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PBL Design Elements

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Article

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(This is the third in a series of posts about schools named as winners in the 2015-16 Schools of Opportunity project. You can find the first post here and the second here.)

If you listen to the school reform debate these days, you would be forgiven for thinking that public schools across the board are failing students and that schools that are struggling can only improve if they fire all of their staff, become a charter school or let the state take them over. It's just not so.

This is clear in a project called the Schools of Opportunity, launched a few years ago by educators who sought to highlight public high schools that actively seek to close opportunity gaps through 11 research-proven practices and not standardized test scores (which are more a measure of socioeconomic status than anything else).

The project assesses how well schools provide health and psychological support for students, judicious and fair discipline policies, high-quality teacher mentoring programs, outreach to the community, effective student and faculty support systems, and broad and enriched curriculum. Schools submit applications explaining why they believe their school should be recognized.

The project started in 2014 as a pilot program in New York and Colorado, and went national in 2015-2016, with gold and silver winners coming from states including Maryland, Georgia, California and Oregon. It is the brainchild of Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a professor specializing in educational policy and law; and Carol Burris, a former award-winning principal in New York who is now executive director of the nonprofit Network for Public Education.

Twenty schools were named as honorees for the 2015-16 school year - eight gold winners and 12 silver - and you can see the list here. This is the third in a series of posts I will publish that highlight why each of the schools was chosen to be honored. It is important to note that each school found success in ways that met the needs of their own communities.

This week's winner is William Smith High School in Colorado, and the post was authored by Kevin Welner and Linda Molner Kelley. Welner is the director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a professor specializing in educational policy and law at the university. Kelley, associate director of the Schools of Opportunity project, is the former assistant dean of teacher education and partnerships and director for outreach and engagement at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In those and her current consulting roles, she has developed numerous K-16 and community programs designed to strengthen learning opportunities for students and teachers in diverse settings. She is also a former high school teacher and administrator in a Denver-area school district.

By Kevin Welner and Linda Molner Kelley
High School: William Smith High School
City and State: Aurora, Colorado
Principal: David Roll
Superintendent: Rico Munn
Enrollment: 305
Economically disadvantaged students: 60 percent
William Smith High School serves a diverse group of students who seek a personalized education, grounded in deep exploration of academic content through project-based learning, local community connections, travel, and service experiences.

Located in Aurora, Colorado, which is immediately east of Denver, William Smith's approach is strong collaboration among administrators, staff and students, plus investment in a school community marked by shared values and a desire to do meaningful, relevant work.

Teachers are considered valuable professionals, and the school commits resources to their professional growth and leadership. Teachers spend Friday afternoons collaborating and developing the projects that drive student learning.

With administrative support, teachers hone their practices, traveling to other successful and innovative schools across the country, attending institutes offered through EL Education, Advanced Placement Institutes and other professional organizations. William Smith also supports a pipeline of novice teachers interested in its style of educational innovation. These "Boettcher Teachers-in-Residence" are paired with veteran teachers for an intensive practice teaching experience.

Authentic, real-world problems and issues drive academic course projects, and these often include service learning opportunities. William Smith involves the broader community by partnering with the local University of Colorado Anschutz medical campus in health science programs, offering dual enrollments with community colleges, utilizing adjunct arts and fitness instructors, and requiring all seniors to complete a capstone learning experience, often partnering with adult mentors in the community.

Sixty percent of juniors and seniors choose to enroll in concurrent coursework at community or technical colleges.

Constantly evolving and thinking to the future, staff members frequently adjust courses and schedules, creating flexible ways to allocate time so that learning opportunities are maximized. The administration regularly seeks feedback from alumni, current students, parents, and teachers in order to keep the curriculum dynamic. Students are also involved in curriculum planning, and their collaborative inquiries often prompt subsequent topics of study.

With multi-grade level classes, and with no "tracked" classes at the school, all students have full access to any course in which they are interested. Teachers differentiate their instruction to accommodate all learners in each class. Students also have opportunities to explore their passions in one-week "intensives" offered each fall and spring. Past studies have included 3D prototyping, aerial dance, urban farming, and a service project to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Instruction and assessments are topic-based and authentic to projects, not test-driven. Assessments might include showcases, community presentations, dramatic performances, Socratic Seminars, written portfolios and other opportunities to demonstrate learning that are appropriate to the content.

Students of color and students who receive free and reduced lunch succeed at rates equal to, or higher than, the rest of their peers. The school boasts a 90 percent graduation rate - 92 percent for minorities - and both of those rates are the highest in the district.

"When we teach interesting things and engage kids in the work of professionals, learning will follow," said Principal David Roll.

This shared vision of purposeful learning, coupled with a culture of support and respect for all, makes William Smith High School an innovative example of what a high school can accomplish. We are pleased to recognize William Smith as a gold School of Opportunity.

[How one school created a 'safe, comfortable place' for students and teachers]

[This school was on the brink of closure. Here's how it saved itself.]

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This high-poverty school succeeds by focusing on adventure, the arts, project-based learning

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(This is the third in a series of posts about schools named as winners in the 2015-16 Schools of Opportunity project. You can find the first post here and the second here.)

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What Does It Take for a Project to be Authentic?

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What Does It Take for a Project to be Authentic?

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Blog Post

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What Does It Take for a Project to be "Authentic"?

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PBLWorks Editor in Chief John Larmer explains how there is a continuum of authenticity in PBL and gives examples of projects that are not, are somewhat, or are fully authentic.

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29.5 Tips for Successfully Managing a Project

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29.5 Tips for Successfully Managing a Project

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Blog Post

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March 6, 2014
29.5 Tips for Successfully Managing a Project

Many of the teachers we work with find it fairly easy to envision the end of a project - the products students will create, and the big finish when students publicly share their work, their solution to a problem, or their answer to a driving question. And with a little coaching, teachers can plan an effective entry event to launch the project and get students underway on their initial tasks. But one of the most challenging parts of PBL is figuring out the "middle part" of a project - how to manage the day-to-day work of students and teams.

For rookie PBL teachers, sometimes even for veterans, there are many potential pitfalls during the middle of a project, but for now let's look at some tips for handling the five situations below. (Note: Many of these tips do not apply to primary-age children, who do not work as independently as older students can be expected to.)

1. Some student teams aren't working well together.

Discuss team work with students, drawing from their past experience, noting what it looks like when it goes well and what can go wrong.

Develop clear criteria for teamwork; create a collaboration rubric or another list of expectations/norms. Post guidelines on the classroom wall.

Form teams by carefully considering who would work well together. If a particular student needs extra support or understanding - or, shall we say, special handling - put him or her with the right teammates.

Have each team write - or give them a template - and sign a contract that spells out their agreements about working together, and the steps to be taken when they don't (tip within tip: do NOT let the first step be "get the teacher"!).

Practice collaboration skills before and during a project (e.g., use role-plays, team-building activities, fishbowl modeling, or have them practice on short, fun, low-stakes tasks).

Teach students how to run meetings, play various roles, use conflict resolution skills, and use decision-making strategies.

Have students self-assess and reflect on collaboration skills at checkpoints.

Monitor teams closely; sit in during team meetings; hold meetings with teams or team representatives to check in on progress and teamwork.

Only as a last resort, step in to manage the team, or break up the team and reassign members to other teams.

2. Some students aren't doing their fair share of the work in teams.

Step One is to find out why this is happening; don't assume a student is being lazy or is at fault (maybe the team isn't organized well, or one person is dominating and doing too much; perhaps the student has language issues or lacks necessary skills).

Give students organizers or forms for planning their tasks and dividing up the workload.

Require each student to do specific tasks when working on a team product and have checkpoints to be sure this is happening.

When forming teams, do not put best friends together who may not be able to tell each other to step it up.

Have students include a "Firing Clause" in their contracts (Note: We do not advise this for very young students!) and specify what will happen - e.g., do the project on your own, work with the teacher as a partner, or do some not-as-exciting alternative assignment.

Consider forming teams for the next project by placing low-effort students together so they'll have to rise to the occasion (one colleague of mine calls this "slacker hardball") and learn a valuable lesson.

3. One or more students are frequently absent and miss key project events.

Again, Step One is to find out why this is happening; there could be legitimate reasons that will affect your response.

Make it the responsibility of the student and his/her team to stay in touch, tell each other when they'll miss something, and find out how to get caught up - this should be part of the Team Contract.

Have a project center (a place in the classroom or online) where important documents are always available - don't let them rely on you to hand them everything.

Remember one of the benefits of PBL: chronically disengaged or absent students may be more motivated to participate if the project is engaging, and/or if they have a sense of obligation to their team - or at least will go along with peer pressure.

4. Students don't know what to do during independent work time, waste time, and/or get frustrated.

Plan a more structured project than what might be your eventual "ideal vision of PBL." Create a project calendar with regular and frequent - even daily - checkpoints and formative deliverables.

Before a project starts, teach students how to plan the use of time and how to organize tasks. Show them how to use forms and templates that will help them during the project.

Provide lots of scaffolds: research note-taking forms, Internet search guides, resource logs, etc.

Anticipate Need to Knows so you can plan and present lessons and resources on a "just in time" basis. During the project, decide whether it would be a good idea and feasible to deliver these only to the teams that are ready, or to the whole class.

Differentiate daily and weekly tasks for teams that are ahead or behind other teams; make sure they have next steps to accomplish ("if you finish that, you could do this, or this, or this").

5. The project is taking too long and your calendar was way off.

​If possible, and if the project is important enough, adjust your semester calendar to free up more time. (I know, duh, but it needs to be said first.)

Scale back the project requirements; cut down on the number, length, or complexity of the products students are working on (for example, instead of 10-minute videos, have students produce shorter videos or even just storyboards and scripts; have them interview only one expert, not three).

Call for back-up; bring in other school staff, older students, outside experts/mentors, or parents to help student teams wrap up their work.

Provide resources (websites, experts, reading material) for students instead of asking them to find and sort through them.

Reduce the amount of time allotted for presentations; if possible, have students present simultaneously in different locations (with other adults you've recruited to facilitate and assess).

Here's a good general rule for managing projects: Do whatever you can to make the PBL environment more like a real-world workplace. If a team is not working well together, what would adults on the job do? If a co-worker gets sick, how might a team handle the situation? If deadlines are being missed and the project is falling behind schedule, how does a project manager adjust?

And remember, managing a project gets easier over time. As you, and especially students, get used to what it means to work in a PBL environment, a lot of management issues go away. If your whole school is using PBL extensively, managing projects will be much easier, as new ways of teaching and learning become part of the culture. Routines get established, desired behaviors become the norm, and troubleshooting becomes the shared responsibility of both teachers and students.

Do you have more tips for any of the above pitfalls?

Any special advice for managing projects with primary-age students?

Please add a comment!

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29.5 Tips for Successfully Managing a Project | Blog | Project Based Learning | BIE

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Many of the teachers we work with find it fairly easy to envision the end of a project - the products students will create, and the big finish when students publicly share their work, their solution to a problem, or their answer to a driving question.

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