Project Based Learning
4/28/2019
As you know, I spent the week in Palm Springs, California at a PBL training. I was so inspired and excited to be part of so many educators coming together to refine our craft of teaching in order to give our students and their families the gift of an education that helps shape them into lifelong learners, curious human beings, problem solvers, and world changers. As I reflect on my trip to California, I am completely content with my time there, but I also cannot wait to go back to explore more. That's what good PBL does as well. It leaves kids with MORE: more questions and more desire to explore the world and find problems to think about and solve, interesting things to observe, or curiosities to explain. My husband and I have already been researching some new desert plants we found, plants that we didn't even know existed until this week. Learning is part of life, and I love that, through PBL, we expose kids to this. The end result isn't a test or the public product; it's solving a problem, discovering something new about our world, ending with more questions than you started with and realizing you have so much more to learn. Moreover, it's about finding new things to explore, to problems to solve, new questions to answer. One of the most important things in PBL is how we frame the learning. We aren't learning just because students "need to know" something or because it is a standard. This is why PBL always revolves around a Driving Question. We are learning because whatever we're studying is something interesting and worthy of being studied, because we have a problem to be solved, a curiosity to be explored, or a question to be answered. And WE are learning. I learn alongside my students and from my students, and they know this. We had a great discussion about this before I left, when I told them I'd be gone so I could go to school to get even better at PBL. Adults do not know everything, and we all learn, explore, and grow together. Learning lasts for a lifetime and exploring our world and trying to make it a better place is a worthy pursuit, one that I think PBL prepares our students for in an exceptional way. I am so excited that Pacific Northern Academy embraces PBL, and I am encouraged that educators across the country are choosing (and sometimes even fighting for) project based learning for their students.
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Saania AliMs. Ali graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelors of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies. She specializes in Early Childhood Education, ESL, and Special Education. Her hobbies include traveling, reading, and painting! Archives
April 2021
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