While the Consortium began as a nonprofit focused exclusively in the Mon Valley in Western Pennsylvania, our project-based learning (PBL) training and support continues to expand our reach beyond the Commonwealth.
In September, our PBL training team, Aaron Altemus and Christy Kuehn, kicked off a hybrid training series with a cohort of alternative education teachers, counselors, and administrators in the Willingboro Township School District in New Jersey.
Educators and school leaders began their PBL journey last year, designing cross-curricular monthly projects with the intent to offer engaging, flexible learning experiences for students who often struggled in more traditional learning environments. Starting this year, the Alternative School at Bookbinder team was eager to build on their successes by incorporating new PBL strategies and a formalized framework into their planning process.
Our PBL training team took an alternative approach as well; rather than jump right in with content and instruction, the first training day started with a listening session–exploring and honoring the incredible work that the educators at Bookbinder had already accomplished, ensuring that the workshop would best align to their current needs and efforts.
Participants then explored the foundational elements of PBL, starting foremost with strategies to inject student voice and choice and real world connections into everyday learning, whether it be a project or a standalone lesson.
After practicing the mechanics of driving questions, they drafted prototype project plans, ranging in topics from the history of Hip-Hop and African American history to school sustainability and explorations of emotional intelligence. And in the spirit of PBL, they shared those projects with their colleagues to gather some initial feedback using a modified Thinking Hats protocol.
The training will continue throughout the fall with a series of virtual sessions focused on specific strategies to facilitate research, brainstorming, feedback, and reflection–often known among PBL educators as the “messy middle.” As the projects develop over time, our Consortium team will continue to curate and tailor the training sessions to unique needs of the cohort.
