ChangED

[Part 2] How One School District Changed Everything Through Project-Based Learning

• Andrew Kuhn & Patrice Semicek • Season 2 • Episode 32

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Project-based learning represents a transformative approach to education, focusing less on test performance and more on creating meaningful learning experiences that prepare students for life beyond school walls. This episodes concludes the conversation of one district's eight-year journey implementing PBL, revealing both challenges and triumphs along the way.

What happens when standardized test scores aren't the primary goal? After years of implementation, the data shows PBL students perform similarly to their traditional counterparts on assessments like the Biology Keystone. This neutrality in test performance removes pressure and allows educators to focus on what truly matters—developing skills that last a lifetime. As our guest explains, "Content's the content... but it's the other skills built into PBL that students feel very strong in" compared to their college classmates.

The journey wasn't without obstacles. Middle school implementation faced unique challenges with larger student numbers and the complexity of integrating four content areas into cohesive projects. Rather than forcing a rigid model, the school adapted by encouraging every teacher to develop at least one PBL experience during the year. This thematic approach maintains content focus while providing students with connected learning experiences.

Perhaps the most powerful takeaway comes from a quote that guided their implementation: "Be flexible with the plans but stubborn on the vision." This iterative mindset—continuously improving through experimentation, reflection, and refinement—embodies the very essence of project-based learning itself. As schools navigate changing educational landscapes, this nimble, self-aware approach becomes essential for sustainable innovation that truly benefits students.

Ready to transform your educational approach? Subscribe to ChangED for more insights on innovative teaching practices that prepare students for tomorrow's world.

Want to learn more about ChangED? Check out our website at: learn.mciu.org/changed

Speaker 1:

welcome back to change ed changed. I am your host that was the worst tony ever it was good I am your host, ader coon, education consultant from montgomery county intermediate unit, and here with me is therese semitech also out of the Intermediate Unit.

Speaker 2:

I'm still stuck on how horrible of a Tony you are.

Speaker 1:

And also what that is.

Speaker 2:

He's really got you down. He's really got you figured out Like his. Andrew is spot on, but you need some work.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to do this, tony Bush, I'm Tony Marabito and I work at Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit.

Speaker 2:

Why is Tony all of a sudden from the South?

Speaker 1:

Stop. Why is Tony all of a sudden from the South and I don't have a?

Speaker 2:

title Now from like Louisiana. What was that?

Speaker 1:

So listen, I'm bringing you back into the whole conversation so you're not confused, because we're all confused. Last time, as you remember from our Project Based Learning conversation with Brian Riley, we told you that he didn't know that we were ending the conversation and then we're picking it up. Guess who else didn't know Tony Maravita, so we used ai to do some voice impressions of tony. I hope you enjoyed them.

Speaker 2:

No yeah, well, you don't blame the ai machine when they, when they rise up. They need to know that I had no part of this I said ai, which is under intelligence, not artificial intelligence.

Speaker 1:

That's not the only ai that's out there. Oh sorry, that's insulting. So Tony is going to be just as surprised as everyone else. Well, actually now we'll know if Tony even listens to the podcast. We're getting all this information back, formative feedback. So much good stuff. We're going to just let Tony kick it off and pick up the conversation right where we left off. Take it away, tony.

Speaker 4:

So obviously this program is successful. You've done it for eight years. You're constantly updating and changing. So let me ask the PDE question how are the students doing on the bio exam in ninth grade and how do you kind of take that data and then apply it and, you know, make your changes from there?

Speaker 3:

So I won't give you specifics. Sure, and I'm going to borrow something from high tech high Cause one of the things we asked that exact question. So students who come to High Tech High and students who go to San Diego Unified School District, what's the academic performance comparison? Because a lot of people criticize High Tech High because they have lots of donors, they have lots of money that they can use, and they say we keep our costs to mimic what San Diego Unified has for their students as well, like they're for people.

Speaker 1:

No-transcript For people, exactly.

Speaker 3:

And they also said we don't exist because we want to have higher performance than San Diego Unified. Our goal is around the experiences for students and at the same time, our students happen to perform at the same level as San Diego. That helped us out a lot in thinking about what our mission was around PBL. And so we didn't go into PBL saying our students in project-based learning aren't going to score higher than other students on the bio keystone, and what we found is they score similarly, so there's no advantage or disadvantage in terms of their performance If you're in PBL or not. It's about the experience. That's what's different.

Speaker 1:

I imagine that would take off a lot of pressure as well, versus if it happened to be sold where it was like, well, they will perform 20% better. And then it doesn't happen. And then you're answering questions Instead. You said they're not going to be harmed, they might do better, they might do the same, but it seems like we're kind of we can cross this one out. This is a neutral choice, and while maybe that took a different level of convincing in the beginning, at least you're not backpedaling, even eight years later saying, well, we've been waiting for this 97% improvement that you promised us.

Speaker 2:

I think it's helpful that your superintendent was the one that brought it to you. It'd be a very different battle if you were like I want to do this and to convince the superintendent, as opposed to having them say we're going to do this now, agreed, yes.

Speaker 3:

He came to us with it he had presented to the school board, and so they were behind it. I'm not sure if they were really supportive, but they weren't. They weren't an obstacle Right Right. Over the years, they have become big supporters of it. Some of their children have been students in the program, and so we get a lot of support from the school board. One of the metrics that we really want to focus on what happens when students graduate as a four-year PBL student and we needed four years to wait for that right.

Speaker 3:

Because we started in ninth grade and let it grow on its own.

Speaker 3:

And just as an aside, as we introduced ninth graders to 10th grade, pbl, we also added seventh grade at our middle school and then, when our 10th graders became 11th graders, those seventh graders became eighth graders, so we had seventh through 12th grade. At one point in a very formal PBL identified way that's changed. We've changed the model at the middle school but we did graduate students and after that first year of having students go through the program for four years, where did they go, as they've left high school? And we did a summer comparison and looked at what did the high school, where did the students go from the high school and where did students go from PBL? And again they matched in terms of which kind of universities, what kind of majors are they majoring in, how many students went to the military, how many students went into the workforce? The numbers were almost identical to each other.

Speaker 4:

That's amazing, yeah.

Speaker 3:

And one thing we also say with PBL is we don't say it's a STEM preparation type program. It includes students with all kinds of interests and so when students went off to college, their majors showed that they were doing all sorts of things and what we heard from every one of them that's come back to talk about the experience is content's the content. It's the same no matter what you do. But it's some of the other skills that they get in PBL that are built into the program that they feel they're very strong in because of that experience that they know that classmates of theirs at the collegiate level are struggling with and so that when hearing, that kind of justifies the reason to keep going because, there's a lot that we're doing that isn't written in curriculum, it's not documented on a piece of paper anywhere.

Speaker 3:

It's just built into what the teachers believe in and what we support.

Speaker 4:

What a great idea collecting that data after their graduation that most schools probably don't do. That's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Have you received feedback from the circle of responsibility, from parents, from guardians, even partnerships, that you might have in the district? I'm asking this question to give you a little perspective. In the school district that I live in, my oldest daughter was able to be part of an integrated program. It was in seventh grade and she was in middle school, but it almost operated as if in elementary school, from the standpoint of we were in the same room, except you pulled out for math. And while she loved the experience and it was tremendous for her, for her growth and for her collaboration, for working with others, the teachers were fabulous she wanted to go back to eighth grade to have the traditional experience.

Speaker 1:

As her parents, I'm like, oh man, she's waking up now in the morning being like I don't want to go to school, I don't want to go, but she's an eighth grader, so she's having a hard time making that connection. As to what happened as her parent, I'm like, man, you were just alive in a different way doing that. So I was just wondering what are you hearing from the audience?

Speaker 3:

So, while we have PBL 9 through 12, that situation pops up at the end of 10th grade. Students can choose to leave PBL anytime they want.

Speaker 2:

Is that when you start your AP classes?

Speaker 3:

Exactly, yeah, and so students are looking for and I'm not sure if it's student choice or if there is encouragement from families.

Speaker 2:

Probably some of both, yeah.

Speaker 3:

Some of both opportunities. For electives it's the opportunity to go to our technical school. The scheduling sometimes gets in the way of that, and so now they're faced with a choice Do I stay in PBL? But I really want to go do the culinary arts program, and so PBL is not going to get that for me. So I have to pick one or the other, and so we tend to lose a good number of students after 10th grade going into 11th grade. One thing we offer a little differently for 12th grade compared to the rest of the student body is our 12th grade experience is one semester of science and then the second semester, and there's complications with scheduling around math credits, which I'm not going to get into. But what we do to balance out the year-long PBL experience is they have an internship in the second semester For students who don't need another course. They'll be part of the internship instead.

Speaker 2:

Oh, very cool.

Speaker 3:

And so we have a number of partnerships that help place those students into situations where they're learning something in a very different environment, different experience.

Speaker 2:

Nice. That directly kind of aligns with the whole PBL idea right.

Speaker 3:

Exactly Yep.

Speaker 2:

Very well thought out. Do with the whole PBL idea right. Exactly, yep, very well thought out. Do you mind talking about the middle school you said you used?

Speaker 3:

to have traditional PBL there and it's changed so we brought that on, knowing what we wanted was students coming out of a PBL experience at the middle school and feeding right into the high school, like every program in a middle school, should feed into their high school.

Speaker 3:

We did it differently because of the way middle school was teamed. They had four teachers, same thing. They got the same training. They went out to high tech high, did the whole embed with teachers out there. Their middle school set up slightly different at high tech high than their high school, as was ours. Those teachers really put a lot of pressure on themselves to do four content, including math, integrated projects. That's so hard and so that was hard. The harder part was they have a lot more students because they're not self-selecting. Now, if you're on this team of teachers, you're in PBL, and so if our typical class in ninth grade at the high school is mid fifties in terms of student count, the middle school had 120 plus kids, and so we're thinking about a project and getting all those kids to contribute to it and grading all that and having experiences that are rich for every single one of them, that was a challenge.

Speaker 2:

It's a very different piece, yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we did do another year where we added eighth grade and it was the same thing. It was still very challenging, based on just on the numbers of students to teacher ratio, and then after that it switched to we want PBL for everybody, every teacher, every student, meaning we're going to work with every teacher to develop at least one experience throughout the school year, integrated throughout, and it doesn't have to be integrated in terms of the content.

Speaker 3:

And so if I'm a social studies teacher and I'm not going to I'm going to do a project just for social studies my team can be doing something else we encourage that sort of model works really well when you think about a thematic project, and so, while we don't necessarily have to collaborate on how the project's going to move forward, when I'm designing my piece it's touching on this theme, so the student experience feels more connected.

Speaker 3:

I'll admit that we've not done a great job of supervising that in a way that has come to fruition, and so we've got some teachers that are doing a phenomenal job with project-based learning at the middle school because they were bought into it from the beginning. They you know the the one our one social studies teacher was on the team when we started it and he's still doing project-based learning. You get glimpses of it every once in a while. What's nice is that we now have some teachers at our elementary level, so K-6 that are starting to think that way and they're dabbling in it, and our whole goal is exactly that right, it's to try to get that happening throughout the district at some level, and so we can build on that Right right.

Speaker 1:

Brian, thank you for coming on the show and for sharing all that I mean there's obviously we're done. No, no, no, no, I wasn't.

Speaker 2:

That's happening.

Speaker 1:

I'm sorry, it seemed like an abrupt ending.

Speaker 2:

Oh, it's 36 minutes. That's why, sorry, I was just like we've just been talking and I've been like all in.

Speaker 1:

There's a sticker for you. By the way, you want to be podcast famous, podcast famous. Thanks.

Speaker 2:

You should put it on all kinds of things and make Katie very jealous.

Speaker 1:

All kinds of things there's only one, there's three.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, oh, I get three, take as many as you want.

Speaker 1:

Do we have any more? We need one for? Oh, we need one. You get two, sir. Two, yeah, two. Don't be greedy, bro. Yeah, come on, I'll take one, you know what I'll take one.

Speaker 3:

Order a sticker.

Speaker 1:

I'll make your own in your maker lab. Fine, oh, that's cool. What's this one?

Speaker 3:

that's just that one's for katie. That one's for katie, yeah, which k?

Speaker 1:

I've got a lot of katie's now whichever one you thought of when I said it's for katie wow, we are recording, we are recording so I would be quiet about which katie you're thinking of.

Speaker 3:

There's only one great answer I don't even know her. That's great answer.

Speaker 1:

Two that I work with, one that I think about happy valentine's day to the one exactly you know who you are you three decide among yourselves we don't need to get the hell up on last names so inappropriate?

Speaker 2:

come on, I'm ready, we're professional.

Speaker 3:

Do you have a daryl williams quote?

Speaker 1:

yeah, he does brian, thank you, we talked about it before he came here. We wanted to give you a moncumber county intermediate unit friends of family opportunity which was for you to have the second to last final word. Have you ever?

Speaker 2:

listened to the podcast before I have okay. So you know, this is not just for you just but I just want people to like if they ever haven't listened to it, and then they choose to listen to more than one.

Speaker 1:

They're like I thought I was special is everyone from montgomery county I thought I was special but in this moment, on this podcast, during this recording, this is special just for you it is special wow brian.

Speaker 3:

just like all your stickers, I feel special for all my one, no, two stickers, two stickers.

Speaker 2:

And two mints, but leave one for Logan. Yeah, just take one.

Speaker 3:

Oh, Logan didn't take one.

Speaker 2:

No, we locked him out. He wasn't here yet.

Speaker 1:

He's like are you serious? Well, now I'm going to lunch and I'm taking you.

Speaker 2:

Yes, anyway.

Speaker 3:

So what am I doing now?

Speaker 1:

There's a lot happening.

Speaker 2:

Brian, don't tell our boss that we're this professional, this professional.

Speaker 3:

I saw a quote on your phone from Daryl. I didn't know if we were going to go to the quote.

Speaker 4:

He's saving it for his final thought.

Speaker 2:

I have some pictures on my phone.

Speaker 3:

I do too, go ahead, I'll leave it Cool.

Speaker 2:

Daryl.

Speaker 1:

So, brian, there's a lot to what we've been talking about and we could keep going, because there's a lot here to unpack, a lot of rich things that we can share with our listeners, but because we try to limit this to less than a three-day podcast, do you have final thoughts that you'd like to share with them, or pearls of wisdom that maybe you didn't get to share already about your experience?

Speaker 3:

I think I touched on it, but I want to go back to kind of the way we started and thinking about our jobs as educators is to design, create, provide opportunities through experience. My experience as a student I got good grades. I don't remember a lot of what I learned that got me to this point, but I can't like talk about the things that we did, the experiences that we right as like really rich things, like it was an amazing experience. What what I want and pbl is an attempt at that is to create that sort of situation for students so when they look back on their education they can recall those experiences and that's connected to what they're learning and so there's a lot more meaning behind it I love, love it.

Speaker 1:

We, I, I, I, I'm just kidding, fun to edit.

Speaker 3:

I'm thinking about the language conversation earlier. Is that English?

Speaker 2:

or we don't know. We don't know. It shows up in every episode. So whoever's that language has got some good stuff.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you for coming on the show and for sharing all that you did. There's a there's a lot here to unpack and to be clear for our listeners this is nine years in the making, so this is a development process, and I only say it as a form of encouragement for them so that they're not like how am I going to start this? And I think the gem that you had as well is when you mentioned that for your middle school, we decided that we were going to try to integrate it within a system that we already have. So those are very real things and very real challenges that exist of trying to navigate different components in different parts of a school and how it's established and very real challenges.

Speaker 1:

And it reminded me of something we heard together at the NSDA conference in Philly from the Wednesday keynote, who is Darrell Williams Jr, and what he said was be flexible with the plans but be stubborn on the vision. And I heard that resonating through everything you were saying of we were going to launch with two grades and we said, whoa, let's pull back. We still want this vision, but let's change the plan because we don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot already. And then we're like nope, this won't work. This, you know, overwhelm the system, so how do we integrate it into the system? And you even tried things. When you said you went to 10th grade, you also introduced 7th grade.

Speaker 1:

Yep, see, I listen, I listen to my own podcast and take notes, but can I have that sticker back? Poor.

Speaker 2:

Katie.

Speaker 1:

But you took her sticker where was I, yep?

Speaker 2:

no, no, no, no you integrated, flexible on the means. So so you continue, you continue.

Speaker 1:

Yes, thank you, thank you so I'm here brian. So, but you were trying other things as well. Right, the year one worked. Okay, let's try something here, and then you're still adjusting. So I feel like that's a very powerful message that I took with me from the keynote and that really again resonated with me here in this situation.

Speaker 2:

But if that's living into the project-based mindset, you're never finished, you're always iterating and you're always doing these things and you're never finished. And I think it's powerful to see it from the students doing it to the teachers doing it, to the administration doing it.

Speaker 3:

That's huge, yeah, and I think the one word that comes to mind a lot when we think about exactly what you're talking about and what I think we need moving forward with a change in standards in Pennsylvania, with steals, and that is. We all need to be nimble as we move forward.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the other hidden gem that I heard, as you were saying that was self-awareness. But across the board, what did the students need? What did the teachers need? What do we need at the administrative level? What do the you know the circle of influence what do they need? What does everyone need as we do this? And so, opening up that channel of communication and, using another Steele's term, creating discourse, let's have conversations about this so that we can figure it out. So, brian, you by far have been our favorite guest on the show for this specific podcast, so thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

In the last 45 minutes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate your time.

Speaker 2:

He's never coming back.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, please tell your friends how professional we are and for all of our listeners. Thank you, as always, for tuning in and for making this the number one podcast in Pennsylvania and the world. Make sure that you like and subscribe and follow and text us on Spotify and text us on Spotify.

Speaker 2:

Is it just Spotify?

Speaker 1:

Wherever texts are accepted. Andrew's number is Three, just dial three what well, I'll start that over. Thank you very much. You're pointing it out. Terrible, that was brian. Oh, nope, hate that too. Wow, it's terrible. Katie. Where's katie? Which which one? Wow, that's terrible, katie. Where's Katie, which one?

Speaker 3:

We need the Katie.

Speaker 4:

Any Katie.

Speaker 2:

Any Katie.