Empowering Students to Take the Lead

Every year my 8th graders complete a legacy project. This project is meant to help our community in some way. My goal with this project is always to put the students in charge, and I take on the role of facilitator. It is also a great way for me to get more practice with designing PBL, project based learning, units.

Students worked on creating a documentary of our academy, with the purpose of informing the public of what we do and using the documentary as an advertising tool on the academy website. It took roughly two thirds of the school year to complete and again, as in the Digital Badge Legacy Project, I facilitated the learning and work of 3 8th grade classes. The 3 classes, about 80 students, worked together to create this single product.

The best thing I love about these projects is the increased confidence students feel when empowered to take the reins and run the project themselves. 

So with a lot of patience and a clear vision of the big, overall picture, here's how we made a documentary.

October

I chose 3 "executive producers" from each of the 8th grade classes, who, with my guidance, would be in charge of producing the documentary, essentially running the whole show. These students would be responsible for figuring out what other jobs were needed, how to give those jobs to their peers, creating a timeline, monitoring the work, giving feedback, and approving the final product. After our initial meeting, we decided to use the group feature in our Schoology LMS as our primary communication tool, since students had to work across classes.

You can see the jobs they decided on by the group names.

       

They also decided that their peers should apply for the jobs and they would make the final decision on who got which job. The execs also wanted to have a "lead" in each group to be the primary communicator and those interested in that position would be interviewed by the execs. To be honest, I was quite taken aback by how "real life" my 8th grade execs were starting out. It was awesome! Check out our final job chart with responsibilities here. 

Executive producers interviewing peers to be potential leads.

November - December

All 8th graders received jobs and we began to learn about documentaries. First we analyzed some mentors and talked about what we thought our academy story was and how we might want to see it told through story. The execs came together to get a list of story board ideas so they could set their peers to work. I worked with them on developing a protocol to assign work.

Students used "orders" specific to their jobs to keep track of the work.

January - March

Students worked to film, create graphics, make music, etc. This was where my talents as a teacher shined through. I had to still teach content for my class, so I create a series of small, independent units that students could work through when they were not working on the documentary. This allowed me to facilitate documentary work and learning of our content.

Executive producer, camera operator, interviewer, and sound manager
filming an interview with the founders of our charter school.

April - May

All the video footage, music, and graphic pieces were handed over to the editors. It would be their job, with guidance from the execs, to piece together our academy's story based on the storyboard and all the pieces. During this process, editors often requested revisions from their peers. Since we had multiple editors, in multiple classes, we used 1 computer that I logged in and out of. The editors communicated on a google doc that was editable by the execs and myself. Once the editors had a working documentary, the execs and I watched it and gave feedback. This prompted a list of work for editors to complete by the end of May.

June

Though it was sometimes hard to manage all 80 students working towards creating 1 product and having the patience to help my students to think of their own solutions to the problems that arose, in the end all 80 8th graders learned to be better communicators and have pride in a job, no matter how small, that contributed to one large project. In the end the 5 minute documentary is perfect and is a great addition to our academy's website.

When students are empowered to take the lead they experience the kind of learning they need to be successful adult learners in a safe environment, with multiple opportunities to practice when at first they don't succeed. This was truly the first time I had been an equal partner with my students in designing an experience to create a single product. I was blown away by the maturity and willingness to grow outside their comfort zones. This documentary will live on for a few years, giving my now former 8th graders the opportunity to see their work serve a purpose.

Our Finished Documentary

Digital Badge Design Unit: My First PBL Experience

I'm the kind of teacher that takes the time to think through a lesson or unit and plan, but at some point you can't anticipate everything and just need to jump in!

This is precisely what I did with my first real PBL (project based learning) unit. Before the planning stages I read Setting the Standards for Project Based Learning and Implementing Project-Based Learning, then as I planned my unit I worked through the Project Based Learning Starter Kit, which was so helpful. Another great resource was the Buck Institute for Education's (BIE) website of resources.

So my first official PBL unit was a doozy, but hey go big or go home, right? I needed a way to assess my students' basic technology knowledge and skills and had been looking at using digital badges. As I contemplated designing a badging system that would entice students to earn them and be easily manageable, I thought who would know better then my students. I immediately started working with the resources above to create a PBL unit for my 8th graders that would have them designing the entire badge system. Here is my unit plan and my teaching and learning guide, both templates I tweaked from BIE's resources. 

The unit began with a solid start; I had planned well. I knew my students didn't know about digital badges and couldn't design a system without having a base knowledge of the kind of system we wanted to create. Using Schoology, I created a differentiated reading group activity where groups of students read and discussed a video or article about badging. 

Video and Articles My Students Read

I grouped students according to their reading level, provided them questions to answer, and required them to comment on their peers answers, to facilitate a conversation.

Instructions for Completing the Reading

Once the groups were done, all the students completed a whole class discussion in Schoology about what we needed to consider when designing our badge system.

Directions for the Whole Class Discussion

This was a great start, but my students were still unsure about what exactly we were creating, so we looked at models of badge systems. We looked at the Aurora Public School Badge System and a Schoology based teacher professional development badge system, designed by Brandi Miller. We then had a ton of discussion and captured our thoughts using Padlet, Google Docs, and more Schoology discussions. After a week of establishing our base knowledge and brainstorming which tech skills to create badges for, we got into groups and started our work.

Here was the tricky part. I have 3 classes of 8th graders and we wanted to all work together to create 1 badge system. To manage 90 students working on the same project I created a team of 3 project managers in each class whose job it was to manage groups and help me design the overall system pieces, like where would we house the system and what the process would be for submitting evidence and issuing badges. Each class also had 8-9 groups of 3-4 students, with a group leader. The group leader was the main contact to the project managers and the project managers were the main contact to me. I only worked with 9 students total, the project managers, and only jumped into working with a group if all other attempts by the students to work out conflict failed. This system worked well, allowed me time to get into group's work and give feedback and train project managers on how to manage groups and run meetings to check in with work progress and group dynamics.

Project Manager Running Group Check-up Meeting

Guidelines for Groups, List Generated by Students

During this 5 week unit, 8th graders were engaged all the way through the last week of school. We had amazing conversations about how to write instructions and create tutorials for the specific audiences of 6th, 7th, or 8th graders. Students deepened their understanding of using information and images ethically and steered clear of copyright or trademark infringement. They also demonstrated their complete understanding of basic tech content. But the best part of all....they took pride in their work and completely exceeded my expectations! 

Students Engaged in Designing Badges

I have a little bit of work to do to string together all the different pieces of our system, but they created outstanding resources for our 6-8th graders to independently learn and earn badges that will demonstrate their basic tech knowledge. This system will also help me pinpoint who knows what and allow me to better plan learning experiences and access tech skills, encourage students to become the teacher, and eventually turn over running the system to a team of students. My 8th graders successfully created 23 badges, each with 4-5 microbadges, and a variety of learning resources to help the earner learn. Here is just a small sample of what was created.

I know some of my colleagues thought I was nuts to tackle such a large scale project with 90 8th graders at the end of the school year, but this amazing work came about through the power of PBL. I'm inspired by the work my students did and look forward to implementing our new digital badge system in August.

Why PBL?

Over spring break I decided to relax like most teachers and read a few professional books. One of those books was Implementing Project-Based Learning by Suzie Boss. I followed the Buck Institute on Twitter, as well as perused their website. And, I will also be reading Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning by John Larmer, John Mergendoller and Suzie Boss. I like to think that I design thought provoking projects that give my students opportunity to critically think and problem solve, but if that was the case my students would begin to show signs of growth in these areas by this point in the year. As I have reflected though, this is not the case. This is precisely the reason I needed to research and understand project/problem based learning (PBL) more. Maybe I need more structure, maybe I need to craft better driving questions, or maybe I'm not allowing my students to be creative. What I do know is that I need to get this right because my students' futures depend on it!

This never was so apparent to me as today...

Have you ever heard someone say that it is ok for a small percentage of students to receive Ds and/or Fs because society needs low level workers, and those students will be just fine, or, don't worry if that student can't think critically, they just have to know how to flip a burger? I have, and some of these people have been my colleagues. Let me make this clear. This is not acceptable! 

All students can be powerful thinkers and problem solvers.

Even in those so called "low level" jobs, employees need to be thinkers, and solve problems. 

I'm an observer; I like to watch how things work. I've always been this way since I was little. So naturally as I watched my car being washed today at one of those "done by hand, take longer, better wash" places, I watched how the system worked. See my husband always takes my car to be washed, so I had never been to a carwash like this before today. 

Image Source

Imagine cars lined up at every part of the process. Some were at the start getting vacuumed, some were waiting to go through the wash, and others were getting detailed. This while several, including mine, were in a holding pattern as those cars done with the wash were stacking up waiting for the detail. At the start (vacuum) and the end (detail) there seemed to be a manager/owner working along side of the other employees. Noble, I thought. It's always nice to see the leaders jump in and help when needed. But, remember, my car and several others were in a holding pattern because the detail work was backing up. I watched how all the employees diligently did their job, but that was it. None of them noticed the back up. Then one of them did and pointed it out to another and then another. It was more of a "look how busy we are", not a "oh man let's figure out how to remedy this". Here in lies the problem. None of them would or maybe even could solve the problem. I watched as 5 cars pulled in, saw cars everywhere and turned around and left. It took a customer complaining about his car being in the holding pattern too long to get the manager/owner at the vacuum station to go see what was happening. He walked over, spoke to the other manger/owner and quickly the employees were reorganized to get the detail on cars done faster. And, before you knew it, there were no cars in the holding pattern after about 15 minutes. Not only had none of the employees solved the problem, but the carwash lost some business. How much business would have been lost if the customer had not complained or the employees stepped up to solve the back up issue?

As I watched this unfold I asked myself: do these guys want to solve this problem or, can they solve this problem? Maybe they weren't allowed to make those kinds of reorganizing decisions, or maybe they were just lazy and wanted to do the bare minimum? After moving closer to listen to what the employees were saying to one another, remember I'm an observer, I believe it was neither of those. I think they couldn't solve the problem, because once they were redistributed to cars, as a way to double up, I noticed that they continued to double up until the back up was gone, then they went back to the original organization, without being told to. 

So what does this have with project/problem based learning? If all classrooms took this approach to learning, doing true PBL, every student would be a creative thinker, problem solver, and collaborator. Many might even be great initiators. No matter what job you have as an adult, you need to be a creative problem solver. My time at the car wash today could have been cut in half if one of the employees saw the problem and initiated a solution, even it was just telling the manager/owner that there was a problem.

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PBL is not about students completing projects at the end of the unit to show what they've learned. It's about students showing the learning through the entire process. It's about not giving all the pieces, but letting students figure out those pieces as they complete the unit.

I'm excited about honing this process in my own classroom and urge every teacher to consider moving to a more PBL classroom. No matter where students end up as adults, they all deserve learning how to think creatively. Our future depends on it.