Alec talks to fifth grade teacher Jeff Govoni about a project he and his fifth grade colleagues did last year, in which students designed and built dog houses and cat condos for animals seeking adoption.
There are two questions I hear a lot from visitors to High Tech High that are TOTALLY different, but both based on the same misconception about Project-based Learning.
Lots of teachers come to High Tech High, see how collaborative the teachers are, and get inspired to make their first project a massive interdisciplinary collaboration between, say, English, Spanish, Biology, and Algebra.
This is almost always a bad idea.
Alec and Nuvia talk to artist Scarlett Baily about her life, her art, and in particular the process of collaborating with 200 elementary school students
Here is a paradox of teaching: if you want your classroom to be full of conversation and self-directed learning, you need to be able to quickly capture everybody’s focus.
Last spring I was standing in my fifth-grade classroom, mid-project, rearranging student groups when I realized we had a problem. My students were building scale models of dog houses and cat condos that they had designed—and would ultimately build—to donate to a pet-adoption event later that spring.
This collection is called “true project stories” because it’s all about teachers (and students) telling the stories of the projects they’ve done, from the heights of achievement to the depths of despair.
Q: It seems restrictive to tell every kid to make the same kind of product when we’re doing a project. How should I decide what parts of the project to be flexible on and which are non-negotiable?
“We critique and discuss what makes the work powerful: what makes a piece of creative writing compelling and exciting; what makes a scientific or historical research project significant and stirring; what makes a novel mathematical solution so breathtaking.”
How can assessment practices be designed to best support student learning? In school, the term “assessment” is often shorthand for “grades”—or, perhaps, tests, quizzes, rubrics, and similar evaluative tools. However, thinking of “assessment” as interchangeable with “test” or “grade” limits the potential for assessment practices to lead to meaningful and deeper learning.
Kelly Wilson, HTH GSE Dean, talks to Louis Lacour, an eleventh grader at Green School in Bali, about project-based learning, local renewable energy infrastructure, and his plan to transform reef conservation with biodegradable zip ties!
My fourth-grade classroom was covered in cardboard boxes. The entire back wall was piled high with donated boxes. The tables were covered in glue and paint cups sat in the sink. As I began to clean up some paint splatters, I smiled to myself as I thought about how I ended up in this situation.
We wrote this chapter several years ago, in response to a request from the Sitra Foundation in Finland that we envision the school of the future. The chapter is dated in some respects, but apart from minimal updates and revisions for clarity, it appears here as written.
In Student-Centered assessment the students first reflect and then receive feedback from peers, teachers, community, and experts to fully develop their projects.
Rosemarie Biocarles-Rydeen talks to Alec about “Everybody Needs a Rock”, the kindergarten geology project she designed and ran at High Tech Elementary Chula Vista
Alec talks to the XP Trust’s Chief Academic Officer, Andy Sprakes, about how XP schools make sure every child’s work makes it into the final product, and the hard lesson that made them take this so seriously.
Alec talks to the XP Trust’s Chief Academic Officer, Andy Sprakes, about how XP schools make sure every child’s work makes it into the final product, and the hard lesson that made them take this so seriously.
This is the longer “director’s cut” version of this episode.
High Tech High Interim CEO Kaleb Rashad and co-founder Rob Riordan talk about how High Tech High’s approach to teaching and learning informs professional development in the organization.
High Tech High Interim CEO Kaleb Rashad and co-founder Rob Riordan sit down to talk about what they were doing BEFORE High Tech High, and how it shaped their philosophy of education
Veteran teacher Andrew Lerario talks to Alec about “sharing the cognitive load” with students, and treating the project as a shared journey you go on together. He also talks about doing rocket science with high schoolers.
Middle School teacher Sean Gilley explains how he uses Chat GPT to share the load on project planning, so he can focus on the parts of teaching that matter most
“Paagalon ka school” (“School for lunatics”), “The Motley Crew’, “The Rag-Tag Army” were the not-so-flattering epithets the community used to describe our school —one would have thought we had started a rock band, not a tiny little school with nine children and grand ambitions.
Veteran PBL teacher Brian Delgado explains the power of thinking about the first time you do a project as a “first draft,” and unpacks a phrase coined by High Tech High cofounder Rob Riordan: “Let the experience be the text.”
High Tech High Mesa Instructional Coach David Roney explains how his colleagues designed August PD to put projects front and center, so teachers were ready to launch their projects on day one of school.
Alec talks to Jean Kluver and Jeff Robin, co-authors of Changing the Subject: Twenty Years of Projects at High Tech High, about how they wrote the book, what they learned from it, and how they hope schools will use it.
The Six Equity Stances of Liberatory Project-Based Learning creates a way to identify, challenge, and critique the social forces that reproduce inequity and oppression.
A project launch is an engaging, active experience with multiple entry points for diverse learners that invites multiple perspectives and fosters diverse, innovative thinking.
