The Fixer-Upper
Recently my wonderful son and his beautiful wife purchased their first home, a mid-century ranch-style home in a lovely neighborhood with big trees and lots of young families. Like many homes first-time buyers purchase, this one needed a bit of work to bring it up to date. It had a distinct 1970s Brady Bunch vibe, but with a lot of work they could make it a home. They asked my husband and me if we would help them renovate the home, and of course we said yes.
Now, I have to confess that I am worthless when it comes to these types of things. I mean, I love watching Chip and Joanna do the fixer-upper thing, and I aspire to greatness, but the reality is that I have no particular skill set for this type of work. Knowing that, my son asked if I would contribute by taking down the wallpaper in every room of the house. I didnât have to pick up a paintbrush or build a thing. How hard could a little wallpaper be?
Still, I wanted to be prepared. I watched YouTube videos, gathered the right tools, and thought I was ready to go. But it was clear when I started the process of removing the wallpaper that it wasnât going to be an easy task. Each previous owner of the house had taken a shortcut and simply pasted more wallpaper on top of the existing layer. There were five or six layers of flowers, paisley, and country geese literally cemented togetherâand to the wall. The stuff wouldnât budge. Undaunted, I did more research, tried different approaches, and finally stripped off all the paper so the walls underneath could get a fresh coat of paint.
It was a lot of work and the result was nothing more than a blank wall, but I felt a deep sense of accomplishment when that exhausting project was finished. My daughter-in-law and I posted the steps in the process to our Instagram stories. I am sure all our followers let out a huge cheer once the final layer was removed. Such a relief for them. (The things we imagine in our head.) But there was no time to rest; we had floors, countertops, and trim needing some love. Another project was just waiting.
Project-Based Life
Life is like that. Once you finish one project, another one pops up right around the corner. We are constantly starting, finishing, or making our way through them. We often juggle lots of projects at once.
As adults we frequently find ourselves needing to accomplish something due to either necessity or want. Once we recognize the challenge, we research and determine solutions. We dig in and work really hard to make things happen. Finally, the project ends, and we canât wait to share our accomplishment with someone else (hello Instagram!).
We live in a project-based world. Our familyâs latest endeavor of renovating a home is an example of this type of real-life experience. You might find yourself doing something similar or something completely different from our project. But whether you are planning a camping trip, searching for the most cost-effective way to get your graduate degree, or retiling a bathroom (donât get me started!), you are leading a project-based life.
My question is simple: if thatâs what life is like, are we preparing students to succeed in a project-based world? Are we giving students the opportunity to wrestle with real-world challenges, encounter roadblocks and regroup, and share the results with others? And if we agree that school should prepare you for life, what steps do we need to take in our classrooms to prepare our kids for a project-based life?
What Does PBL Look Like?
At this point you may be thinking, âSo what is the big deal about PBL? What is PBL? I mean, is it really just doing projects? Or is it more like an integrated curriculum? Or is PBL essentially just a form of thematic teaching?â
I hear you. Educators these days have more jargon and acronyms than we have Sharpies. But honestly, PBL is its own approach. It may have some of the same characteristics as other things we do in our classrooms, but PBL has several distinguishing features that make it both unique and powerful.
Letâs walk into Kâ12 classrooms together to determine the elements of PBL. In other words, what do all true PBL units have in common, no matter the grade level or content area? As I share the following examples drawn from my own classroom and those of colleagues from around the nation, please be thinking about what these scenarios have in common.
Kindergarten
This group of sweet new faces to school were asked to find out âWho are the people who make our school great, and how do they do it?â The teachers took the kindergarten students on a tour of the school, stopping along the way to meet all the important people working to make the school great. They chatted briefly with each member and upon returning to class, they made a chart of all the people they met along the way. Over the next few weeks, students learned about asking questions, being a good listener, and recording answers. Pairs of students interviewed each of the school staff members they visited during the in-school field trip and then created a product such as a video, poster, or booklet to show what they had learned about the staff member and their role in the school. Staff members, students from other classes, and parents were invited to tour the kindergarten exhibit and ask the young interviewers questions about their staff members. The kinders learned about the helpful members of their school community, applied communication arts skills in an authentic way, and educated others.
Fourth Grade
These future entrepreneurs needed to learn a variety of economic, math, health, and communication arts standards. The teacher invited community members who worked in the restaurant business to talk with the students. They were given the challenge of developing a business plan and opening a class business. Students were asked to consider, âHow can we open a successful restaurant?â The class decided to open a BBQ pop-up restaurant and worked through each step, from business plan to opening the business for a day. These tasks included deciding the type of restaurant, garnering investors, applying for jobs, creating the menu, advertising their business, determining cost of supplies, taking reservations, ordering supplies, cooking the food, welcoming guests, taking orders, serving the meals, and handling both the order and money transactions. These scrappy business owners served community members, family, and friends, and created a thriving delivery service for school personnel that day during their pop-up restaurant. Students gained an in-depth understanding of economics, mathematical computations, importance of health guidelines, and communicating with others through speaking and writing.
Middle School
A determined science teacher connected with her somewhat reluctant middle school students through the use of PBL. She needed to hook her learners into understanding basic scientific principles about the scientific method and various chemical compounds and mixtures. She began by bringing in everyday hygiene items such as lotions, soaps, hand sanitizers, etc. Then she asked the students to explain how these products were made. When it was evident they had a very limited understanding of how these common products were manufactured, she challenged them to develop their own self-care products to share with the rest of the school. They decided the items must be safe, appealing to their peers, and cost effective. Over several weeks, the students investigated how these items were made and worked in teams to create their own. They produced many prototypes, tested them out, rejected many and started again. Ultimately, the students produced hand sanitizer, body scrub, and bars of soap, demonstrating along the way their understanding of chemical compounds and mixtures. They created packaging, pricing, marketing, and sold the items to students at the school. This project was an authentic way to not just cover the science standards for the course, but empower students to apply the learning in a real-world way.
High School
A nervous social studies teacher preparing students for the stateâs end-of-course exam for US history and the Constitution struggled with how to implement PBL with the large amount of content needed to be taught for the high-stakes assessment. She decided to have the students interact with real people who worked daily with laws, to help provide a purpose and context for the content she was teaching. Guests she invited to class included lawyers, law makers, community leaders, and police officers, who talked with students about how laws are made, changed, and followed. They discussed local issues that impacted the students and their community. Students then worked in small groups to determine an issue or area that needed legislation or a change in legislation. They researched and created proposals for the new laws or changes to laws. They presented their ideas to a small group of lawyers and law makers for feedback and suggestions. This teacher was able to make the required standards for an end-of-course exam come alive for students by facilitating an experience that allowed choice, passion, and a real audience.
Virtual Learners
Teachers of all different grade levels invited students to choose a topic or interest that they were passionate about and share with others their expertise. Students developed questions and explored resources for answers. They created a product or presentation to share their learning and used technology tools such as Zoom, Google Meets, and Flipgrid to share their passion with other students, parents, and experts in the field.
PBL Key Elements
You undoubtedly noticed several commonalities across the grade levels and content areas in these scenarios: things such as collaboration, real-world problems, community members, research, hands-on learning, and engagement that led to empowerment. All these elements are important components of PBL, and each, properly understood, helps to comprise what makes PBL its own unique teaching approach.
Another PBL teacher Iâd like to introduce you to is Tracy Harris, a sixth-grade teacher at John Thomas School of Discovery in Nixa, Missouri. When I asked her what was unique about PBL classrooms, she emphasized how all the different elements of PBL came together when authentically grounded in the lives of her students:
I find that PBL is really most organic when you can find something around your building that you can make connect with your kids. So, anytime I can pull in a problem that is happening on our campus, something that we can fix, something that we can improve, [it] actually makes them more connected and gives them more ownership in whatâs going on. I find I can use it a whole lot more within my classroom.
As Tracy and the examples above illustrate, PBL is meaningful when connected to the lives of students, which allows her to use PBL âa whole lot more.â Note what she doesnât sayâthat itâs PBL or bust. I want to make clear that I believe our students need all types of teaching and learning strategies. They need projects, icebreakers, room transformations, field trips, experiments, reading, writing, thematic or integrated units, centers or stations, etc. Everything we presently do has its place and purpose, and despite my enthusiasm for PBL, you might be surprised to discover that I donât think all our curriculum should be taught through PBL units. I think we should do lots of PBL, but not solely PBL. The scenarios Iâve described above involve some heavy liftin...