Five middle schools and one high school in the Whitfield County, Georgia school district are in their second year of a transition to project-based learning. Their model is High Tech High, a San Diego charter school renowned for its hands-on student projects that have real-world impact.
Whitfield educators have taken big risks, tried things that failed, and then improved their work based on those mistakes. They’re still learning. Yet they’ve also succeeded in making a huge transition in a short time. The words they use for what it’s like to see their students so thoroughly engaged include exciting, amazing, and fun.
Here are some key lessons from Whitfield County — often learned the hard way — on how to tackle the challenges of replicating a model PBL school.
Laura McBain from High Tech High explains their protocol for collegial conversations.
1. Deliberately build trust among colleagues
Any process of change — not to mention project-based learning itself — requires teamwork and learning from one another. “One of our biggest mistakes was assuming that teachers could jump in and collaborate and have those critical conversations,” says Andrea Bradley, principal of North Whitfield Middle School. “It’s very, very hard not to make it personal.” After some initial friction, North Whitfield Middle School started using High Tech High’s procedure for constructive criticism to help teachers learn to go “hard on the content, soft on the people,” as High Tech High describes it.
2. Grant the freedom to fail
It requires courage and a willingness to take risks and experiment to try anything new. Teachers in Whitfield County say a crucial part of their success results from knowing that administrators will support them even if they try something that bombs. “Teachers need to feel that if I walk into their classroom and they’re trying something and it doesn’t work, it’s OK,” explains Bradley. “Otherwise, they’re not going to try to grow.”
3. Allow for flexible scheduling
Engaging, hands-on projects often don’t fit neatly into a 50-minute class period. A teacher might need just 20 minutes for an introduction one day, then 90 minutes for students to work in groups the next day. So Bradley and Tim Fleming, principal at Whitfield Career Academy, the high school, did away with bells at their schools. Instead, each group of teachers shares the same set of students, and each group has the freedom to adjust its schedule depending on the demands of the day.
Whitfield Career Academy teachers collaborate and plan a multidisciplinary murder mystery project for their students.
4. Build in time to plan and collaborate
An essential part of the High Tech High model is integrating multiple subjects into each project, which requires teachers from different disciplines to plan together. Plus, teachers need one another’s support and coaching as they undergo this change. So principals at each of the schools shifting to PBL changed the schedules to allow for daily common planning time. At Whitfield Career Academy, teachers literally share an office; Fleming moved their desks from separate classrooms into a big, shared workroom.
5. Don’t forget the standards
Teachers at Whitfield Career Academy and North Whitfield Middle School say that last year, they were so intent on designing meaningful projects and personalizing the work for their students that they didn’t always build in enough academic rigor. This year, they’re working to correct that.”One of my biggest mistakes was thinking that a project has to be a grand display, the more butcher paper and scissors and glitter the better,” says North Whitfield Middle School seventh-grade teacher Samantha Bacchus. “Now, I feel like a project really works when I start with the standards and incorporate aspects that I know the students will be able to use to learn the standards.”
6. Remember, not everything is a project
“When you jump into something and teachers are excited about it, they may want to force, say, this math into this science, but it doesn’t always fit,” notes Bradley. “I keep having to say to teachers, ‘It’s OK if I come into your classroom and it looks very traditional,’ because a project for everything is not appropriate, but engaging work is always appropriate.”
Colleagues (above) listen to Whitfield Career Academy teacher (and “evangelist”) Eric White in a school district PBL training session.
7. Cultivate an evangelist
Whitfield Career Academy teacher Eric White went on the first of the district’s several visits to High Tech High, and he took to the school’s rigorous project-based learning right away. Given his passion for the practice and his skills as a presenter, he became a key evangelist who explained project-based learning to his colleagues and led training sessions across the district. As usual, it helps for teachers to hear this message from a fellow teacher — someone who understands the daily challenges of a classroom.
8. Pilot with a small group of enthusiasts
Rather than trying to convert their entire schools to project-based learning all at once, principals in Whitfield County started with a single grade and tried to place the teachers who were most eager to make the transformation in that group. That way, the enthusiasts could work out some of the bugs and demonstrate the benefits of PBL for their colleagues to see. The principals chose the earliest grades in their schools, sixth and ninth, because students in those grades would more likely be open-minded about a new kind of learning.
9. Use the available free resources
The nonprofit High Tech High aims to share its best practices openly, not make money off them, so it posts a host of materials on its website for free. The Projects page details projects created by High Tech High teachers, with timelines, assignment descriptions, and examples of student work. The Videos page contains dozens of videos on teaching and learning at the school, some produced by students. More resources and videos on project-based learning are available from the Buck Institute for Education and Edutopia’s own PBL page.
Eric White discusses ways to get buy-in from parents and community members for project-based learning.
10. Educate parents and the community
Helping parents and community members understand and buy into project-based learning is one thing educators across Whitfield County agree they haven’t done enough of. “The word project can mean so many different things,” Bradley points out. “Parents thought it meant we were going to cut out cute stuff and stick it on a poster. For us, project-based learning doesn’t mean you have to use paint or glitter or build something. Really, it’s about designing an experience that children want to be a part of.”
We’re looking to put some more muscle behind the idea of preparing students to do more than take multiple choice assessments. We looked at a variety of products and were not happy with the options so we decided to make our own. Working with, John Ross1 we got together a team of core content teachers from four different schools.
We all attended a CLA workshop on how to create performance based assessments. The model is essentially based around providing a limited source of materials with varying degrees of reliability and in need of varying levels of analysis. Marc Chun2 was the presenter and he did a good job outlining the process and providing time for us to begin building our assessment over the two day workshop.
I like the CWRA model as a whole but the pre-made route was expensive for the scale we’re interested in and we wanted the assessment to allow more freedom in terms of the final product. The CWRA assessment only allows text and we were hoping to encourage students to select from a variety of technologies as part of determining how to present their final product.
So our goal was to create a scenario that both interested and engaged 8th grade students. It needed to have interdisciplinary elements that required using higher order thinking skills in all of the core content areas.
We opted to have students argue about current HCPS cellphone policy for students. They would analyze the data and then present their opinion on what the school board should do in the most effective way possible.
The goal was to present them with a variety of fact based media artifacts from a variety of sources (text, graphs, audio). John Ross created these artifacts from a variety of sources and added some context specific to HCPS. I’ve put the source files for the artifacts up at http://henricostaffdev.org/cellphone/. The SITX compressed files are probably what you’re interested in.
I’ve been to see one of the assessments being given and it was very interesting. I’ve got a great video clip of a student despairing about the public and how they don’t double check the information given to them and so believe all sorts of things based on false information. I’ve got to clean up the audio but I’ll get that posted soon.
After Spring Break (this week for us), we’ll meet with the four teachers and debrief in preparation for scaling this assessment out to more teachers. It’s going to be interesting in a variety of ways. I think we have a fairly scalable model and one that seems to interest at least a portion of students and teachers. I think we can create a repository of these assessments and align them to content, skills, and SOLs/Core Content. I also want to see what happens when we stop creating content and simply aggregate and display information directly from the real world.
2 He’d have a decent picture in this post if he’d have let me add him to my (now neglected) Stranger portrait series but I seem to have scared him.
3 As an interesting aside, Jen was shot in front of a fairly typical cinder block wall. It looked bad enough that I took a stab at chroma keying it out. It worked surprisingly well but I had some holes in her shirt where the blue background showed through at times. I “fixed” this by dropping a new layer in and putting a white box between the Jenn layer and the world background. Not perfect, but a decent fix if you’re in a hurry.
We just wrapped up this year’s 21st century lesson plans awards. Below is one of the student work winners- a great stop motion ad created for Alexander’s BBQ. The restaurant has the ad running on its website.
You can also find quick video summaries of the winning lessons (like the one below) on the ITRT Vimeo site. Once we get the lesson plans and artifacts up, I’ll post those as well.
Rachel Toy (the teacher who leads off the video above) is also working with me and a few other people on 21st century assessment (which I’ll post about later).
HCPS Technology Department has started creating a list of “tech tips” to help students troubleshoot issues on their computers. I thought you might find them useful as well. Here’s the list:
Does your Laptop react slow and sometimes freeze up? Here are a few tips to get your laptop back up to speed.
Set your desktop background to one picture rather than using a desktop background that changes every few seconds.
Try minimizing the use of Desktop gadgets; do you really need to have 4 clocks open all the time?
Limit the use of animated screen savers such as the “Bubbles” and try to limit the number of programs that are open at one time.
All of these settings use up valuable memory and resources on your laptop that can cause your computer to respond slower than normal.
When and how often should I back up my files to the server?
Get in the habit of backing up your files every morning when you arrive at school and every afternoon before you leave. You should also back up before turning in your computer to the Help Desk for repair.
Did you know you can access files on the server with a student loaner, or from Library desktop computers?
If you need help backing up, ask the Help Desk, or your teacher. If you follow these simple tips, you will always have your most current data.
Did you know pulling your battery out or holding down the power button to shut down your laptop is bad for your computer? Doing a forced Shutdown can cause file corruption or even worse, it could crash your hard drive. Think of it as suddenly putting a car in reverse while driving down the interstate at 70mph. Not Pretty! So what is the right way to shut down your computer?
Select the Windows icon located on the taskbar, and click “Shutdown” from the menu options.
Shutting down your computer daily helps Windows organize your files and keeps your computer running at peak performance.
It is also a good idea to shut down your computer each day before you leave school, and before you store your computer for overnight charging.
Remember Performing Forced Shutdowns stops Windows in its tracks and it may not start again.
Laptop Care
Did you know that leaving your laptop in a car overnight can be harmful to your computer? Extreme heat or cold can cause cracked screens or hard drive failure, or other damage. Be sure to bring your laptop inside every afternoon.
Never over pack your backpack. Your backpack may be padded for protection, but will not protect your computer from rough handling. Your backpack should not be used as a seat cushion, step stool, or Frisbee.
Avoid holding your computer by the screen. This can result in a broken hinge.
If you need to store your laptop in your locker, make sure you have a specific place in it for laptop storage. Never force your laptop into your locker and be cautious when shutting the locker door. Failing to do so can cause cracked screens or other damages.
Your Laptop is not an Umbrella. Keep it in a backpack or case during rain or snow.
Choose a safe location to charge your computer like a table, desk, or bookshelf. If you charge your laptop on the floor, it could accidentally be stepped on. If you stretch your charger cable across a long distance, the cord may become a tripping hazard. Either of these practices could lead to a cracked screen or other damage. Whenever possible, choose a location that is close to an electrical outlet.
Food, drink, and computers are 3 things that don’t play nicely together. Liquid spills are a common accidental damage that can be easily avoided. Please don’t eat or drink while doing work on your laptop.
Remember, an accidental damage can prevent you from laptop incentive qualification.
Always store your computer in a safe place when you are not using it. It should be kept in an area that is away from pets and small children.
2011 Mar 13: 71 comments as of today means we've struck a nerve. Many commenters have put their mark down with an algebraic proof. More interesting to me are those who have included devices for illustrating the proof to their students. That's harder stuff. See MPG's comment:
Consider a similar problem using discrete objects (e.g., playing cards. Take 10 red cards and 10 black cards face down in separate piles. Take four at random from red pile; mix into black pile. Shuffle. Return four random cards face down to red pile. Ask: more black in the red pile or red in the black pile. Try this several times. If you’re not convinced, do it with the faces showing. Apply principle to soda problem.
video — a pair of blocks with the same surface area
video — a pair of blocks with the same volume
video — miscellaneous block #1
video — miscellaneous block #2
video — the answer
image — dimensions of all blocks
applet — interactive exponential model
Caveat #1
I wouldn't use this lesson. I can't explain the best-fit model adequately. I can't adequately explain a microwave. This link was extremely helpful (thanks, Jean-Marc!) as was this explanation (thanks, Carmen!) but in my hands this problem verges on pseudocontext because I'm asking the students to use an operation (exponential modeling) that may or may not follow from the context — I don't have a strong sense of it.
But maybe you can explain the operation to your students and how it results from the context. In that case, here are all the resources and this is how I see other aspects of the lesson playing out.
Caveat #2
I need to reshoot everything, after controlling for variables mentioned by Matt and Christopher. It'll take some time, though. Mostly because I'm sick of cheese.
Caveat #3
The original post wasn't a lesson. I wanted to share something I found interesting and tap into our braintrust here to help me explain it. I only raise this particular caveat because there seems to be some misunderstanding that every blog post constitutes a lesson or a complete curriculum or something.
Perhaps this confusion is genuine. Perhaps it's disingenuous. Certainly it's easier to criticize something if you measure it against a higher bar than it's trying to clear.
2. Ask the students to write down a question in their research journals that interests them.
Then share out.
I presume a majority will want to know how long it will take the block to fully melt. If that isn't a pressing question for your students, then abort. (And let me know.)
3. Estimate.
Ask students to write down a guess. Then ask them to write down a time they know is too long and a time they know is too short. Put some of those guesses on the board and attach them to names.
4. Give more data.
This is where you can introduce the idea of extrapolation, using what few data we know to draw conclusions about what we don't. Open the video of the first five cubes. Ask them to write down what they think is going to happen when the microwave starts.
Afterwards, ask them to write down why they think the cubes melted in the order they did. Really push hard on their idea that "bigger" blocks take longer to melt. Make sure they define bigger. More surface area? More volume?
In either case, you're covered. If someone thinks surface area matters, load up the blocks with the same surface area:
So we threw a sharp rock at both of those theories. Is there a better option? Lecture about the ratio of volume to exposed surface area or let the students discover it. Your method here matters less to me than the fact that we've given students some reason to care about the ratio, what it models, and what they can do with it.
5. Calculate.
Using the measurement images, have the students create a table including the dimensions, the total surface area, the exposed surface area, the volume, the ratios between them, and the melting time for the block. Include the big block whose melting time we don't know.
Have them graph time against one set of data. Show student work. Discuss which model looks best.
6. Model the exponential.
Use the Geogebra file, which graphs the melting time of the block against its ratio of volume to exposed surface area. Have them adjust the parameters until they have a good fit. Discuss the meaning of the parameters.
7. Resolve the hook.
How do we use our model to find out how long it'll take the enormous block to fully melt? Then show the answer:
