PBL Simplified by Magnify Learning
PBL Simplified Podcast helps innovative principals and teachers like you bring Project Based Learning to your classrooms. PBL Simplified is in the top 5% of over 2 million global podcasts.
Hosted by Ryan Steuer, of Magnify Learning, we strive to empower school leaders and teachers with examples from Project Based Learning classrooms, leadership inspiration, and practical PBL resources.
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Whether you are a teacher or school leader, there is something for you on PBL Simplified:
1st Wednesday: PBL Leadership Episode
2nd Wednesday: PBL Showcase - a PBL facilitator shares a PBL Unit
3rd Wednesday: PBL Leadership Episode
4th Wednesday: PBL Interview.
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PBL Simplified by Magnify Learning
Three Systems Every School Can Use to Implement PBL - Large District PBL Model | E202
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Virtual PBL Conference October 16th (link)
Are you ready to transform your school's approach to learning? Tune in to the PBL Simplified Podcast as we spotlight Perry Township District in Indianapolis and uncover the secrets behind their thriving Project Based Learning (PBL) system. As the fifth largest district in Indiana, Perry Township has successfully integrated PBL across a 22,000-student population. We break down three game-changing strategies: training administrators by modeling the process, training teachers by modeling the process, and publicly showcasing the work. Discover how a shift from compliance to empowerment has cultivated a rich PBL culture, making Perry Township an inspiring model for other districts aiming for educational innovation.
Learn how Perry Township has moved from traditional "sit and get" teaching methods to dynamic, community-engaged learning. This episode dives into sustainable PBL systems that outlast individual contributions by focusing on robust structures. We'll share practical tips for fostering collaboration, such as rethinking meeting agendas to inspire and engage. Plus, don't miss out on our upcoming virtual PBL bootcamp designed to equip educators at all levels with the tools they need to succeed.
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Welcome to the PBL Simplified Podcast. I'm your host, ryan Stoyer. This is the podcast where we talk all things project-based learning. It's about equipping. It's about inspiring, because we know that when you are inspired, those that you lead are inspired. So that's what we're shooting for, and if you've heard a few whispers about something that's been coming, a little whisper campaign is over. We're shouting now. We've got a bootcamp coming up, a PBL bootcamp. It's virtual, you can jump in for free and it's going to be awesome. It's like five days you kidding me Like we're giving away five days of content. You jump into it. We're going to talk about just like we do in the podcast. We're going to talk PBL because that's what we do. We're geeky, we love it. We've seen it change kids in the classroom. We've seen it change adults leading the classroom, so we're going to keep shouting. So you've got a bootcamp coming up. You can jump in as a leader. You can jump in as a teacher, you can jump in as a group of teachers. However you want to jump in, you can do it. Check the show notes to sign up. You're going to love it.
Ryan Steuer:Today's episode, though, we are talking about a large model district, so the district we're talking about today is over 20,000 students. That's what we're defining as large. We've worked with school districts that are larger, of course, but there's a good chunk of you that might fit into this category and I would say, either way, there are three moves that you can learn about PBL implementation from this school, and every school can implement them. So let me tell you about this school a little bit. Perry Township District is on the south side of Indianapolis. They're the fifth largest district in the state of Indiana. Again, they've got about 20,000 students. They're a PBL model district for us. So what's that mean? They've had a PBL model school for quite a while. Southport Elementary had the largest growth in the state of Indiana and they're using project based learning as their main instructional model. Right, they were a PBL school. They can be partners, coming in all the time. Gosh, the Pacers mascot was there all the time. They were in the paper. I say all the time, but on the regular. On the regular, their PBL units are publishable. Right, it's one of the things I think so great about PBL for your school or your district is you get to share the things that you're doing with the community, and it's such a big deal, and Southport Elementary has done a fantastic job, and now we're working with district leaders to bring PBL across the district. We've been doing it for a couple of years now.
Ryan Steuer:One of the main reasons I wanted to bring them into the podcast, though, is because the mindset is so pervasive at the top of the organization. It's not a top-down mandate. Hey, we're all going to do PBL tomorrow, which, if I'm honest, as a PBL zealot, I would love that. I think the whole world should do PBL tomorrow. It, if I'm honest, like, as a PBL zealot, like I would love that I think the whole world should do PBL tomorrow. Right, like it sounds awesome, but it's not really how it works. Right, it's not the process. The process is that there's a mindset. It's way more than the tips, the tricks, the tools and the resources, and it's rare for assistant superintendents to see that, for the cabinet of a district to see that, and I absolutely love it. You know the cabinet of a district to see that and absolutely love it. So what does it look like, right? What's it look like boots on the ground. It looks like well, I don't want to spoil your three systems that every school can use to implement PBL.
Ryan Steuer:So let me give you a little bit more of why I love this district. They've got the mindset at the top. They've got specific trainings for their leaders that are not just giving out information. They've actually got a conference that I'm going to tell you about. That's actually in-district, and some of you, if you're at a smaller school, I'm telling you you can still learn from this episode, but if you're a larger school, you're going to love this a larger district because they actually basically hold an in-district conference for their leaders. It's phenomenal. So let's jump in.
Ryan Steuer:So three systems that every school can use to implement PBL, based on Perry's model. So the very first system is that they train administrators by modeling the process. They train administrators by modeling the process. So what do I mean by that? I mean that when they have a principal's meeting, they don't just say go do this or you're doing discipline wrong. Switch to this method, do literacy this way.
Ryan Steuer:They bring the leaders together and they all discuss outcomes, like you might with, like a profile of a graduate, like what's the best possible outcome for discipline? What's the best possible outcome for instruction? What's the best possible outcome for engaging parents? Right, so what's the outcome? Now they start to dissect, like what are the possible ways to get there? Right, and they're doing it collaboratively with their leaders, just like you would in a PBL classroom, right, like that's the mindset is. You want to empower people. You don't want to tell people what to do, because now they're compliant. And here's what happens when people are compliant when they're compliant, they do what they're told until it doesn't make sense anymore, and then they do what they want. Right, so they can be compliant for a while, but then you're going to have to stand right over their shoulder. Which is why some of our teachers are so strung out and have so much anxiety is because their learners are. They want to be compliant, so they have to stand over their shoulder rather than empowered where they're leading themselves. So again, all these ideas that we want to see in the classroom they work all the way up the org chart, right? All the way up to assistant superintendent and superintendent. All the way up the org chart, all the way up to assistant superintendent and superintendent. They all have to work their way up.
Ryan Steuer:So what this district does really well with 24-plus administrators in their large district, is they're bringing them together and then empowering them and leading them, not just making them be compliant and then checking up on them, because it's impossible. It's impossible. At some point you get to a scale where you cannot check up on every single thing that you're asking people to do, so you've got to create. What these guys do is they create scenarios, they role play. What would you do if? And then the scenario comes up and they work it out in a safe culture environment of administrators. But hey, we're all just trying to get better.
Ryan Steuer:If you're in a large district, you know that it can become competition between principals, right, and if that's your environment, then people aren't sharing best practice because I'm trying to be better than the other school or the other principal. So competition and compliance, not so much. You're looking for collaboration and cooperation, and you can do that again at scale because they're doing it. So what does that look like for them? It looks like an in-district conference. So they'll bring principles together and they're teaching them, modeling this process of collaboration, and then they bring the principles and the leadership teams together. So now you're a hundred plus people at this point. Right, you're really holding an in-district conference.
Ryan Steuer:So there's that conference buzz, right, that you cause. It's cool to go to a conference. Right, there's people milling around and it's, it's exciting. There's all these things happening. We're wondering, we're learning, what if that was all happening within your district? Oh, it's, it's so powerful, absolutely love it. So they're trying to do these once a semester or once a quarter and they're bringing all these people together and you've got this buzz.
Ryan Steuer:And what happens with the buzz, especially when it's all your district, is that now the principals who have modeled had that modeled for them how you collaborate and lead and engage your team. That's what they're doing Now. They get to practice it, right, they get to practice it. They're going to lead their team, not just tell them what to do. And because you've modeled the protocols, the practices, the language, they know how to do it right and if they don't, they know that there's a place you can go back and get better. But for this big conference, the other thing that happens is all these schools are in the same place At some point. Elementary and secondary are in the same place, collaborating. That does not happen often, right, and definitely not enough. You also have all these elementaries watching the other elementaries collaborate and then you're going to share out. Right, you always share out. Make your work, transparent and public. So now you're spreading best practices across your district because people are hearing oh, you're doing that, we're doing some of that, but we're also going to add this and you're starting to spread best practice and one elementary knows another elementary is working just as hard as they are right. And now you're starting to build a culture across your district Again, a large district, this thing, this doesn't happen.
Ryan Steuer:Right, it doesn't happen because it's usually. You know, we're going to be compliant, we're going to be competitive and we're not going to share our best practices. But if at the top, if you're modeling what you want to see collaboration, cooperation, collaboration it starts to work its way down, right to principals. Now we're talking about leadership teams. What's the third system that every school can implement to bring PBL to their district Is, then the teachers are going to be involved. We're going to model the process for the teachers, right? So assistant superintendents have done that for the principals, principals have done that with their leadership teams. Now leadership teams and principals are going to do that for teachers.
Ryan Steuer:So your faculty meeting has to look different. It can't be sit and get as soon as you have a sit and get meeting, where you're just putting stuff out there that could be in an email. You're now advocating for sit and get in the classroom. You might be saying, hey, I want you to be innovative, hey, I want you to do protocols, hey, I want you to have community partners, but what everybody's experiencing is sit and get, and we're going to do what we experience, not what we hear. We're going to do what we experience, not what we hear. So your faculty meetings now have to be interactive. They've got to be collaborative, they've got to have voice and choice.
Ryan Steuer:Before your teachers get there, you're going to have them fill out a Google form that says, hey, what would you like to learn in this faculty meeting? Coming up, right, and they're going to say, well, we want more time to grade, and you're going to say, no, we're going to collaborate. We're going to cooperate because we're better together. Right, and another 30 minutes of grading is not going to get you out of the hole that you're in teachers. It's not. It seems like it, but it doesn't. So, leaders, we're going to bring everybody together. We're going to collaborate about the bright spots that are happening in our school, and those bright spots are going to grow. We're going to share best practices, maybe by grade level, maybe by content area, but get people together collaborating on solutions and then sharing those solutions and then, before everybody leaves, you're going to do likes and wonders, because your teacher's voices are important and when you start to advocate for their voices, they're going to advocate for the voices of their learners in the classroom.
Ryan Steuer:Do you see the waterfall effect that's happening? It seems simple and it is simple. It's just hard because you've got, you know, a hundred years of inertia, fighting against us, of this. Just sit and get, do it better, work harder. It's like that's. That's probably not it. We've been doing that a real long time. We need something different and this is it and one of the reasons I love having Perry on the podcast and we're going to have our movement maker come on next week to explain some of this and ask some questions, and you can go to pblsharedcom. Actually, if you've got some questions, if this spurs some ideas, well, how do you do? Right, you can ask that question and I'll pose it in the podcast. Happy to Happy to ask your questions. That's why we do this.
Ryan Steuer:But what I love, as this comes out of a big district, a lot of times we say, well, well, it's a big ship. You know it's hard to turn. You know we've got pockets here, pockets there. It's the best we can do. It's like no, it's not. No, it's not. Now. Does this process take a little longer? It might, but it also lasts longer. Right In Perry we're building systems that are going to outlast any of the people that are within the system, so as principals move on or move to a different district or retire.
Ryan Steuer:Same thing with assistant superintendents, like we're creating systems so that this lives on well beyond any one person or any one person's personality. And it's such a big deal and you can do it too. So what is the third system that every school can implement, based on Perry's success? I had train admins by modeling the process, train teachers by modeling the process by the way, we do model the process in every Magnify Learning workshop. And the third one it seems like I should keep this parallel and have another train in here, but it's actually I'm going to break the parallelism, which is tough for me as a former English teacher, but it's showcase the work publicly.
Ryan Steuer:The third system every school can use to implement PBL is to showcase the work publicly. Perry's been doing this a long time. In their district. They have a social media person, so you call her to come and take pictures. Anytime you're doing something, they're going to put it on social media.
Ryan Steuer:It's a big deal. They honor community partners at the school level and the district level. They have some expos where it's multiple grades coming together. It might be elementary and secondary coming together. So your community partners are coming in and seeing a little bit of everything. They've got third graders with robots, they've got juniors changing the local community through nonprofits, so they've got a little bit of everything that they can show people. And it just brings in more community partners, right. It strengthens the ones they have and then it brings in more community partners. They have larger partnerships with local universities, local nonprofits, and their central office is very intentional about introducing those relationships to their district because they understand the importance of that, right. So that's the. It's a third system. It's not just one person who's well connected, it is truly a system of community partners. And once you're known for that again, it just becomes easier to get community partners.
Ryan Steuer:Because I know some of you are thinking well, I know that because you ask us in workshops, but we don't have any community partners. There's nobody around us. We're a small rural school and it's always funny for us because then we'll go to an urban school and the urban school. So we don't have any community partners because they're all taken, because you know there's too many people and it's like, okay, so there's no community partners for rural or urban or suburban, right? Well, let's just see what we can do and we'll run a protocol around community partners. It's gosh, I'll tell you right now it's three rounds and you basically chalk talk. The idea of who do we know, who do we know in the business world, who do we know in the nonprofit world and who do we know that we think doesn't fit that arena. Usually there's a good miscellaneous bucket that seems to get filled and every time we do that, I don't care where we're at right, a school of 200 kids, schools with 20,000, we fill the chart paper every single time, right, and everybody has a place to start. We know so many people. Now, some of those protocols don't go much beyond the chart paper. Right, because it's not a system yet. So what I'm really advocating as well with this Perry Township partnership that we're spotlighting today, is that they have systems and they're always thinking systems. Right, because it's what if this great personality leaves right, that happens.
Ryan Steuer:There's a lot of turnover in education and sometimes it's going to a new district. Sometimes you get a new position. It's like, yeah, great, like happy for you. Now we've got to fill this position right, so it can't be based on personality. You need to move towards systems in some form, and you're not going to do it tomorrow, but I want you to pick some form of this right. So today we've got three systems Train the administrators by modeling the process, train the teachers by modeling the process. And the third system is to showcase the work publicly. Pick one of those three, make a small move towards building that system. So what does that look like For the administrators that you're training? It might be that you adjust the agenda and you create an agenda template, and you could probably do this for teachers too. Let's double them up for administrators or teachers.
Ryan Steuer:Look at your agenda for any meeting that you're about to have. Where are you being collaborative? Where do you have a bullet point plan? That should just be an email. It's not really a discussion, it's not inspiring. It should be somewhere else.
Ryan Steuer:What's your hook for your meeting? I don't need a hook. They have to be here Wrong right, wrong Like. We want to engage your learners, who happen to be administrators or teachers. So do you have an engaging YouTube video? Do you have an inspiring story? Do you have a question that makes us think? You need to think through these things. If you want it to be a blah blah blah faculty meeting, don't worry about it, but if you want to create a system that creates a culture of collaboration, cooperation and compassion I added another C there then you've got to build it into your system. To come up with it on the fly, you're not going to remember, so get your agenda out for your next meeting and put in hook. You have to have some kind of a hook. Will it take time to think of that? Yes, not as long as you think, though, where are you collaborative? How are you ending? How are you getting voice and feedback? If you just put those things in, you now have a system that's moving towards building your culture. It doesn't have to be a full revamp tomorrow. In fact, it probably shouldn't be. It probably can't be Small steps, all right. So those are the three systems that every school can implement to bring PBL to your school or your district in a truly sustainable way. Right, we're talking about systems.
Ryan Steuer:I love systems talk. I love succession talk, because this work is generational. We're not going to fix the education system tomorrow. We're not going to end generational poverty tomorrow. Not all of our kids are going to be in the best situation ever tomorrow which, by the way, I'm going to rabbit trail before I close.
Ryan Steuer:Sometimes, because you are so passionate, because you want to help all the kids, you try to shortcut the work. You say, well, we've got to do it now. So you just say everybody, do this because it's the right thing, we've got to help every kid right now. And I understand that. I understand the heart. I've talked to administrators that say the exact same thing. But it's not sustainable and eventually we end up providing a disservice to future students. So I know, in some ways, this is a mindset shift for some of us. Right, that we've got to look at systems. You can try to do both for a little while, but you're gonna burn the candle at both ends. But you'll find, as you build out systems, it actually saves you time. It takes you time to create them, but eventually it saves you time and it creates lasting change. So important, all right, so you might have to go back and listen to this one again.
Ryan Steuer:You're definitely going to want to tune in next week when we talk to the movement maker that's in this work of Perry Township, because he's going to be able to give us some more insight to the work. I think you're going to love it. Again, if you go to pblsharedcom, you can ask any questions that you might have for one of the leaders of this large district bringing project-based learning into classrooms For 22,000-plus students. Jeff has been the principal of multiple schools that have had PBL as their instructional model and brought them in super successfully. I mean and I'm talking about like taking schools from an F to a B or a D to an A like major changes that have in fact been sustainable. So I think you're gonna love that conversation next week.
Ryan Steuer:Make sure that you tune in next Wednesday and make sure you check that show notes because you don't want to miss the bootcamp. Right? The bootcamp is coming up here in October, october, whatever it is right before the 16th. Right, it's going to be a free bootcamp that you can jump into. It's a ton of PBL knowledge and skills. You're going to get to hear from really passionate PBLers, so you're going to be inspired and equipped. Make sure you get in there and make sure your people get in there. Until then, go out and lead inspired.
Ryan Steuer:Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the PBL Simplified podcast. I appreciate you and honor 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.
