Question and Rationale

Title. Restoring the Heart of Alpha through Project Based Learning.

Abstract.

My project will focus on project based learning in order to reinvigorate the key elements of our middle school team. Our team has evolved over the years, and as it has progressed forward, it has veered away from students pursuing individual projects based on their interests and passions. My plan is to collect data through surveys from teammates and students to answer this guiding question:

Question.
How does project based learning support the core elements of the mission of the Alpha team and uphold the principles of Act 77?

Introduction and Rationale for the Project.

The rationale for this project stems from two key discussions that took place at the Institute. The first one was the three pillars conversation, the analogy to Act 77’s three main components of (1) Personalized Learning Plans, (2) Proficiency Based Learning and (3) Flexible Pathways. Lindsey and Don’s conversation focused on how the edges of these three pillars connect through project based learning. The second conversation was with students, who loudly and clearly identified where we have been remiss in year one of PLP implementation: student voice. These two  discussions were critical turning points for me, as they are foundational to the origins and longevity of the Alpha team, a team that will turn 45 years old in 2017. If our team is going to see this milestone, it needs to reaffirm our commitment to student voice and project based learning. Therefore, the purpose and rationale for this project will focus on the elements of personalized learning through the implementation of project based learning.

Historically, Alpha’s integrated themes were solely generated from students’ common self and world questions. Teachers had an idea of what science and social studies content needed to be addressed and how literacy would be woven throughout the theme. (Math was a separate subject). Once students determined the big idea, or theme from their common questions, they generated  individual, small group and whole group activities, projects and resources; teachers then crafted the progression of how the theme would be implemented. An example of a theme from that time was our Origins theme, where students studied the origins of life, earth, language, civilization, etc and were grouped based on interest to those strands. Student input and interest, admittedly through rose colored glasses seemed high, and students created theme projects either individually or in small groups that were connected to the theme.

As the stakes and accountability to content standards and GE’s increased, we redefined how

themes were determined. They were still based on student’s common self and world questions but were anchored to a predetermined content area, much more specific to a strand of science or social studies. Students still had voice in the planning process, but the choices were more limited, and we lost the genuine creativity and interest that stems from connecting learning to a big overarching idea, and the personal interest choice option was limited. While students still created compelling projects, and demonstrated enthusiasm in their learning, the element of student choice in pursuing a project of personal interest was rarely actualized. And that wasn’t the worse of it. Last year, after we had completed a theme and were about to start the planning process for the subsequent theme, a student stopped me in my tracks and asked, “Why do we do this? You ask us for our input and then you create the theme without following our input?” I was dumbfounded, and heartbroken. He was so right. Even though in theory we had asked their input, and followed what we thought was their input, we had failed to actualize it. We let the dictates and mandates determine our curriculum implementation and override student voice. It seemed there was never enough time to do both well, so we defaulted to what we “had” to do. They felt unheard and devalued in the process. It is clear that something radical and purposeful needs to be done.

The purpose to this action research project is first and foremost, to re-establish student voice into the heart of the Alpha team. In order to get there, we must first determine the core values of the Alpha team as teachers (if we are not in alignment, we cannot expect our processes and protocols to be aligned). This will be done through an agreed to process by the teachers of the team, and then replicated in some way with the students. These agreed to values will then be transparent and guide decisions made as a team. An important area to practice our mission and values will be demonstrated in our curriculum development process that requires an important upgrade in student voice and negotiation. While the idea of core values and the heart of Alpha is important, what I want to focus on for action research is project based learning. My thinking is that a well defined process for students to pursue individual projects based on interest and passions will not only invigorate student voice on our team and in our curriculum, but will subsequently address the P(personalized) in the PLP. As Scott so delicately proposed to the SCS team to chew on… “To what degree or extent does the PLP or the goal section drive or influence what happens in all our classes...if the goals aren’t connected to the work I (student) am doing - why am I doing it?” And so it here that I wish to focus the action research project.

Relation to Middle Level Philosophy and Literature.

Last year was our first year implementing the PLP at SCS. For our team, personalized learning was not a new concept, as students had historically built portfolios that reflected their learning around the 5 Vital Results. We confidently thought the transition to PLP’s would be an easy one, and perhaps even an improvement on our portfolio process. In some ways it was - students set the length of the goal versus arbitrary trimesters, and they generated specific action steps to achieve a reasonable set of goals versus up to 10 goals overall (2 per Vital Result)...a much more daunting and unattainable number. For some students, this new approach worked well. In fact, I had two students who set personal goals related to a specific project (Vermont History Day inspired). They used the PLP as a vehicle to record and document their progress,  and as a result, scored well enough in their category at Vermont History Day to move on to the National History Day celebration. This momentum not only set them up for success but they were so inspired they set about establishing a fundraiser to raise awareness and funds for girls to go to school in Afghanistan. This is exactly what we want to happen for ALL students, not just those motivated to pursue these opportunities on their own. So, in looking back on our first year, we know we have some important changes to make so all students will realize their potential as change agents. While we had hoped that implementing the PLP would help us achieve a more personalized approach, it doesn’t just happen because the law says it will. Personalization needs purposeful implementation, and curriculum development and project based learning are vehicles to get us there.

The three main pillars of Act 77 are Flexible Pathways, Proficiency Based Learning, and Personalized Learning Plans, and our work as teachers to help students see where the edges of these three pillars connect, or touch. Middle school is the time for students to not necessarily determine their exact pathway, but to understand that they are very much at the center of determining their pathways. The PLP facilitates the personalization, by helping students set reasonable personal goals and action steps to help them realize their potential. Schools need to provide opportunities for student to engage in learning that is relevant, rigorous and responsive to their needs. One of the tidbits that summarized the educational quality standards put it this way: “Each school shall ensure students are able to access academic and experiential learning opportunities that reflect their emerging abilities, interests and aspirations, as outlined in the student’s Personalized Learning Plans,”  (Intro to Personalized Learning Module). It is incumbent upon us as teachers to make sure that what we are asking of students in our classrooms connects to what students are hoping to demonstrate through their PLP’s. If there is no connection, we have missed the point. This references back to Scott’s provocative question to our MGI team - if what we are asking to students to do in our classrooms is not grounded in their personalized learning then why are they doing it?

One essential element of linking projects and personalization stems from how curriculum is designed and implemented on the team. Students need to see the curriculum reflect their interests, and the issues and concerns of their day. For Alpha, we need to refer back to the curriculum development process as outlined years ago, but update it with an emphasis on personalization. The component of Alpha’s curriculum development process that is central to our team is generating the self and world questions, grounded in James Beane process of negotiated curriculum. This process has always remained central to our theme development; typically a student-generated question would become the essential question from which we create our units. Student generated questions were often much richer than something we could come up with, and honored their voice in the process. Where we have diverged from the Beane process in recent years was that the only connections made from the common questions were to pre-established content standards. This has eliminated the difficult but essential process of connecting our learning to bigger ideas or overarching themes that integrate content standards, and what make the learning meaningful.

Essentially, we need to develop a process to connect our learning to a bigger overarching idea or theme, and allow students to pursue learning to that theme based on their interest and passion. Reviewing the Edge Academy Curriculum development process has sparked some ideas about how to generate themes from the negotiated curriculum process.  The Edge has a well articulated mission and vision, something that needs time to cultivate on Alpha. (While we have guiding principles, they are certainly not transparent across the team, and that is why the heart of Alpha discussion needs to take place first before we can redesign our curriculum process and PLP implementation). Once we have drafted our mission/core values and have mirrored that process with students, we can proceed with our curriculum development of self and world questions, and have students look for themes from their common questions. (At the institute this year, Wendy (teammate), Lindsey and I reviewed our curriculum for the upcoming year and saw a natural overarching idea of Revolution; we can offer this as an example, and have students build from there and find their own connections). Depending on what our mission has established, we could determine next steps - perhaps decide on one theme for the year, or vote on more than one. Much will need to be hashed out as a collective learning community. Regardless, meaningful projects will be an essential part of the process (I know this is being somewhat presumptive but I am confident that meaningful projects will be part of our team’s learning process).

It makes sense, then, to refer to resources that organize the main elements or categories of project based learning for the purpose of effective implementation.  The edutopia video series entitled Resources for Getting Started with Project Based Learning offers insight and strategies to each element; my goal is to consider what our team would need to do to and what other tools are out there to help facilitate implementation.  Over the course of the summer I would like to populate the implications column with specific examples of tools or templates we could use. Alec Patton’s Work that Matters: A Teacher’s Guide to Project Based Learning, provides an appendix of extremely helpful systems, templates, timeframes and rubrics to support the implementation of project based learning. That, coupled with resources from the Buck Institute and the Edge will be our go-to in planning and moving forward.

Essential Elements to Project Based Learning	Description	Implications for Alpha
Establishing Real World Connections	Having an authentic problem that drives the curriculum- driving question. What are problems or needs in our community and who are people we can connect with?	Often generated from self and world questions Ask families for possible resources (Wendy did some work at the institute on community partners and we often have families offer their expertise throughout our themes) Buck Institute has some great question generators  such as Tubric to help support students in identifying problems or possible projects to explore. Helpful resources:     Community Projects
Building Rigorous Projects that are Core to learning	Rigor doesn’t come at the end of the unit after we have covered the content, but IS the unit. Backwards design starts with the standards in mind.	This is where the transferable skills come into play. Alpha follows a KUD process for designing our themes, but for this year we will be implementing learning targets generated from the transferable skills, and content learning targets that anchor back to transferable skills. Helpful resources:     Authentic culminating projects
Structuring Collaboration for student success	This is about having students work together but providing a structure to do so - carefully scaffolded,  by establishing roles, using common language and offering tools to help kids manage time and tasks. It is also about culture how do we talk to one another - especially when we disagree on something. Some specific ideas to help foster this were: table-top directions, checklist or agenda that students have to get through the end of the day or the end of the week.	We spend a great deal of time on building a community and a culture on our team, but having specific systems and protocols for critiquing each other’s work, offering feedback, working through hiccups. Our PSGs (Problem Solving Groups) are an important element of working together, as well as goals partners can help foster collaboration Weekly goals can reflect this element Theme units up front with a checklist of what needs to happen per project regardless of topic Helpful Resource:       Peer critique protocols (page 98)
Facilitating learning in a Student Driven environment	Teacher as facilitator, asking good questions along the way to keep the student engaged and productive...this is also where student reflection is key - how are we doing? What is working? What is not? What do we need to do next? Ideas are to use a class white board, identifying what’s working, what needs to happen next; have students engage in discussion with peers; have students reflect to a learning target that has been articulated by the teacher at the start of the lesson/day/week	This is a fairly well established component of Alpha Student reflection needs to be reintroduced purposefully here as an element of the PLP Reflection strategies do need to be varied to avoid redundancy, fatigue, etc.
Multifaceted assessment	Assessment is integrated throughout the entire unit, this is where the work on learning targets helps - could be small checkins, and the students are assessing themselves. Multi-week projects means you really need to be on top of students, so having strategies for regular check-in’s is important.	Regular reflection is essential here to communicate to teachers, parents, partners successes and challenges moving forward Use Fist of 5 approach to determine where students are at on the learning target Stan & Emily’s red yellow and green cards for determining progress on the scales of learning targets Poster of dot voting - here are the scales, here’s where we are at (might also be a great way for kids to get comfortable with a 1 on the scale)

I was re-reading the Story of Alpha by Susan Kuntz, for inspiration. If an essential element of  change is re-establishing the critical components of the Alpha team, we should have an understanding of where we came from; we should know the history of the team. It is not surprising to know that Alpha is well versed in the idea of project based learning, and the section of the book that describes projects of yesteryear echoes what we know is best practice today: high interest projects, embedded creativity, and to authentic audiences. When Sue interviewed Alpha alumni looking back on their middle school years, they remember project based learning as a highlight; it was remembered “as a good way to explore areas that interest them” and they “valued the opportunity to present their finding in creative ways.” They recalled “culminating events as representative of their learning” (Kuntz, p. 30).  

To keep the heart of Alpha going, we need to stay relevant to what we know and believe is best for students. Project based learning will help us achieve what we hold dear:

• Negotiated curriculum that honors student voice and choice
• Personalized learning through the process of goal setting and action steps that help students pursue their passion and reach their potential
• Opportunities to celebrate learning, and for students to see themselves as the agents of change for themselves and their community.

These elements will be central to the implementation of the action research. I am ready and excited to proceed!!

Resources:

"5 Keys to Rigorous Project-Based Learning." Edutopia. N.p., 2014. Web. 6 July 2016.

"Blog." Gold Standard PBL: Student Voice & Choice. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 July 2016.

Kuntz, Susan. The Story Of Alpha. Westerville: National Middle School Association, 2005. Print.

Patten, Alec. Work That Matters - The Teacher’s Guide to Project Based Learning. Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2012. Web. 10 July 2016.

Presentation. “The Beane/Brodhagen Model of Negotiated Integrated Curriculum - A Curriculum Model for the Middle Years of Schooling.” N.p., Web. 8 July 2016.

"Resources for Getting Started With Project-Based Learning." Edutopia. N.p., 2014. Web. 8 July 2016.