When I started this project, I was unhappy with the idea of only introducing PBL to the club program. I wanted every student to be able to benefit from the project based learning model, not just the ones involved in after school clubs. Ironically, my wish was granted by way of the pandemic. Our clubs were forced to go virtual and engage in activities during school hours. Some intense schedule juggling resulted in campus-wide club time twice a month. This allows for every student to participate and gave me the instructional time I needed to move ahead with the innovation plan.
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My campus began an after-school club journey in 2014 by partnering with our county 4-H to sponsor a robotics club. Since then, our program has grown to include cooking, sewing, gardening, videography, and outdoor skills. While we have enthusiastic student participation and staff support, there's still more we could do to make our clubs truly extraordinary. By adding a project based framework to our club program, we will give students more choice and voice in their learning as we engage them in their community through authentic experiences.
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There is so much research on the benefits of project based, authentic learning, one wonders why the system is so slow to give up the traditional factory model. True, designing a project based curriculum is more time consuming and difficult than just following a textbook, but with appropriate training educators would rise to that challenge and give their students the experiences that would provide them with not only academic skills, but life skills as well. Overcoming the inertia of an outdated system must be a priority for the future success of the next generation.
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Training is definitely an obstacle to persuading teachers to adopt project based learning. By building training opportunities into my implementation timeline, I hope to mitigate some of the apprehension my colleagues may feel. Of course, the innovation plan only proposes to integrate PBL into our club program, not every classroom....yet.
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