Unlock the full potential of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in your school with our six-step guide, a roadmap to educational success that can't be missed. Discover how a needs assessment can reveal the unique strengths and challenges of your school, setting the stage for a PBL plan that helps fulfill your vision. Our candid conversation, inspired by thought leaders like Simon Sinek, will help align motivations across your school's ecosystem, ensuring that everyone from individual teachers to the whole school is on board with the transformative 'why' behind PBL. We even tease the wisdom from Andrew Larson's forthcoming book, Life's a Project: The 6 A's of Project Based Learning on advanced PBL strategies, and delve into how tailored deep planning sessions can help you craft a three-year PBL plan engineered for long-term success.
Take a journey with us as we lay out the practical steps for cultivating a PBL vision that creates the school you've always wanted to lead. We'll walk you through the nitty-gritty of rallying a leadership team, nurturing grassroots support, and shaping a positive adult culture that mirrors our highest hopes for student learning. Learn about the power of storytelling through local success narratives, the art of clear communication, and the strategic patience needed to work a comprehensive three-year plan. By equipping teachers to lead and engaging the whole school community, we pave the way for a dynamic Project Based Learning environment that promises to elevate teaching and learning to its pinnacle. Join us for these essential tactics that promise to revolutionize your school's PBL approach.
Some of the links above are affiliate links which means we get a small commission on anything you purchase using that link (at no more cost to you). As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases.
Unlock the full potential of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in your school with our six-step guide, a roadmap to educational success that can't be missed. Discover how a needs assessment can reveal the unique strengths and challenges of your school, setting the stage for a PBL plan that helps fulfill your vision. Our candid conversation, inspired by thought leaders like Simon Sinek, will help align motivations across your school's ecosystem, ensuring that everyone from individual teachers to the whole school is on board with the transformative 'why' behind PBL. We even tease the wisdom from Andrew Larson's forthcoming book, Life's a Project: The 6 A's of Project Based Learning on advanced PBL strategies, and delve into how tailored deep planning sessions can help you craft a three-year PBL plan engineered for long-term success.
Take a journey with us as we lay out the practical steps for cultivating a PBL vision that creates the school you've always wanted to lead. We'll walk you through the nitty-gritty of rallying a leadership team, nurturing grassroots support, and shaping a positive adult culture that mirrors our highest hopes for student learning. Learn about the power of storytelling through local success narratives, the art of clear communication, and the strategic patience needed to work a comprehensive three-year plan. By equipping teachers to lead and engaging the whole school community, we pave the way for a dynamic Project Based Learning environment that promises to elevate teaching and learning to its pinnacle. Join us for these essential tactics that promise to revolutionize your school's PBL approach.
Some of the links above are affiliate links which means we get a small commission on anything you purchase using that link (at no more cost to you). As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases.
Ryan Steuer:
six steps to a no-fail PBL implementation. Will you have some fails along the way? Yes, but your implementation will not fail. You need to have a growth mindset, but if you follow these six steps, your PBL vision is going to make it. Now, before we jump into this episode, I want to tell you about Life's a Project. It's a brand new PBL book. Life's a Project the Six A's of Project-'s a Project. It's a brand new PBL book. Life's a Project the six A's of project-based learning. It's coming out May 14th of 2024. And if you go to pblpresscom, you can get on the wait list for that book and you're going to love it. I wrote the book PBL Simplified. This book is written by Andrew Larson, who is a PBL guru and thought leader in both PBL and assessment, and he's going to give you the PBL 201 version. He's going to go deeper into all the six A's to bring your PBL practice up higher. So go to pblpresscom to get on the list for life'sa project.
Ryan Steuer:
Now, how do you have a no fail PBL implementation? Number one it's important that you do look into this and you have a purposeful, intentional PBL implementation, because research shows that only 11% of principals are gonna be in the same position for 10 years, which means you've really only got so much time to implement your vision. And you have a vision otherwise you wouldn't be in leadership, right? You see something in education that needs to change. You've got an idea of what it is. Now let's walk you through the steps to implementing that vision, and there's really three ways to do this that I see. There's three ways to implement One you can use the do-it-yourself version, and I'm going to give you that playbook right now in these six steps. I'm going to give you the playbook that we use with schools and districts across the country to implement project-based learning. I'm even going to show you the agenda. I'm going to walk you right through these six steps. The second way you can do this is you can come to an in-person conference in Indianapolis or in Missouri. In Indianapolis, it's going to be June 10th and 11th and in Missouri it's going to be July 23rd and 24th. It's called Emerging Schools. We walk your leadership team through this process to creating a three-year plan for you. And the third way to do this is a total deep dive, where we customize these design days specifically for you to come up with a three-year plan with your leadership team and everything you need to fully implement, and that is a guaranteed no-fail option for PBL implementation. So those are your options. I'm going to walk you through that first option.
Ryan Steuer:
How do you DIY this? How would you do it yourself as a school leader? Again, there's six steps. The very first step is you're going to do a needs assessment. What are the things that you need within your school? So you can go to pblculturecom, pblculturecom, and again, we're going to give you that same playbook that we use when we do a needs assessment with schools and districts. We're giving all of this to you because we want 51% of schools using PBL by 2051. And we know it's got to be a movement, not just one company or a couple of companies trying to get PBL out there. We know that you need to be in the driver's seat, so that's our goal.
Ryan Steuer:
So first thing you're gonna do is a needs assessment, or slash bright spot assessment. Where are the bright spots at your school? Where are the things that are really going well? Maybe it's assessment. Maybe you have some student-centered practices already in place. Maybe you're doing reflection or you've got a voice committee right, so you're already looking at student voice and choice. Those are some of the things that are really working. Now, when you go to pblculturecom, you'll get a needs assessment, a whole series of Google Forms that you can give to your staff, students, community partners, parents, and I actually have a video that goes along with each one to walk you through how you implement this and how you do it well, and we do this with schools and districts across the country. We come into your school and do the needs assessment and then we lay it all out for you. But again, I'm giving you the first option. These six steps you can do on your own to bring your PBL implementation to life.
Ryan Steuer:
So the first step is a needs assessment. If you look at a map, a map is only helpful if you know where you are. So these six steps are only helpful if you know where your school's at. Are you highly traditional? Do you have a rigor in place? Are your assessments solid? Do you have some student-centered practices in place? We need to know all these things. You need to know all these things so that you can move on to the next step.
Ryan Steuer:
Now the next step is you're going to want to establish your why, and sure you've read Simon Sinek's book and you know what that why, how, what golden circle is right, but a lot of your teachers don't. Your leadership team might not, your coaches, your assistant principals they might not. I can tell you that I've led for the last 10 years. I launch almost every talk that I give with some form of what is your why from Simon Sinek, and every single time that I speak and I give this, people are wowed by it. They say, wow, I love this idea. You're tapping into your why and it's like, yes, I've been doing it for a decade. So, even if you have it as the leader, I guarantee you that your people have not been down that path. So you need to establish your why, both personally, for you personally, for your leadership team, and then globally, as a school.
Ryan Steuer:
What is your why for bringing project-based learning to your school? And if you don't have a really strong why, if you don't know why PBL and why now it's going to be a really difficult implementation. So you want to take the time to create the culture, create the space, create a protocol. Take 30, 45 minutes to draw this out. So you have a mission and vision of why your leadership team wants to go in this direction, why your school should be going in this direction. So that's step two.
Ryan Steuer:
We'll get back to the episode in just a minute, but I want you to know about Magnify Learning Design Days. Design Days is a two-day workshop held at one of our PBL model schools. So a school or a district that's operating a really high level with project-based learning. Then we're going to take you and your leadership team, a group of 10 or less made up of you, assistant principals, coaches, teachers that are all starting to plan out the next three years of PBL implementation. If you just start and hope it's going to work, it's probably going to fizzle. So what about a three-year plan where you think about all the different stakeholders, we think about the values, we think about the rollout, think about which teachers on your leadership team could start to implement and start to have your own local success stories around PBL that you can share with your staff. That goes a really long way and you're going to do it at one of our model schools, so you and your team get to ask questions of that local principal, the teachers, the learners that are in the classroom, you get to go see it and then we pull you back out and one of our facilitators helps you and your team plan. As the leader, you get to be a part of the planning process, not just driving at home or pulling people along. You're going to leave those two days with a grassroots movement. You're going to leave with momentum for your PBL vision. This is the way to start. We've done it a lot of different ways. We've seen other groups do it. We've been doing this for a decade. The schools that start with design days and keep those going implement strong and a lot of times faster than you might otherwise, because you have more people moving in the right direction and they know what the goal is. So look in the description, get a overview of our Magnify Learning Design Days schedule. A call let's jump in and partner.
Ryan Steuer:
Now back to the episode. Step three is you need to create a plan when you launch your vision. This is not just a hey, I've got a faculty meeting coming up on Friday. I better get something together. That's not how you launch a vision. You personally need to create your vision because, as the school leader, I believe it is your job to bring the vision. We all want to be a part of something that's bigger than ourselves, and your staff is no different. That's why they got an education. They want to help bring opportunities to learners that they wouldn't have seen otherwise. They want to see light bulb moments in their classroom. They also want their classroom to be part of something bigger. They want to be at a place where people from around the country come to visit to see the work that you're doing at your school. That requires a vision. So you're going to line this out and it doesn't mean that you're going to know what happens on day 240. It means that you're going to know why PBL and you're going to know why.
Ryan Steuer:
Now and then, once you have it together, don't go to the faculty meeting and just put it up in a PowerPoint slide. You're going to go to a smaller leadership team maybe your AP, maybe your coaches, maybe your superintendent, somebody above you and you say, hey, this is what I'm thinking, superintendent, somebody above you and you say, hey, this is what I'm thinking. What do you think? Does this align with your vision? Because you want your vision to be a part of that district vision. So you're going to test it with a smaller group and once you've got the smaller group on board, now you're starting to get some grassroots movement. That's important. You don't want to be the only one pulling people through this vision. You want to have some people on your side that are also speaking this vision. So you're going to create a plan. I like a three-year plan. Anything past three years is really hard to see. So I like the idea of a three-year plan to show that you're growing in PBL. You're growing in the expertise of your staff. Your learners are walking through PBL process. They've got expos, you have some local spotlights that you can point to and say, hey, this is really working.
Ryan Steuer:
The fourth thing you're going to do is you're going to build culture, and you're really probably doing this throughout. But you want to build a culture at the adult level of project-based learning. At the adult level, your teachers need to have voice and choice. Your teachers need to be empowered, not passive. If you're doing sit and get on Friday with your staff at the staff meeting, that's what you're gonna get in the classroom, because your student culture is never gonna rise above your adult culture. That's the lid. John Maxwell says that leadership is the lid, and it's true in your school as well, which means that you have to up your skills, but then you have to help up the skills of your teachers. If they don't know what voice and choice is, it's very difficult for them to give it to someone in their classroom. Don't know what voice and choice is, it's very difficult for them to give it to someone in their classroom. So you have to create a culture, which usually means protocols. So go to pblsimplifiedcom, get some of those videos that we have around voice and choice and watch some of those, because that's going to show you how to bring voice and choice to your staff so they can bring it to your learners. You have to create a staff culture that is empowering, not passive. If you have a typical staff meeting, that's going to be a yellow slash, red flag for you, that typical sit and get put that in an email. And then you're going to want to do something that's interactive. You're going to do a gallery walk or a chalk talk with your staff what would the ideal classroom look like? And then you have a chalk talk and everybody's up and writing and talking and there's post-it notes and people are interactive. That's the culture that you need so that your student culture can thrive as well.
Ryan Steuer:
At this point, number five, you're going to communicate the plan. You've been building these things up. Your teachers are starting to think things are a little different around here, like people are actually asking our opinion and they're actually paying attention to us. I'll tell you, just like your students that are often people don't listen to their voice. Teachers are the same way. It's really easy for teachers to get in this rut where they shut their door and do whatever they do. But you're gonna mix it up a little bit and people are gonna say oh, here we go again. We're doing some protocols, but you're going to talk about why they're so important because we need to build our culture, so we can build the student culture, and now you're going to communicate that plan. Hey, you've probably noticed that things have been a little bit different. Well, the district is moving in this direction. Our coaches and these teachers that are on my leadership team, they've been moving in this direction of project-.
Ryan Steuer:
How did you get Victor to do that? Victor was in my class, he didn't do much of anything. And you're going to have these local success stories. Because if you go and bring in the research on PBL which there's a lot of it and it's really, really good and it shows really good things for your learners your teachers really don't care. They want it to be research backed, of course, but that's just a bullet point. They want to know is it going to work in my classroom? So, when you have local stories now, now your plan has traction, now your plan has grassroots movement to it, which gets you to number six is you're going to work the plan.
Ryan Steuer:
So you've got this three-year plan that you started with your vision. It's been co-created by a leadership team of APs, of coaches If you have them, I hope you do with some lead teachers that have some voice and they want to move this work forward. Now that plan is not just your plan. It's not this crazy idea that's going to go away in three years. It's an idea that's been co-created by your staff and now you're opening up to the rest of the staff to join in. And you've got, because you've set up this culture, you've got a whole another section, this early and late majority. They're just waiting for you to invite them into this vision.
Ryan Steuer:
Yes, I saw that. I saw what Victor did. I've been to an entry event. I've been to an expo. I've seen the excitement. I want my learners to have that Now they're going to jump in because now you've communicated the full plan. You've got some training for them, you've got some guidance for them and they're going to jump in. They've got some mentors that are local, right, and now your PBL vision and plan is implemented. Isn't that fantastic.
Ryan Steuer:
Like this plan works, like we've done this plan, it takes schools from a D on that state test to an A in just two years. In just two years. There's a case study. We'll put it in the description or the show notes, right? This works when you do this plan. And again, there's three levels of this plan. I gave you the DIY version, the do it yourself, because that's what YouTube's all about. It's about giving out free info, and I've even given you the resources. So walk you through. We'll link an agenda. I just gave you the six steps. I gave you the needs assessment that we start with right PBLculturecom, and you can go and implement this.
Ryan Steuer:
And I'm even going to give you case studies as links, because in Lexington, kentucky, that elementary school that went from a D to an A was also on the news, because they were not just doing skill and drill to get this D to A. In fact, that doesn't work. They had context for their learners, for all of their academic learning. All of this is standards-based. So when they needed a new playground, the learners the elementary learners planned out a playground that was accessible to all students, and then that was the playground that was implemented. How empowering is that, both for the teachers and the students. When they started teaching some employability skills of how do you act and how do you interact with professionals Maybe at a fancy dinner they went to a fancy restaurant to do this. And the news is there, because these are newsworthy PBL units. They planned all this in design days. They went through a jumpstart, they went through advanced, they're going to certification now because they have their own PBL certified facilitators, teachers in the classroom that can now train their new hires. They have a sustainable system. That is a no fail PBL implementation.
Ryan Steuer:
We'll give you a link as well. You can talk to assistant superintendent superintendent. While he's going to talk to you technically, on the video, he is going to tell you how these design days changed his entire career. It's one of our model schools out in Missouri and because he did the design days, because he saw the work happening in a classroom in a school that he wanted, the vision became very, very clear for him. He went back with that clear vision.
Ryan Steuer:
See, if you go with number three, where we run the design days for you, we take you through this process. Then we're going to take you to one of our model schools so you and your leadership team can see the learners in action. You get to see a panel of teachers and talk to them. You get to talk to the administrators. You get to talk to the kids and say, well, how does this work, how does grouping work, how does grading work? All these ideas, how did you start? That's a great one to ask, by the way. All of these things come back with you and you have a three-year plan for your school. And once you have the three-year plan now, you can start walking through that plan.
Ryan Steuer:
But don't forget about option two. Option two is you come to an in-person conference. But don't forget about option two. Option two is you come to an in-person conference. We have a district that is going for it. They brought their leadership team to the conference and that is a more affordable, budget-friendly option. It's just not quite as customized, right, because you've got other schools there, but they're going to take the work that they did there again huge team-building work, building grassroots momentum. So it's not a top-down mandate and they're going to take that work. They're going to bring teachers into the fold with a jumpstart, with an advance and then a certification. In three years they're going to have a sustainable system, a no-fail PBL implementation. It's absolutely possible. If you're looking at project-based learning and you are, because you've gotten it this far in the video, there is a right and a wrong way to do this. If you buy your school teachers, pay teachers license and say everybody, grab a PBL unit and do it next semester, that is a for sure fail implementation model. If you follow these six steps, you have a no fail PBL implementation. Keep watching these videos so you can keep getting more tips like this so that your PBL implementation soars.
Ryan Steuer:
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the PBL Simplified Podcast. I appreciate you and I'm honored that you tune in each week. Would you please take two minutes to leave a rating and a review? When you leave a review, it lets the next person know that this is a podcast worth listening to. When they go into their player and search project-based learning and PBL Simplified popped up. When they see those reviews, they know that high quality, visionary leaders are listening, so they tune in too and they can find their way into the PBL journey. Thank you so much for leaving a review. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you.