One of the biggest lessons is time management. “I’ve never had someone not finish a project but there have been some close calls,” she laughs. “On the Monday before a project was due I might think ‘no way,’ but then magic!” Each project culminates with the architect writing personal critiques. “That’s the fascinating part. I use that critique paper as a map of learning for the next project,” says Anderson-Brule’. “There’s no failure in learning.” ❝If you face a problem, what do you do?” —JACLYN ZARRELLA, KEHILLAH JE WISH HIGH S CHOOL dean of humanities and History Teacher Jaclyn Zarrella studied PBL in graduate school and has been on the front lines ever since. She recently tasked students with creating infographics to teach what they had learned from lecture and readings. They worked in teams and used an unfamiliar computer program. She says: “I asked myself, ‘what’s my goal?’ It’s not that they complete it but that they try to complete it…If you set it up so that they never hit a roadblock that’s not Project-Based Learning.” Zarrella defines a PBL project (she prefers to call them “labs”) as a multi-step process that uses multiple skills and contains oral, written and visual components with lots of feedback. “The direction we’re going is to look at skills. This is where you have the push and pull. Are we pushing into the 21st century by knowing something happened or by why it’s happening? You don’t need to memorize a list of names.” 70 South Bay Accent TOOLKIT FOR TOMORROW SEVEN CRUCIAL SKILLS How do we create good, employable citizens for tomorrow, since many traditional jobs have been out-sourced, automated or just plain disappeared? That is the driving question behind the creation of the 21st century skill set that is used by schools today in formulating what skills they need to foster on top of core academic knowledge. While there is no one accepted definition for the set, one popular list contains the “seven survival skills” created by Harvard educator Tony Wagner: 1 Critical thinking and problem solving 2 Collaboration and leadership 3 Agility and adaptability 4 Initiative and entrepreneurialism 5 Effective oral and written communication 6 Accessing and analyzing information 7 Curiosity and imagination The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, which includes leading tech companies as well as the National Education Association, has drawn up its own vision. This vast list includes many qualities similar to Wagner’s, but adds the need to master interdisciplinary themes such as global awareness and economic literacy, technology proficiency and cross-cultural skills. She shares a rubric—or statement of purpose—she developed for her “Interwar Years Newscast Project” where students created newscasts about post-World War I events. There were five grading areas ranging from eye contact to subject knowledge. Palo Alto-based Kehillah seeks a balance, says Zarrella, adding that the school does have finals. PBL is “at the teacher’s discretion here. We are very open.” She cautions, though, against thinking PBL is less rigorous. “I’m not here to entertain students. This is pushing multi-tasking and the things they need for today.” ❝We learn that way naturally.” —AIMEE GILES, HILLBROOK SCHOOL “we as a school have defined what a learner looks like at Hillbrook and that includes 21st century skills. Projects are a great way to bring students into that space,” says Aimee Giles, director of teaching and learning for Los Gatos’s Hillbrook School, which encompasses junior kindergarten through eighth grade. “Kids love it,” she adds. “They are project-based learners. We learn that way naturally even as adults.” Giles’s position is a relatively new one, and indicative of the Hillbrook mindset. The school has revamped teacher schedules to allow for more collaboration, which is vital for cross-curriculum project planning, and also funds summer teaching fellowships. Hillbrook’s science program has increasingly turned to PBL and found unique ways to draw students into a collaborative undertaking by the science, music and art departments. Students take a found object—first year was a bicycle, the next a wooden chair, and most recently a wheelbarrow—and attach to it other objects As part of their unit on plants, secondgraders at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal School take part in a flora scavenger hunt in the school’s outdoor classroom. JENNI PETERS
South Bay Accent - Feb/Mar 2016
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