The Teacher As Change Agent: Project Based Learning and Design Thinking

...we want to tap into authenticity and student interest, and allow them to explain what they’re learning in a way that best suits them and isn’t something that has been mandated by a hierarchy that’s in place that maybe they haven’t had success with before. 
— Leah Henry

My interview with Leah Henry was very inspiring and my goal in this post is to simply share the resources Leah mentioned, as well as some I found. I was watching School of Rock last week. I had seen it before and loved it, but watching with the lens of project based learning this time around got me so excited. I was envisioning this post being my spin on the movie and its connection to PBL. Then I thought, I bet this idea has already been thought of and I was positive that someone who knew more than me about PBL had already written about it. I was right! Lee Hewes wrote a very thorough blog post entitled How is Dewey Finn’s Class Project in “School of Rock” Project Based Learning? Thanks for saving me the time, Lee!

Resources for Project Based Learning and Design Thinking

Leah mentioned:

#pblchat on Twitter/ Tuesdays at 9:30 PM EST

Buck Institute/PBL Works

New Tech Network

CraftED Curriculum

Jenny Pieratt

Magnify Learning

I think the key to any kind of pedagogical theory, getting any of that working, is for everybody to have the same vision for what the purpose of what you’re doing is. And whenever we would coach leaders, and I’ve done some workshops. The state of Indiana had this series last summer where I led some workshops about leadership. And I was just like, your focus has to be known throughout the whole school. And if you would like for students to be engaged in problem solving authentically, and diving into what’s going on in the world and have it be student centered, then you have to, as a leader, clear out the obstacles to that.
— Leah Henry

In Hacking the Writing Workshop, Angela Stockman explains that design thinking can be used to enhance the writing process and includes prototypes, when the students “make writing.” That will be my focus in next week’s post.

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The Teacher As Change Agent: Make Writing Year One

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The Teacher As Extreme Cleaning Specialist