David Roney:
People were like, “Whoa, I’m not an artist that feels really risky.” And I was like, “Yeah, and you’re going to ask kids to do that all year.”

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and you just heard the voice of David Roney, who’s an instructional coach at High Tech High Mesa. I wanted to find out more about what was happening at High Tech High Mesa because of what High Tech High’s Director of General Education, Diana Cornejo-Sanchez told me about what she saw when she visited the school six days into the new school year.

Diana Cornejo-Sanchez:
In every single classroom that we walked into, we saw students collaborating. We saw students designing. We saw students problem solving. Students were up. It was kind of that environment where you walked in, you didn’t really know where the teacher was because they were everywhere, managing all of the millions of things that were happening in the classroom. They were all so exciting. Students were 100% engaged in some kind of experience. I think that part of this is, when we talk about beginning of the school year, we always think about beginning of school years as setting expectations. Typically and traditionally, it’s usually about behavior in the classroom and we forget that behaviors linked to engagement. So it’s like, “Why not set the expectations for learning because we learn by doing?” And what we saw at High Tech High Mesa was that educators had experienced something before the school start that allowed them to create these conditions in their classroom.

Diana Cornejo-Sanchez:
We saw that they had carefully designed active learning opportunities for their staff in their back-to-school professional development. And so for the staff, it was a model for learning in their classrooms. So that’s where we had the opportunity to see students collaborating, problem solving, designing, testing, and most importantly, learned by doing. And that was by launching immediately into the projects.

Alec Patton:
I heard High Tech High Mesa’s approach described as PBL from day one. And when I asked their director, Brett Peterson, about it, he told me to talk to David. I started by asking David about the rationale behind PBL from day one.

David Roney:
We think it’s really the vehicle by which students most quickly and most deeply find what’s important to them. And when students find meaning and purpose behind their work, then they want to learn. And that’s what we want it to feel like here. Brett Peterson, our director, has told me before that his goal is, on the first day of school, to walk around campus and see students making doing on the first day. And I really took that to heart when Natalie Zanzucchi and I, she’s our dean of students, started approaching the planning of staff days. That’s really what we had in mind as our goal is that, everybody would be engaged in project work on day one.

Alec Patton:
Now, there’s also an argument that you should spend the first couple weeks team building and it should be a different thing from the project. How do you feel about that?

David Roney:
Well, I mean I certainly see an argument for that, and there are places where I think that’s really super appropriate, particularly if you have a project that is going to immediately delve into hard history or there’s something that’s happening in your classroom for which there’s a really important relational basis prior to the work itself. I think that certainly is an argument I hear and I would say no shade to folks who make the choice to do that. But also in a lot of ways, what we hear from students, what I have heard from students, our students here, I’ve been here for a few years, and what I hear from our students here is that they already really know each other. And so when students walk into our classrooms with a pretty solid sense of each other already, what we really care about is that they get to know each other on a deeper level and that they feel like those connections they’re making with each other are meaningful. And often, we find that the most meaningful connections they can make with each other are through purposeful and legitimate collaboration.

David Roney:
That’s not to say that we don’t invest in really purposeful identity and community development, we certainly do, but the vehicle for that is a project.

Alec Patton:
Awesome, thank you. You said that Brett Peterson had this vision and kind of goal that there would be meaningful work happening in every classroom if you walked around on the first day of school. Kids would be making stuff, kids would be doing stuff that was meaningful and important and that you designed the August staff days to set yourselves up for that. How much time do you have to work with, with the staff?

David Roney:
When we move into August, our new to High Tech folks get a week-long Odyssey experience, that’s our onboarding experience, in which they have a project slice, which is a really cool opportunity for experienced High Tech High teachers to run a full, abbreviated obviously, project into two days. This year, I ran a project slice at Odyssey with 25 teachers who were going to be High Tech teachers for the first time this year. I ran them through a project that I did last semester with my 11th grade humanities class and my 11th grade teaching partner, Megan Patty. That’s the first thing that happens at Odyssey. I remember when I was new to High Tech and I went through a project slice, I think that was the most important way for me who was new to High Tech’s version of PBL, which is, I came to High Tech in the first place because it was the gold standard in PBL so far as I could tell.

David Roney:
I had been teaching in Nashville for five years and I was really interested in seeing what it looked like where it was being done best. And as far as I could tell, that was here. In my experience in onboarding, the best way for me to figure out what PBL was, was to experience it, which of course is what we believe at High Tech is the best way to learn is through experience. And so, when Brett talked about wanting to lead with projects, that really resonated with me because that’s what was effective for me as a learner when I arrived in this organization. I was actually working with Camille Dixon originally, who was formerly our dean of students at the end of the year last year, to sort of plan out what staff days would look like. We decided that we would devote the first of our seven staff days to a miniature version of a project slice.

David Roney:
Like I said, we have the Odyssey, which is the new teacher onboarding. And then right after Odyssey, we had seven days this year that were devoted to what we call staff days. Those were days that my partner in crime here, Natalie, and I were able to plan for all the things that teachers would need, how to plan projects, how to plan daily instruction here, what does our schedule look like, what does our safety plan, how do we deal with discipline? All the things that people need to know in order to be successful on a campus.

Alec Patton:
So if I’m a High Tech High Mesa teacher and summer’s over, it’s my first staff day, where am I coming to on day one and what happens when I walk in the door?

David Roney:
Well, first of all, I think the most important thing about our culture is that when you walk in for day one of the staff day, it’s not really day one. The day after students have their final day, we have one more day as a staff. And on that day, we spent a lot of time talking about what our inspiration, what our interests were for our projects for the following year. So we spend some time with our collaborators on the day before summer starts. On that day I asked people, “What kind of work do you actually like to do over the summer and how might we stay connected so that when you arrive for staff days, you feel like you’ve got a really good project seed that you can bring to fruition during staff days?” There’s nothing worse than showing up at staff days and not knowing where you want your project to go, generally.

David Roney:
Not having any community partnerships on your mind, not having any field work on your mind, not knowing what you want your product or your exhibition to be. You don’t know any of that when you walk into staff days, a hundred percent feels stressful. Planning a project in seven days is a challenge because a lot of it takes time. So I think the first and most important thing is, we spent time, before summer started, finding out what is your workflow over the summer and how can we stay connected so that when you show up to staff days, you feel pretty confident already about what’s happening? I actually talked to a lot of people over the summer in different capacities, quick text messages, longer emails, phone conversations. We had a training with Blue Dot run by a bunch of amazing folk, formerly High Tech teachers who are now doing some consulting.

David Roney:
We had a number of our new to Mesa teachers join us for that. A lot of opportunities for ideation. That was a chance for us to get the ball rolling, I guess I would say. When we approached staff days, it wasn’t like, “Hey, this is who we are.” It was more like, “Hey, welcome back. We’re excited you’re here,” even for the people who were new. I think that preliminary work was really super important, but then when people came for staff days, we wanted them to have a project experience that also allowed them to get to know each other. So this speaks to your question of, what is the balance between community building and project work? Camille and I, last year, during the end of last school year, in May of 2022, we decided that we wanted to run a slice.

David Roney:
And I had used as a launch in my project in the spring of 2022, I had used this launch where students interviewed each other. It was a documentary project. The launch for this project was for students to interview each other and then create a short documentary that captured the interview they did with some sort of visual aspect. The idea was that they would get a feel for what visual storytelling is like, but they would also get to know somebody else in their class on a much deeper level than they otherwise would. We repurposed that launch for our staff so that was the project slice we did. Staff members looked at student work. I showed them, obviously with permission of students. I showed the staff some examples of really excellent versions of this interview documentary project that students had made.

David Roney:
I invited the students to come and talk about the work that they had done, what was challenging for them, what supports they felt like they needed in order to be successful. And then as a staff, we developed a super quick rubric for like, what would a great version of this look like? We all had shared expectations, and of course, I’m doing that not because our staff needed to have a rubric for this project, but to model the idea that co-constructing a rubric is a really good way to build investment in a product. Then we provided some materials to pretty heavily structure the interviews. We wanted them to be place-based interviews so that our staff members could get to know a little bit more about each other without asking really super direct questions about who people are and what they believe. Instead, we focused on the places they come from and then are important to them.

David Roney:
And as a result, a number of them said that gave them an opportunity to be a little more open, maybe, because it was a little less direct and awkward to have that conversation with somebody new. We also grouped people really intentionally. We wanted to make sure that people were connected with somebody who would, for whatever reason, be an important ally for them as the year started. Whether it’s because they were in a similar subject area or a similar grade level or it’s because they had personalities that we thought would be good. We did all the same things we do when we group kids. And so, the result of that was about 40, 50 minutes for staff members to interview each other. And then the goal was that over the next couple hours, they would create a visual representation of their partner’s story about the place that they really cared about.

David Roney:
Unlike with students where it had to be a documentary film because that was the medium for the project and we wanted them to utilize the storytelling skills they would use for that product, for our staff, that actually wasn’t the purpose. The purpose for our staff was, we are going to use those artistic representations during our first whole school community meeting in order to introduce our staff to our students. We had an exhibition built into this project slice experience, which was that we’re going to share these visuals with our student body and that, that’s how they were going to get to know us.

Alec Patton:
That raises the stakes a whole lot.

David Roney:
Right. Exactly. It’s important for kids, when they’re starting a project to know, “What’s the point? Why am I doing this? Who is this for?” We really wanted to start there with our staff also, and there were some questions. People were like, “Whoa, I’m not an artist. That feels really risky.” And I was like, “Yeah, and you’re going to ask kids to do that all year.” So this is what it feels like to be vulnerable with students and what you have to offer is amazing. Let’s see what that looks like. And we were really super proud about what people created. And to be totally honest, we spent about two hours that first day in the afternoon. So this was, they had up to lunchtime to create whatever their visual representation was. And then we had a beautiful lunch. And then afterwards, we had a mini exhibition where we shared those visual pieces with each other just as a staff. It took two hours and it was really a beautiful opportunity for people to share about their partners.

Alec Patton:
One thing that really strikes me is that I think often when we think about doing a project slice, I think about the focus being on the fun and the engagement and you’re doing this thing that’s fun and it’s a reminder of how engaging learning can be. But actually there’s another thing about, it’s the first thing like, “Man, I’m making a rubric? That doesn’t sound that fun.” There’s a certain amount of the things that you have to do that we expect students to do. There’s an element of what was it actually like to be on the student end of that, that I think is super interesting.

David Roney:
And I think that was really important to me. We had a lot of new staff members coming in, almost half our staff. I know that as a learner, if I don’t have any reason to believe that what you have to offer is of value, then it’s hard for me to engage. If I haven’t seen what you’ve done, if I haven’t seen your work product and I don’t believe that you’re really good at what you’re supposed to be doing, it’s hard for me to listen to you. And so, it was really important for me to have to get up there and do the thing that they’re going to have to do with students. It was important for me as a modeling thing like, I’m going to work really hard to put something together that is worth your time. And if it isn’t worth your time, we need to talk about why not and I need to make adjustments.

David Roney:
That was a commitment I always made with kids, and it’s a commitment I really thought was going to be maybe even more important with adults because I know it’s just people’s time is the most valuable thing they have. And if I’m going to take a whole day that they could be spending with their partner on project planning and instead ask them to engage in this slice experience, I have to make this slice experience meaningful. I thought one way to make it meaningful was to model some really specific things that I always felt like made my projects better. And one of those was looking at mentor techs, professional mentor techs ahead of time and then deciding what makes those excellent and how do we shoot for that? And having everybody invested in the experience of, this is what excellence looks like in this project and that’s what we’re shooting for together. It’s important to me to have the opportunity for people to see, “This isn’t something he’s just telling me to do. This is something that maybe actually worked for me too.”

Alec Patton:
Who did you make your art piece about?

David Roney:
I did it about one of our Ed specialists, her name is Hannah McCann.

Alec Patton:
So that’s day one, there’s an afternoon exhibition and then the knowledge that all this work will be getting exhibited again. Did you take it all or did everybody hold onto their own one?

David Roney:
If there was one thing I could do differently, actually, that would be it. The problem was there were so many different media formats. One of the things I didn’t mention is, I went to Michaels the weekend beforehand and I just got a bunch of art stuff. So I got watercolors and watercolor paper. I got sculpture materials. I got lots of different canvas type stuff, wood, actual canvas, all kinds of things for people to make on, all kinds of different paint, all kinds of stuff. My invitation for everybody was like, “Look, whatever your gift and talent is, go put it to practice.” I’m a poet, so I wrote a poem, but there are lots of other things that people did. We have a songwriter and she wrote a song. We had people who used digital art media. We have a filmmaker so he went and made an actual film.

David Roney:
We have been historian, so he told a family history. There were a bunch of different media that people chose, but that made it really hard to gather the work. We also realized, “If we go and try to exhibit this with students, I don’t think we’re going to be able to get 400 kids to sit for two hours and listen to each of these presentation no matter how amazing and engaging they are.” And so we didn’t end up doing a theater, everybody stands up in front and doing it that way. We actually exhibited a little bit differently than that. But that’s one of the things that happens in projects is you have a plan and then things roll out and it’s not exactly like you expected it to be sometimes, and so flexible and make adjustments in that way. Anyway, I think one of the things I will do differently if I ever used this again in the future, is have a really clear place for those things to live immediately after they’re finished being produced.

Alec Patton:
Day one finishes, you realize that you don’t really have a good way of storing all of these different amazing, wild, and wonderful projects that everybody’s made. But what happens on day two?

David Roney:
Day two, we move pretty explicitly from like, “This is a slice. This is what it feels like to be in a project. Now, our responsibility is to design excellent projects for students.” So Natalie and I, we spend a lot of time figuring out what are the must-haves for all staff, particularly considering that we’ve got a lot of staff who are new to us, before we really get into project planning. We cut that into two days, so day two and day three, we’re really focused on the project design. Day two, we focused on the PBL Essentials. What is a launch? What is an exhibition? How do community partnerships fit? What is field work and how do we make it happen? What is an iterative cycle that includes drafting, critique, and revision? All the things that PBL is. But that’s a lot of things and we didn’t want to just stand up there and talk.

David Roney:
What we decided to do instead is introduce the High Tech High design principles and then lean on some of our really phenomenal and experienced staff members. We did kind of a stations thing. We had four stations, one for each design principal run by a staff member who was really good at whatever that thing was. We had Chase Buchanan and Natalie Zanzucchi focused on equity. We had Felix Lopez focused on collaborative design. We had Margaret Noble focused on authentic work, and we had Lexi Wiggins focused on personalization. We had these four stations for our teachers to go to and see, what does personalization look like in a project? And then they were looking at specific PBL Essentials with a lens of personalization. And then same thing for authentic work equity and collaborative design. We spent an hour moving 15 minutes each station, moving around, seeing what the amazing work of the people in our own schools have done in this regard.

David Roney:
And then we had two hours of just dedicated project planning time with our teaching partners. Then we had lunch, and then afterwards, we had really purposeful project tunings inside of disciplines. The first day was focused on disciplines thinking that, “If I’m a science teacher, I really want to talk about the launch and the product and the exhibition, all that stuff, all my PBL Essential. I want to talk about that stuff with other science teachers, other people who have the same context I do because the project stuff is where they’re going to be able to give me the most valuable feedback.” That was day two, was focused on PBL design principles and PBL Essentials. And then day three, we were focused on student learner outcomes, our SLOs. Natalie developed a really beautiful gallery walk experience where we traveled in grade level teams and we ideated and set a vision for what those student learner outcomes look like at each grade level on our campus.

David Roney:
And then we had the same thing. We had two hours of dedicated project work time with our teaching partners and we had lunch. And then in the afternoon that day, we had another project tuning, but this time, we did it in grade levels and we invited students. We had 14 students come to campus and two or three students sat in with each grade level and provided their own feedback on the projects that they were going to be working on that year or on this first semester.

Alec Patton:
Awesome.

David Roney:
That’s day two and day three. That’s the most intensive project planning time. And then throughout the course of the rest of the week, there’s all kinds of other stuff that we’re trying to fit in. CPR training, mandated reporter training, discipline expectations, evacuation routes, curation and exhibition. It was all the things. I mean certainly, it was very much a puzzle from there on out. And I think the big challenge for us in planning those days was like, “How do we make sure teachers still have enough time to write their syllabus and set up Google Classroom and learn how to use PowerSchool and make materials for the first week?” It’s a balance between what do we need somebody to stand up and talk about? What can we do through email? How can we make sure people have as much time as possible to do the things that professional educators do?

Alec Patton:
Did you achieve PBL from day one across the school?

David Roney:
I think anytime you ask that binary question like, were kids in every classroom doing meaningful work that was associated with the projects that they were going to do? Yes, absolutely. Was everything perfect? Probably not. Are we still growing every day in order to live out the sort of vision that PBL sets for us? We are. I don’t want to make it sound like everything is just glittering and gold and we got rainbows and unicorns everywhere, but this is hard work. Sustaining really purposeful and meaningful projects over the course of the semester is very challenging work. You have community partners drop out and you have field trips that, for whatever reason, can’t work out. And you have products that don’t go the way you expected them to, whatever.

David Roney:
All kinds of things happen. And so, teaching is still hard and planning is still hard and we’re learning a lot. But I think more than anything, what stands out to me as a success about the beginning of this year is that everybody bought into the idea that students learn more when they’re doing something that’s valuable. And to make something valuable, it needs to be connected to an outcome for them. I think really, if nothing else, we absolutely had a whole staff of people who were bought into that idea and that was really cool.

Alec Patton:
And you had a fair number of people coming in with zero PBL experience. Is that true?

David Roney:
Yeah.

Alec Patton:
What would you say is the most valuable thing if you have seven days with somebody who has zero experience with PBL before they’re in a classroom as a PBL teacher?

David Roney:
I hope this doesn’t sound trite, but I would answer that question in the same way I would answer a question about what is the most important thing you can do in order to make sure your students are set up for success. Get to know them, know what they care about, know what’s important to them, know what their values are, and then be able to center those in the development of the learning experiences that they’ll build for kids. For me, my vision in my classroom is literacy is justice. I was unabashedly a person who is committed to making sure students saw themselves as strong readers, writers, and thinkers, and were able to use that as a tool for whatever was important to them.

David Roney:
It’s like, if I’m a person who’s coming into a school and the people who are designing the learning experiences know that about me and don’t shy away from that, then they can really help me develop amazing projects that allow my gifts and talents and values to be at the center. I think that was the most important thing for me was get to know the people and what they’re amazing at and help them see how, what they’re already amazing at, can help them build excellent projects.

Alec Patton:
David, thank you so much. This has been awesome. It’s reignited my excitement. I want to go like do PD and do projects slices.

David Roney:
It’s been really fun. Thank you so much for talking.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother ‎Hershel. We’ve got the model David made for his project slice in the show notes. Thanks for listening.