Making the Investment in PBL

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the PBL Works PBL 101 institute in Palm Valley, California.  As part of our professional development journey the last two years, we have focused almost solely on Project Based Learning while we built and enacted Chickasaw Challenge, J-term and now are moving to PBL work in semester courses.

PBL is built on 8 Gold Standards as defined by the PBL Works company, previously the Buck Institute.  With a group of 6 other staff, I spent three days building a course to institute upon return to New Hampton.  I am so excited to see some of our staff begin on Monday as well as to share the information with the rest of our staff.

The main focus of our time at the PBL 101 training was using the framework of PBL to become better at building courses. At the left, you will see high school staff members and Mr. Jurrens, our superintendent, collaborating and communication (2 of the 4 Cs) to get better. It was interesting to see what other schools were doing as well as to share our own thoughts, questions, and insights.

I am excited to get started with my own course. We were very intentional in building courses that each of us can use, in every professional setting we represented.  Mrs. Anderson, Ms. Konecne, and Mrs. Manson will begin their PBLs this week and I plan on enacting mine as an extra-curricular opportunity.  In addition, two TLC staff were able to attend the three day coaching training for PBL in a neighboring building.  This will help them prepare staff and coach through the process of building PBLs with the 8 Gold Standards.

Of course, we were able to fly in and be here for the next round of winter weather. A big thanks to my fellow travelers for being patient with delays-- it was totally worth it!