I have spent a lot of time reflecting on this last school year, one that really was a challenge, and something that continues to rise to the surface is that I must continue to nurture my creative side through project based learning. I must continue to cultivate a strong community of empowered learners.
I have always considered myself to be a student centered educator, a champion of the workshop model and hands on learning for as long as I have been a teacher. But as I reflect on my shifting classroom, I realize that what has helped students grow has also helped change me, has helped me pour into my creative side. It is something I hope to continue to explore and nurture in the coming school year.
About 3 summers ago I took a Project Based Learning (PBL) course offered through my school district. This course allowed me to change the way I thought about student centered teaching. I began thinking differently about drafting and feedback, things I was doing in other parts of my day but not throughout my whole day. After that course, I began trying new things with students, gallery walks during science or social studies, feedback circles, empowering students to make choices about our classroom work, learning together from our mistakes and tapping into our natural questioning and creative side. From this class, came the idea of a beginning of the year picnic, one where we asked our class, “How can we come together as a community?”
My co-teacher and I worked to build a team that nurtured our classroom community, with a community meal and market, and our school community with our coffee cart. We explored ourselves and our identities through self portraits, poems and identity mapping. We continued to seek the comfort of that community through bake alongs, bread baking and snack carts.
I am eager to continue our PBL work this coming year, adding new projects to our lineup and responding to our new class needs. This work has freed me to continue learning and growing as an educator, discovering a part of teaching that helps me meet many students where they are and helps them fall in love with learning just as much as I love learning. Often, I tell people that learning about PBL has allowed me to be a better teacher and I only say that because it is true, I am a better teacher and my students are better for it too.