Hands-On PD: The Key to Helping Educators Facilitate PBL

A New Jersey curriculum direcrtor shares her successful professional development strategy for preparing educators to teach project-based learning.

• By Joanne Mullane
• 03/27/2018

If you had walked into one of our classrooms in the Hopatcong school district three years ago, you would have seen students seated quietly, with a teacher standing at the front of the class giving a lesson. We identified that this traditional teaching model was not engaging, and set out to make a change that would engage our students and inspire them to learn. After doing some research, we decided that project-based learning was the answer.

Project-based learning (PBL) is a powerful tool for helping students build 21st-century skills, but many educators need additional support to break away from direct-instruction teaching models. During my years as an administrator, I've learned that a top-down approach to professional development (PD) isn't effective. Additionally, I didn't want our educators to feel like PBL was another new initiative district leaders were "making" them do. For them to see the power of PBL, I knew they would have to experience it for themselves.

A Hands-on Approach

As we were considering our approach to preparing for PBL, I attended a local conference where I engaged in a hands-on PBL workshop with other educators. We were separated into groups and asked to complete a performance task. As a group, we conducted research, collaborated to produce a final product and presented it to the rest of the group. Completing the task for myself allowed me to see the benefit it can have for students, teachers and our district's goal of student engagement. The hands-on professional development session made me realize that appropriate training can level the playing field for teachers who may have never tried PBL.

After making the decision to use standards-aligned performance tasks from an online PBL resource, Defined STEM, we dove in head first with training. To implement our new initiative, we decided to follow a train-the-trainer model to create a handful of PBL experts at each school. The experts would then conduct trainings with educators at our five locations. Today, they continue to serve as the specialists for PBL implementation and an open resource for our educators to ask questions.

All my teachers went through a hands-on training session similar to what I experienced at the conference. We were split into groups and completed a performance task just as students would. Afterward, we conducted research using the resources, then designed, drew, and presented our projects.

Working on a project allowed teachers to experience how performance tasks increase student engagement and allow them to use their knowledge to discover solutions and answers for themselves. We are no longer providing answers to students. Now, we are facilitators of the classroom, guiding them to explore a new style of learning.

In-Class Implementation

During the first year of the implementation, each building had the freedom to implement PBL in their own way, but all teachers were required to do at least one performance task with their students. For example, our 4th- and 5th-grade building implemented PBL by grade level, so 4th-grade students worked on one cross-curricular project in all classes, showing them how math, science, English, and social studies are connected in the real world.

This approach was wildly successful for Hopatcong. At the end of the school year, we had a group of students present one of their projects to the school board to showcase their growth in all content areas. We also took time for teachers to display their students' work during a faculty gallery walk.

PBL helps our students bridge the gap between the classroom and the real world, and adds a cross-curricular focus to multi-faceted lessons. For example, our 8th-grade class was reading The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, which led to the idea of creating our own drive-in theater. Teachers from different disciplines worked together to teach a wide variety of topics related to the project. Students then reached out to involve a local car club, and the PTO set up a concession stand and donated prizes.

Pamela Brennan, a lead teacher who led the PBL initiative, had this to say about her experience: "I encouraged my students to focus on their strengths. I used cooperative group work to give my students opportunities to collaborate and problem-solve. I can say that the overall learning experience for the students was an eagerness to work on the project. They were excited to work together and determine the best strategy to create their final product."

Providing Ongoing PD

Hopatcong provides a plethora of PBL PD opportunities for our educators, including full- and half-day in-services, collaborative lesson-planning time every six days, team-building time, and faculty meetings to ask questions and share best practices. Once teachers see students actively participating in their learning, it's contagious. Teachers realize the benefits of PBL are worth the hurdles, because there's nothing more gratifying than seeing students excited about learning.