Creating Purpose-Driven Learning Experiences by Solution Tree

S olut i ons f or D i g i ta l L ea r ne r–C ente r ed C la ssr ooms

Creating Purpose-Driven Learning Experiences by William M. Ferriter brings to focus the importance of motivating and engaging students in their learning. In order to bring motivation and meaningful work to the classroom, educators need to change outdated practices. Teachers can foster this motivation by linking students’ abilities and interests outside the classroom to doing meaningful work and skill building inside the classroom.

Educators will: • Gain research and opinions from multiple students and educators on which areas of education they think should be altered • Read about work that schools have done with project-based learning and what students have accomplished with microlending school projects

C R E AT I N G P U R P O S E - D R I V E N L E A R N I N G E X P E R I E N C E S

Creating Purpose-Driven Learning Experiences

Creating

Purpose-Driven

Learning Experiences

• Discover the tenets of high-quality project-based learning and the impact they have on academic growth • Have access to reproducible rubrics, questions, and reflection tools

Visit go.solution-tree.com/technology to access materials related to this book.

solution-tree.com

WILLIAM M. FERRITER

Solutions Series: Solutions for Digital Learner–Centered Classrooms offers K–12 educators easy-to-implement recommendations on digital classrooms. In a short, reader-friendly format, these how-to guides equip practitioners with the digital tools they need to engage students and transport their district, school, or classroom into the 21st century.

William M. Ferriter

Copyright © 2015 by Solution Tree Press Materials appearing here are copyrighted. With one exception, all rights are reserved. Readers may reproduce only those pages marked “Reproducible.” Otherwise, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the publisher. 555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700 FAX: 812.336.7790 email: info@solution-tree.com solution-tree.com Visit go.solution-tree.com/technology to download the reproducibles in this book. Printed in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ferriter, William M. Creating purpose-driven learning experiences / by William M. Ferriter. pages cm -- (Solutions) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-942496-31-1 (perfect bound) 1. Inquiry-based learning. 2. Active learning. 3. Project method in teaching. 4. Motivation in education. I. Title. LB1027.23.F47 2015 371.3--dc23 2015007484 Solution Tree Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO Edmund M. Ackerman, President Solution Tree Press President: Douglas M. Rife Associate Acquisitions Editor: Kari Gillesse Editorial Director: Lesley Bolton Managing Production Editor: Caroline Weiss Proofreader: Miranda Addonizio Text and Cover Designer: Rian Anderson Compositor: Rachel Smith

Table of Contents About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Necessary Change in Teacher Mindset. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Succeeding at Meaningful Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Chapter 1: Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s What I Mean by Doing Work That Matters. . . . . . 7 Working to Engage Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Project-Based Learning as a Tool for Doing Work That Matters . . . . . . . 10

Chapter 2: Microlending as an Example of Doing Work That Matters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Kiva Makes It Possible for Students to Do Work That Matters. . . . . . . . . 16 Is Microlending the Right Project for You?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 What Required Objectives Will You Address in a Microlending Project? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Would Addressing Poverty in Your Local Community Make More Sense for Your Students?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 How Will You Handle the Funds You Collect for Your Microlending Project? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Resources for Supporting Classroom Microlending Projects. . . . . . . . . . 22 Which Country Should We Loan To Comparison Activity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Do Something Funny for Money Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Lending to Women, Lending to a Group, Giving a Gift Card to Another Class. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

CR E AT IN G P URP O S E - DRI V EN L E A R NIN G E X P ERIEN C E S Kiva Lending Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Kiva Loan Reflection Organizer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Setting Kiva Loan Priorities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Self-Assessment Rubric for Microlending Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Kiva U. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Teachers as Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Chapter 3: Purpose-Driven Blogging as an Example of Doing Work That Matters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Raising Awareness About Issues That Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Four Tips for Starting Your Own Purpose-Driven Classroom Blogging Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Choose a Cause That Matters to Your Kids. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Use One Blog for Your Entire Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Choose a Blogging Platform That You Are Comfortable With . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Recruit Regular Readers and Commenters for Your Blog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Resources for Supporting Classroom Blogging Projects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Classroom Blogging Tasks to Tackle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Self-Assessment Rubric for Classroom Blogging Projects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Tracking Student Masteryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Classroom Blogging Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Classroom Blogging Reflection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Chapter 4: Making School Different. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 How Will Y ou M ake School Different? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

About the Author William M. Ferriter (@plugusin) is a National Board Certified Teacher of sixth graders in a professional learning community (PLC) in North Carolina. He has designed professional development courses for educators nationwide. He is also a founding member and senior fellow of the Teacher Leaders Network and has served as teacher in residence at the Center for Teaching Quality. An advocate for PLCs, student-centered learning spaces, improved teacher working conditions, and teacher leadership, Bill has represented educators on Capitol Hill and presented at state, national, and international conferences. He has also had articles published in the Journal of Staff Development, Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, and Threshold Magazine. Bill also maintains a popular blog—The Tempered Radical (blog.williamferriter.com)—where he writes regularly about teaching in today’s world. He earned a bachelor of science and master of science in elementary education from the State University of New York at Geneseo. To book William M. Ferriter for professional development, contact pd@solution -tree.com.

vii

Introduction Let’s start with an uncomfortable statistical truth: today’s schools are failing our students. While graduation rates may be at historic highs (Layton, 2014), almost 60 percent of the students in our high schools are disengaged in school (Busteed, 2013). Boredom is the driving force behind the decision to drop out—and that boredom starts early: 71 percent of the students who leave our schools without a diploma lost interest in schooling by ninth and tenth grades. Worse yet, the majority of high school dropouts are convinced that they could have graduated if they had been motivated to work hard (Azzam, 2007). Even the students who survive our school systems are struggling. One in three high school graduates who move on to higher education must take remedial classes in order to be fully prepared to meet college expectations (Sparks & Malkus, 2013), and less than half of all employers believe that college graduates are prepared to meet the challenges of the modern workplace (Mourshed, Farrell, & Barton, 2012). Critical adults stand ready to hold students responsible for these statistics. Take Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation (2008), for example. As an English professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Bauerlein has grown tired of the growing number of seemingly unprepared kids sitting in his classrooms: Whatever their other virtues, these minds know far too little, and they read and write and calculate and reflect way too poorly. However many hours they pass at the screen from age 11 to 25, however many blog comments they compose, intricate games they play, videos they create, personal profiles they craft, and gadgets they master, the transfer doesn’t happen. The Web grows, and the young adult mind stalls. (Bauerlein, 2008, Kindle locations 1683–1685)

Listen closely to students, however, and you hear dissatisfaction in their voices. “When we’re born, until around age 5, most of our learning is delivered through our experiences,” explains student activist and author Nikhil Goyal. “We’re just asking questions, we’re curious about the world. Then formal education hits us and everything changes; we lose our curiosity and instead are trained to regurgitate information for the test” (quoted in Zmuda, 2012). Worse yet, argues fellow activist Zak Malamed, students feel like education is something that is done to—instead of 1

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with—them. “Too often students are ignored in the conversation revolving around education policy,” he shared in testimony before the New NY Education Reform Commission. “Students are America’s most underrepresented population, and today we have no say in the policies that most affect our future” (New York City Regional Hearings on Education, 2012).

A Necessary Change in Teacher Mindset The contrast between the learning done in schools—where we stubbornly cling to the outdated notion that the content defined in our curricula matters most and that the best way to teach that content is in stand-alone, fifty-minute class periods led by teachers—and the learning that today’s students are doing on their own couldn’t be more stark. Popular examples like fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka, who used his free time to develop a test for pancreatic cancer that is 168 times faster than tests currently used by professionals in the medical industry (Danzico, 2012), elevenyear-old Sylvia Todd, whose passion for maker projects has drawn the attention of millions of YouTube viewers and the President of the United States (Bhanoo, 2013), or nine-year-old Martha Payne, whose efforts to raise awareness about the quality of school lunches have given her a platform to drive conversations about food security around the world (Somaiya, 2012) prove that our kids are more motivated, passionate, and capable than we give them credit for. Sadly, schools do little to tap into these passions. The late rapper Tupac Shakur accurately described the tension that exists between what matters to students and what matters to schools in a prescient interview given in 1988. School is really important: reading, writing, arithmetic . . . but what they tend to do is teach you reading, writing, arithmetic. Then teach you reading, writing and arithmetic again. Then again, then again, just making it harder and harder just to keep you busy. And that’s where I think they messed up. There should be a class on drugs. There should be a class on sex education. No, a real sex education class, not just pictures of diaphragms and unlogical terms and stuff like that. There should be a class on scams, there should be a class on religious cults, there should be a class on police brutality, there should be a class on apartheid, there should be a class on racism in America, there should be a class on why people are hungry, but there’s not. Instead, there are classes on gym . . . there are classes like Algebra. Where I have yet to go to a store and said, “Can I have XY+2 and give me my Y change back, thank you.” This is what I mean by the basics are not the basics for me . . . . We are being taught to deal with this fairyland which we’re not even living in anymore. And it’s sad. (Spirer, 2002)

In troduc tion

What Shakur recognized so long ago is that meaning drives motivation for any learner. Why are students disinterested and dropping out? Because the schools that they enter every day are fairylands—places completely divorced from relevance and reality. Outside of schools, students are surrounded by challenge and opportunity, and having grown up in a world where digital tools make it possible for anyone to drive change, they aren’t comfortable standing idly by (Tapscott, 2009). Inside of schools, however, our students are trapped in classrooms that haven’t changed in a hundred years, hopelessly looking for a greater purpose in the content that they are forced to master in order to succeed. There is nothing fundamentally surprising about Shakur’s discovery, is there? Even for adults, meaning and motivation go hand in hand. As Harvard business researchers Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer (2011) demonstrate in The Progress Principle, people engaged in knowledge-driven work—much like the work done by the students in our classrooms—become less committed, creative, and productive when asked to tackle tasks that seem pointless or impossible. On the other hand, individuals who believe in themselves, the people they are working alongside, and the greater purpose behind their practices invest extraordinary amounts of time and energy into their work. “In other words,” write Amabile and Kramer (2011), “the secret to amazing performance is empowering talented people to succeed at meaningful work” (p. 2).

Succeeding at Meaningful Work Succeeding at meaningful work—like designing a new test for pancreatic cancer, developing a popular YouTube channel dedicated to advancing the maker movement, or raising international awareness about food insecurity—isn’t just about increasing motivation, however. Succeeding at meaningful work depends on mastering the competencies that modern employers are searching for. Mechanization, globalization, and transformational technological change have largely erased opportunities for low-skilled workers to make a decent living (Smirniotopoulos, 2014). That means learning to solve problems, to efficiently and effectively manage information, to identify sources of bias, to set criteria and to make judgments, to think creatively, and to persist in the face of challenges are the new entry level skills (Mourshed et al., 2012; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2013). Why will students like Jack, Sylvia, and Martha survive and thrive in the modern workplace? Because they can do more than just read, write, and calculate—the kinds of basic skills that critics like Bauerlein are content to mourn. The skills that Jack, Sylvia, and Martha are mastering while succeeding at meaningful work also mirror the skills that the Partnership for 21st Century Skills—an organization of interested businesses, policymakers, and education leaders founded

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in 2002 to start conversations about the importance of 21st century skills—believes should stand at the center of classroom practice. •

Communication: Students must learn to articulate their thinking in a variety of formats and in a variety of contexts in order to succeed in the modern workplace. They must be skilled at asking questions, sharing thoughts, polishing ideas, and proposing solutions. They must also become expert listeners, recognizing that communication depends on honest efforts to understand people with differing positions.

•

Collaboration: Flexibility and compromise, particularly when working on diverse teams, is also essential to success in the modern workplace. Students must learn to take responsibility and to value the contributions of others when working in collaborative environments. They must also learn to leverage the collective expertise of the group in order to best accomplish shared tasks.

•

Critical thinking: The modern workplace values individuals who can evaluate evidence, analyze alternative points of view, make connections between arguments, and draw conclusions based on reasoned judgments. That means the students in our classrooms need to become skilled at managing information, looking at ideas in new ways, and drawing on information from multiple disciplines when solving problems.

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Creativity: Innovation in the modern workplace depends on individuals who demonstrate a willingness to think differently about the solutions to common problems. That means our students should be practicing creative thought on a regular basis in our schools—learning practices that can facilitate ideation and processes for revising, polishing, and improving on their own thinking and the thinking of others. They should also be open to suggestions, comfortable with the notion that failure and mistakes are a part of successful innovation, and ready to work within real-world limits when designing new ideas. (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, n.d.c)

And the best news for classroom teachers is that succeeding at meaningful work doesn’t mean that our students won’t meet the expectations of the increasingly demanding stakeholders that we serve. In fact, the chances are that regardless of where you live or what you teach, mastery is being redefined. Need an example? Look at the expectations laid out in documents like the Common Core State Standards or in the Next Generation Science Standards. You will see that the knowledge-driven

In troduc tion

objectives that have traditionally dominated our instruction have been pushed aside in favor of objectives that require students to do something with what they know. What’s more, students who are doing meaningful work are far more likely to see a reason for wrestling with the concepts required by state and district curriculum guides. That means that giving the kids in your classrooms chances to solve the kinds of challenging problems that Jack, Sylvia, and Martha were wrestling with will leave them even better prepared to meet your community’s expectations. But succeeding at meaningful work isn’t something that every student is ready to do alone. While students may be comfortable with new tools and technologies, few see the opportunities that new tools and technologies make possible. Need proof? Then turn your next class loose in the computer lab for an hour or two without any kind of structured task and watch how they spend their time. If your kids are anything like mine, they are far more likely to spend their time checking their social media profiles or watching random videos on YouTube than developing tests for pancreatic cancer or drawing awareness to global food insecurity. They are kids, after all. How would you have spent two hours of unstructured time at school? Helping students to succeed at meaningful work, then, depends on our ability to build a bridge between what today’s kids can do and what they are doing with technology. That’s what this book is all about.

Here’s What I Mean by Doing Work That Matters Are you ready for an interesting confession? Even though I make a pretty good living as a consultant to schools and districts across the world, I can be a terrible participant in traditional professional development sessions. If I wore a body camera to my next faculty meeting, district-level workshop, or school-based breakout session—and as a full-time classroom teacher I go to more than my fair share of meetings, workshops, and breakout sessions—there is a good chance you would catch me checking my email, sending tweets, or surfing the web. I’d lose track of the questions we were being asked to answer, I’d drop in and out of conversations we were asked to have, and I’d walk away having learned next to nothing that the presenter was expecting me to learn. That doesn’t mean that I’m not learning during those meetings, workshops, and breakout sessions. In fact, if you looked through the emails, tweets, and websites I was exploring, you’d probably discover that I was involved in some pretty deep stuff. I might be having a conversation about best practice with a buddy who is integrating reading and writing into his classroom. I might be checking out a link to a science experiment I stumbled across on Twitter. I might be asking the readers of my blog for feedback on an instructional strategy that failed. While I may not be paying attention to the content being delivered by the expert in the room, it would be hard to argue that I wasn’t paying attention. The truth is that access has changed me as a learner. In the 1990s, I tolerated (without complaint) staff development sessions that had little to do with my

Chapter 1

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Two weeks ago, I dropped out of school, not because I’m a deadbeat, not because I was failing, not because I’m not just as motivated as anyone else to make a difference in this world. I dropped out of school because my schooling was interfering with my education. (Brown, 2010)

Spoken word artist Suli Breaks (2012) agrees: “All I’m saying is that if there was a family tree, hard work and education would be related, but school would probably be a distant cousin.”

Working to Engage Students In response to these criticisms and new realities, innovative teachers are working to find ways to give students opportunities to demonstrate intellectual agency. Some have embraced 20% time, allowing their students to spend 20 percent of their school hours pursuing individual interests (Juliani, 2013). Others have created genius hours, where students study topics that drive them for one hour a day or one day a week (Carter, 2014). Innovation days ask students to master a new self-selected skill and

interests or that did little to challenge me as a practitioner simply because I didn’t have any other options. If I wanted to learn—and like most people, I do—I made the best of bad situations by looking for something worthwhile in whatever lesson the principal or professional developer in charge thought I needed to learn. Today, though, I know that ideas, individuals, and opportunities that interest and challenge me are never more than a mouse click away—and that’s made me an impatient learner. Force me to sit through training that treats me as a silent member of a passive audience, and I’ll find ways to steal minutes to study the things I really care about. Does any of this sound familiar? Have you grown tired of professional development sessions chosen by others that are disconnected from your own needs? Are you pushing back by using your devices to seek out more relevant learning opportunities while simultaneously pretending to pay attention? If so, then congratulations: you are officially a modern learner. Now imagine how bored and frustrated students who sit in traditional classrooms must be. They too are forced to sit through countless lessons that have little direct connection with their own interests. Take the sixth graders on my learning team, for example: just yesterday, they studied the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, memorized the order of operations, learned the finer points of refraction, and practiced with adverbs. How’s that for a riveting schedule of irrelevance for you? After twelve years of sitting through similar fact-heavy, teacher-driven lessons, University of Nebraska student Dan Brown had had enough. He shared his frustration in an insightful and poignant commentary posted to YouTube:

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Highly conscious of and concerned about a wide range of social problems and proficient in the use of technologies that enable them to learn, to express themselves, and to network, many of the Innovation Generation long to put their mark on the world. Are many of them overly ambitious and naïve? Perhaps. Impatient? Definitely. But they are our future, and I believe that we must learn how to work with these extraordinary young people: learn how to parent, teach, and mentor them—and learn from them as well. (p. 18)

So does Paul Miller, director of global initiatives for the National Association of Independent Schools. He argues: There are critical problems that are facing the entire world, and the thinking is that it’s not sufficient to wait for students to graduate, get jobs, and reach a point where they might have sufficient authority to address any of these issues. What we really need is

then demonstrate their learning in front of an audience of parents and peers during the course of one school day (Stumpenhorst, 2011). Passion projects provide yearlong opportunities for every student to wrestle with a concept that is deeply personal to him or her. Regardless of title, the goal of each of these instructional models is to make sure that schooling doesn’t get in the way of learning for the kids in our classrooms. “We spend 14,256 hours in school between kindergarten and graduation,” argues A. J. Juliani (2013), a technology staff developer from Philadelphia. “If we can’t find a time for students to have some choice in their learning, then what are we doing with all those hours?” But are strategies like 20% time, genius hours, innovation days, and passion projects the best we can do? There’s no doubt that introducing some measure of choice into our curricular decisions will resonate with students who are sick and tired of constantly being told what they have to learn. And like most critics of traditional schooling, I am more than ready to celebrate any effort to reimagine the 14,256 hours that students spend in our classrooms. I just worry about the messages that we send to students when personalization becomes the primary goal of education. It feels selfish and isolated to me—and in a world where it is all too easy to “bravely venture forth into life within glossy, opaque bubbles that reflect ourselves back to ourselves and safely protect us from jarring intrusions from the greater world beyond” (Huston, 2009), that’s frightening. Shouldn’t schools encourage students to wrestle with the jarring intrusions of the world around them? Isn’t developing students with a sense of civic responsibility a fundamental purpose of public schooling? And aren’t we selling our kids short when we assume that pursuing personal goals matters more than participating actively in society? Tony Wagner (2012), author of Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, thinks so:

CR E AT IN G P URP O S E - DRI V EN L E A R NIN G E X P ERIEN C E S for them to start addressing these issues right away. (quoted in Cutler, 2013)

I believe there remains a great deal of value in the idea of school as a place where kids go to learn with others, to be inspired by caring adults to pursue mastery and expertise, and then to use that to change the world for the better . . . . It’s not “do your own work,” so much as “do work with others, and make it work that matters.” (Kindle locations 210, 282)

You see the common thread in each of these arguments, don’t you? Doing work that matters depends on something more than pursuing your own interests or studying your own passions. Doing work that matters starts when we look beyond ourselves and tap into the human desire to leave our mark by making a difference in the lives of others. People who are doing work that matters see themselves as protectors, contributors, improvers, and agents for good. Doing work that matters means coming together to use our shared expertise to change the world for the better.

Project-Based Learning as a Tool for Doing Work That Matters And make no mistake about it: there are teachers and students all over the world who really are changing the world for the better. Take High Tech High in California, where the juniors in Jay Vavra and Tom Fehrenbacher’s science and humanities classes are working together to protect the San Diego Bay. The entire year is spent studying the habitats of the Bay Area and the impact that humans are having on the environment. Together, Vavra and Fehrenbacher’s classes publish an annual field guide that is used by everyone from scientists to local politicians interested in

What’s more, the agencies and organizations working to redefine literacy and learning in the 21st century have, without exception, written civic responsibility into the sets of standards that they are releasing. For the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2004), literacy in an increasingly complex world involves “enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society” (p. 13). “Participating effectively in civic life” is a basic expectation set forth by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (n.d.a). And the Common Core State Standards believe that literate individuals should be able to “reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship” (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010, p. 3). Educational expert Will Richardson (2012) best summarizes the notion that personalized learning experiences can’t be the final outcome of education when he writes:

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looking for solutions to improve the overall ecological health of the region (Vavra & Fehrenbacher, n.d.). At Brookwood School in Manchester, Massachusetts, students in Rich Lehrer’s eighth-grade science classes have spent the past few years exploring the role that biomass cook stoves can play in replacing charcoal ovens in primitive kitchens in Brazil (a country where breathing in the smoke of kitchen fires leads to two million deaths from respiratory illness a year). Working together with partner classes in Uganda, Rwanda, and Brazil, Lehrer’s students design new cook stove models based on their understanding of key science concepts like energy transformations and combustion, and then build and test those models with the intent of making recommendations and sharing their plans with anyone interested in improving living conditions in the developing world (Cutler, 2013). At Westwood Middle School in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, teachers Bob Schneider, Chris Clark, and Dominic Martini turn sixth-grade social studies into a yearlong lesson in community activism by assigning civics participation projects every fall. Students work to learn more about the role that local government plays in their lives and get involved in advocating for changes they believe in. Whether they are sitting in on school board meetings, writing letters to the mayor, or volunteering for groups dedicated to fighting hunger, Westwood Middle School students care about their community and are taking action on their concerns (Kaner, 2012). Each of these schools has embraced a form of project-based learning (PBL), an instructional model where students master core competencies while investigating and responding to a “complex question, problem, or challenge” (Buck Institute for Education, n.d.). The question for the students at High Tech High is, “What factors are impacting the health of the San Diego Bay, and how can we raise awareness of the impact that humans are having on the world around us?” The problem for students at Brookwood School is, “How do we develop a new cook stove that is efficient, affordable, and replicable by anyone living in the poorest corners of our world?” The challenge for students at Westwood Middle School is, “What do we need to know about the structure and function of local government in order to become effective advocates for the causes that we care about?” Service stands at the center of each of these projects, however—the notion that we is more important than me—making them fantastic examples of doing work that matters. Rather than protecting students from the jarring intrusions of the world, High Tech High, Brookwood School, and Westwood Middle School have challenged their kids to meet those intrusions head-on. Making a difference isn’t something left to graduates. Instead, it has become a core expectation for every student. Imagine how powerful that could be! “Although they might begin hesitantly or even question their ability to change the world for the better,” writes Amy Conley (2014) of Fortuna High School in California (a school that asks every senior to complete a

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1. Real-world connections: Building an authentic mission and purpose for project-based learning experiences depends on connecting student efforts to authentic challenges faced by the local, national, or international community. For far too long, students have been asked to pretend that their voices and actions mattered; imagine that you are in charge of improving the overall health of your local environment. If you could design a better way to cook food in primitive households, what changes would you argue for if you were in charge of your town’s government? Project-based learning environments operate under the assumption that even the kids in our classrooms can play a role in improving the world around them. Schooling isn’t about preparing kids to be college and career ready. Schooling is about preparing kids to be college, career, and community ready. 2. Academic rigor: Perhaps the greatest challenge in developing project-based learning experiences is ensuring that each project is academically rigorous. While doing meaningful work is fundamentally beautiful, schools must still respond to the demands and expectations of the stakeholders they serve. For teachers, this means carefully aligning classroom projects with the required curricula. Giving students the chance to do work that matters in purpose-driven learning spaces can ensure that students have the will to tackle project-based learning experiences. It’s up to knowledgeable classroom teachers to make sure that students have the skill to tackle those projects. 3. Structured collaboration: Coming to consensus, building on the knowledge of peers, working through conflict, and providing just-in-time support to struggling partners are valued skills in knowledge-driven workplaces. They are also skills students can practice and polish while working together on project-based learning experiences. As a result, teachers in PBL classrooms are constantly introducing students to structures, processes, and behaviors that

service-oriented project at the end of his or her senior year), “the chance to dream big and exercise control over their reality empowers them.” Helping students to do work that matters, then—introducing purpose-driven learning into your classroom—begins by developing an understanding of the fundamentals of project-based learning experiences. According to Peggy Ertmer, the founding editor of the Interdisciplinary Journal of PBL at Purdue University, five core tenets anchor the most effective project-based learning experiences.

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facilitate productive group work. In many ways, planning for successful collaboration is just as important as providing real-world connections for student work and ensuring that academic rigor defines PBL experiences.

5. Multifaceted assessment: Since the mid-2000s, the term assessment has been ruined in education, redefined as little more than tracking student performance on regular multiple-choice benchmarks that test mastery of basic skills and isolated bits of content. In PBL classrooms, these kinds of traditional measures of student success are not enough. Instead, PBL teachers become experts at formative assessment, gathering ongoing information about student mastery from formal and informal interactions with students throughout the course of a project. Self-assessment also plays an important role in project-based learning experiences, helping students see that the best learners can identify the gaps in their own skills and abilities, rather than waiting for others to point out those gaps. (Edutopia, 2014) For Ertmer, one of the primary benefits of project-based learning experiences is the motivation—for students and teachers—that comes along with any effort to do work that matters. She argues: Our students would blossom under this approach. They learn that they have voice and choice. And teachers would probably in the end find it easier and more fulfilling and we would probably have a whole lot less burnout. I mean this is really an exciting way of teaching. (quoted in Edutopia, 2014)

Educational expert Michael Fullan (2012) agrees: “There is only one thing worse than being bored and that is being responsible for teaching the bored under conditions that restrict what you can do” (p. 17). The simple truth is that we will all be better off in a world where students come to school motivated to change the world for the better.

4. Student-driven environment: In order for project-based learning experiences to become a truly meaningful replacement for traditional instruction, students need to feel a genuine sense of ownership over their work. Questions and curiosity become important levers for driving action in project-based classrooms, and regular opportunities for reflection on new learnings and next steps are built into every school day. Accomplished PBL teachers believe there is inherent value in allowing students to set and track progress toward the learning done in the classroom.

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Apply knowledge more flexibly and solve conceptual problems more easily than peers in more traditional schools

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Show more sophisticated reasoning abilities and are better able to use criteria to support choices than peers in more traditional schools

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Develop proficiency with design and planning skills that peers in traditional schools are often never exposed to

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Spend more time learning to cooperate with other people than students in more traditional schools

Summarizing their review of decades of research on models of instruction that require students to work together to solve challenging problems, Barron and Darling-Hammond (2008) write: As schools explore and implement strategies to engage and prepare students for the complex and ever-changing world, inquirybased learning provides a research-proven approach that has the potential to transform teaching and learning. Students develop critical academic, interpersonal, and life skills and teachers, for their part, expand and deepen their repertoire, connecting with their peers and their students in new and powerful ways. (p. 12)

Inquiry-based learning, or PBL, doesn’t just have the potential to transform teaching and learning, though. When teachers are committed to the notion that students can and should be powerful forces for change, inquiry-based learning has the potential to transform the world. Are you ready to get started?

But project-based learning experiences are about more than just motivating today’s learners. Research has proven that, when done well, project-based learning experiences have a tangible impact on the academic growth of our students. Compared to peers learning in more traditional environments, students in PBL schools perform just as well on the kinds of traditional measures of mastery that still govern the work we do in schools. “Generally, research on project-based learning . . . has found that students who engage in this approach benefit from gains in factual learning that are equivalent or superior to those of students who engage in traditional forms of instruction,” write Stanford University researchers Brigid Barron and Linda Darling-Hammond (2008, p. 3). Students in project-based classrooms also excel in mastering the kinds of highvalue, hard-to-assess skills—creativity, critical thinking, complex problem solving— that we know matter. Barron and Darling-Hammond (2008) write that students in PBL classrooms:

S olut i ons f or D i g i ta l L ea r ne r–C ente r ed C la ssr ooms

C R E AT I N G P U R P O S E - D R I V E N L E A R N I N G E X P E R I E N C E S

Creating Purpose-Driven Learning Experiences

Creating

Purpose-Driven

Learning Experiences

• Discover the tenets of high-quality project-based learning and the impact they have on academic growth • Have access to reproducible rubrics, questions, and reflection tools

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WILLIAM M. FERRITER

William M. Ferriter