At the heart of PBL are STUDENT-DRIVEN ACTIVITIES, which involve creating a 68 South Bay Accent product, performance or event. Right now in the South Bay there are few PBL-only schools. While many schools use projects as a small part of class work, a growing number are beginning to experiment with more intensive PBL courses. Implementation is tricky, as PBL requires an overhaul of curriculums, grading methods, and lots of teacher training. And if PBL endeavors are poorly constructed they can be time-consuming, and improperly balanced between skill development and factual content. Children frequently collaborate, while at the same time independent thinking, accountability and selfevaluation are stressed. Preliminary research indicates that PBL fosters gains in standardized test scores as well as such areas as student engagement. “This is a huge difference from when I learned,” says Janice Tupaj-Farthing, vice principal of academic affairs at Notre Dame San Jose High School. “Then we all sat in rows and if you talked to your partner you got in trouble. The teacher stood at the front of the room, and maybe wandered down the rows, but that was it.” “Project-Based Learning is becoming the standard of instruction,” believes Palo Alto Preparatory Social Studies Sixth-graders at Almaden Country Goblet” and then explore ancient Egyptian art and architecture. Chair Andrew Fryer. He adds that it helps students to develop School read “The Golden a 21st century skill set. A snapshot of six representative Silicon Valley private schools— running the gamut from preschool through high school, singlesex and co-ed, religious and secular—provides a vivid portrait of PBL in action. ❝Get out of the silos of learning.” —JEREMY ADAMS, ALMADEN C OUNTRY SCHOOL s panning pre school through grade e ight, Almaden Country School (ACS) is actively investigating PBL and “some of the components are already happening,” according to Jeremy Adams, learning support coordinator. Sixth-grade teacher Jane McGinnes admits “I’m new to PBL, but I’m dipping my toes in the water.” After attending workshops and visiting other schools she decided to take the plunge with her class’s Immigration Project. With a tie-in to a book about Ellis Island, the driving question behind McGinnes’s five-week unit was why people go to a new country. “This was designed to drive curiosity,” McGinnes says, and not simply to study immigration. Students created characters from another nation and researched their journey using such decidedly modern tools as Google Earth. The project culminated in Jane McGinnes is an Almaden Country School teacher who recently started incorporating PBL. As a teacher, she says, “you find yourself more as a partner in learning. I did projects before— and I liked them I must say—but not PBL projects. Before it was content delivered first and then brought together by a project. This is so different. How different is how this builds on its own momentum and is so organic.” At Kehillah Jewish High School, Dean of Humanities Jaclyn Zarrella has become a huge PBL fan. “Building skills (through projects) makes sense to parents,” she says. “The days of just memorizing facts are over.” She adds: “Relevancy is key. That’s where you get learning.” “It was hard for my daughter at first,” admits one San Jose mom of a 16-year-old student whose high school has begun incorporating PBL. “She was in a group project, and she was giving me that usual kid-complaint that she was doing all the work. Well I thought, ‘that won’t fly in a real job.’ It was a good lesson for her to learn.” Her daughter came away with fresh insights: “I had not really done group projects since I was a little kid,” she says, “so it felt a bit strange having them be such a big deal in high school … It was hard at first because I felt like I had to motivate the other kids, and I worried about making deadlines. But I found that when it got down to the presentations, some of the other kids were much better than me speaking in public although I think I’m getting better at that. I also worried about my grades but we get to critique ourselves and each other and just have the teacher see it, so I think that gave me more confidence that my work would be recognized. I’ve gotten better at figuring out how to use my time.” CATHELINE SHIN
South Bay Accent - Feb/Mar 2016
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