Authenticity to Self: Engaging Students’ Identities in Project Based Learning

While most schooling forces students to conform to social norms, Project Based Learning can provide opportunities for students to build from their own lived experiences and cultural vantage points.

When I stepped onstage at the first PBL World conference in 2012, I was nervous. Not normal speaking-in-front-of-a-crowd nervous—nervous because I was about to (playfully) criticize the organization that had invited me to give a keynote.  I spent my 45 minutes arguing that the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) should alter their core belief system: their eight Essential Elements (the commandments!) of Project Based Learning. What was the change I was proposing? Adding a ninth Element: Keep It Real.

Central to this notion was the idea that the best projects are "authentic." This was not an idea that was unfamiliar to BIE. In fact, about two weeks before I spoke at the first PBL World, in an article for Edutopia, BIE's John Larmer defined four ways in which a project can be authentic:

1. Meets a real world need
2. Focuses on an issue or problem relevant to students' lives
3. Sets up a scenario that may not be real, but is realistic
4. Uses the real tools and processes employed by adults in corresponding career fields

https://youtu.be/AudP5KioSug

I agree with John on almost all of these fronts and when I returned to speak at PBL World 2014, I described three of them: "real world, real issues, and real work." I steer away from the idea of realistic scenarios (#3 above), because while I have seen some cool projects that are essentially simulations, I believe that there are always ways to leverage and link to real scenarios that are more engaging, more ripe with learning opportunities, and more powerful in having an actual impact on the world.

But, as much as I enjoy quibbling about these details with John, the more important change I have been advocating through my notion of "keeping it real" is an additional form of authenticity: projects that are authentic to students' identities and cultures. This type of authenticity is especially important for students whose cultures, communities, and realities are not reflected or respected in dominant social paradigms.


The term "keeping it real" comes from hip-hop culture. Hip-hop was created and has been innovated over the years predominantly by young Black and Latino people -- some of the populations our school systems are most drastically failing to engage and prepare. I argue that one of the reasons schools are so unsuccessful with students of color is that the work students are given rarely reflects or honors their identities and cultures (whether they have any connection to hip-hop or not), and what they know to be true.

Here’s an example of a project from the High School for Recording Arts (the school I focus on in my book) that demonstrates strong examples of what both John and I are talking about when we trumpet the value of authenticity..

.This project addresses an important issue—the impacts of stress on children’s brain development. Working on the project allowed students to learn audio and video production, and engineering skills. They used the software and equipment that professionals use. They interacted with a real world client—the United Way—and posted the video online for the world to see (it has been viewed over 1,000+ times). 

But I would argue that the most important measure of this project's authenticity are the tears rolling down Isaiah’s cheek in the video. The project speaks to his identity and culture in at least two crucial ways: it creates space for his lived experiences growing up in stressful situations and it empowers him to express his learning through rap—a form of creative expression that has deep personal and cultural significance to him. In allowing Isaiah's culture and experiences to play a central role in the project, he is able to appear--in a world that too often denies students of color such opportunities. Once this happens, once a student sees their self in their work, all sorts of learning and development can occur that would have been virtually impossible otherwise.

If you’re a teacher, every time you initiate a project, ask yourself:

1. How can I provide opportunities for my students to create projects that incorporate their identity and culture?
2. How can I encourage and support students in addressing real world issues in their projects?
3. How can I make sure students are getting exposed to the actual tools and techniques of professionals in fields related to their studies?

No matter how authentic a project is, there is always room to ask these questions and find new ways of pushing the project's parameters.

From my own experiences as a teacher and from extensive observations of other classrooms, I have found that projects that fire on all of the cylinders described above are successful by all measures that matter: Students are engaged and work hard; teachers feel fulfilled; families understand and feel connected to the work; final products are high quality and have immediate impact in the world; and the skills and information students learn, and relationships they build, prepare them for future successes.

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Meet the BIE National Faculty: Telannia Norfar

I am a math teacher, new teacher mentor and department chair at a high school in Oklahoma City. I have one goal for my students—how to learn, unlearn and relearn (Alvin Toffler). I have used Project Based Learning to teach key concepts and achieve this goal since I started teaching in 2005. In addition to PBL, I believe in using technology, STEAM and differentiation strategies to improve learning.

After a 10+-year corporate career path, I started teaching at a charter high school in Oklahoma City. During my orientation they showed a video that explained Project Based Learning and how they used this method of teaching in all classrooms. I felt like it was a great method and was glad to see that education had moved in this direction. I thought all schools had moved to this method of teaching and was anxious to discover how to apply it in a math classroom

.

Hooked on the idea, I used my journalism background to learn more about the methodology. I studied everything I could find and began to fail forward.  After three years of working on implementing Project Based Learning, I became an advocate for the model to be best for all students. One particular student—Melody—inspired my advocacy. She was a beautiful young lady who was in jeopardy of dropping out of school. We were not able to work on a cross-curricular project one day and Melody’s usually happy demeanor was turned to anger. After asking her what was wrong, she said, “The only reason why I came to school today was to work on this project.” I could not apologize enough. I knew then how much my classroom practice changed my students’ lives. Now I tell anyone who will listen about the power of Project Based Learning to transform his or her classroom.

Favorite Projects
As a result of my experience with Melody, the “Food Project” will always be one of my favorite projects. It was a 9th grade collaboration between math, ELA, science and social studies. It was my first project that I did with other colleagues. It is also the only time where I documented the process of designing a project. The students were challenged with making a proposal to the high school principal on how to redesign the cafeteria. The proposal included a recommended menu and layout of the cafeteria. The recommendations were grounded in evidence collected via surveys, scientific lab results, and examination of the cultures of the school. The school was going to be remodeled the next year and the winning team’s ideas were used in the redesign. 

Another favorite project is based upon the high connection to my content and my students’ interest—the cell phone project. All of my students are tied to their cell phones, so they were challenged to answer the question: “How do you choose the best cell phone plan?” Cell phone plans have a clear linear relationship that students can dig into deeply. Each time I have done this project with my 9th grade Algebra I students, the engagement is high from the time it is introduced until they informed the Parent-Teacher-Student Association representatives of their answer to the DQ. Students worked to create a brochure that helped anyone understand how to choose the best cell phone plan.

My final favorite project was students helping a local family. The Cumby family needed to build a home that met their dynamic needs. They had two daughters and twin sons. One of the sons was severely disabled. As the students answered the question of how can they design a home for the Cumby family, they worked with an engineer and construction owner to understand 2D and 3D design in a real context. The students created a blueprint, 3D model, and a proposal for the family. They presented their results to a panel of judges.

A “Fail Forward” Moment
My most embarrassing project was Expressions Everywhere. It was my intention to have students convert situations in the world into an algebraic expression that will be shared on the school website. The students were very polite during the entry event showing moderate engagement. By day 3, I could tell that the content was not deep enough, its authenticity was nonexistent and the inquiry was shallow. My students’ faces were showing signs of pain. I asked one of my students to share honestly what he thought of the task. He said, “To be honest, it is pretty bad.” I thanked him and ended the project. I realized that sometimes it is just not a good project and it is nothing wrong with ending it.

My Work with BIE
Just as I have learned from my own classroom practice, I have been able to grow through helping other educators join me on the PBL journey. Teachers are implementing some amazing strategies in their classroom. They discover that PBL only enhances their work and allows them to really help all students succeed. 

There are a few words of wisdom that I offer to teachers during PBL training. One is don’t give up on PBL when things go wrong. There are going to be mistakes and it has hard times but don’t give up on it. My next tip is to take it one Essential Project Design Elementat a time if you may discover it’s hard for you to do all of them. Rather than not do it all, try a few elements. Eventually, you will be doing all elements, which is true PBL. On the flip side, you may do all seven elements right out of the gate but a few of the elements end up being weak. Pick one of the poorly implemented elements, revise it and try it again. PBL is a journey not a destination. It is one of the best journeys I have in my life.

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Meet the BIE National Faculty: Telannia Norfar

I am a math teacher, new teacher mentor and department chair at a high school in Oklahoma City. I have one goal for my students—how to learn, unlearn and relearn (Alvin Toffler). I have used Project Based Learning to teach key concepts and achieve this goal since I started teaching in 2005. In addition to PBL, I believe in using technology, STEAM and differentiation strategies to improve learning.

After a 10+-year corporate career path, I started teaching at a charter high school in Oklahoma City. During my orientation they showed a video that explained Project Based Learning and how they used this method of teaching in all classrooms. I felt like it was a great method and was glad to see that education had moved in this direction. I thought all schools had moved to this method of teaching and was anxious to discover how to...

https://youtu.be/yaoYlENPxMQ

What the exhibitions were like

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools held one big event in April, with over 300 projects on display in a local college’s exhibit hall from 8:00am to 8:00pm. Over 900 people attended, including middle school and high school students, parents, teachers, administrators, and partners from the business community.

York County Schools asked each of its 19 schools to hold its own exhibition sometime in April or early May. District leaders asked principals to make sure at least 20% of their school’s teachers participated, but each event could look different – for example, a school could focus on one grade level or department.

Karen noted that her school’s families loved it: “It was a wonderful celebration of what we do in our schools every day. Some parents even asked if they could do this every quarter,” she said (with a chuckle, because of all the work it took to produce such an event).

Favorite projects at the exhibitions

Kristin described a “virtual zoo” project, in which students created multimedia posters using Discovery Education’s Board Builder. Each student picked an animal to become expert on, she said, and “it was more engaging & meaningful to research information they knew their classmates would be learning from.”

Karen liked the 6th grade “Mars Survival Project” where students constructed habitats for human settlers of Mars. They also had to create advertisements, to convince their audience to choose their habitat. Among the guests was a researcher from NASA, who had worked with the students during project, and several other NASA scientists. Karen was impressed that the students – on their own – made connections to colonization at Jamestown, which they had studied earlier in the year.

Eric told about a project that started when first-graders read a book about a dog and cat that survived Hurricane Katrina. Their Driving Question was, “How can we help dogs and cats in our community that do not have homes?” The class heard from a representative of an animal shelter down the street, and decided to write book called “18 Reasons to Adopt a Dog” for an audience of their peers, family members, and neighbors. Students also decided to produce an audio book to go on the school’s and the shelter’s websites. Finally, they made dog cookies for a fundraiser for the shelter, Eric reported, “and found a home for one dog.” This school's exhibition took the form of a film festival with videos students made to document their process on a project.

In another primary school project Eric described, the children read the book Augie about a boy with a facial deformity. Out of this grew a project to encourage others to “Choose Kind” – the tagline from book – in which they wrote precepts for “morals for good living” and wrote books with in-depth stories behind their precepts. Inspired by Skyping with a boy about their age who has a facial deformity, the students ran an awareness-raising drive in their school and made PSAs to promote the precepts.

Sonya told about two of her favorite projects. One, in a high school Business Academy, was about the value of home ownership and the pros and cons of renting vs. owning. This school is in one of Nashville’s highest-poverty communities, where 75% of the parents rent their house or apartment, “leading to a lot of transition in our school.” Many students even wound up challenging their parents on the issue, Sonya said, which resulted in a few phone calls, but “it was exciting to see one of those times when a project goes home.” The project resulted in several instances where parents were connected with Fifth Third Bank, one of the school’s business partners, to clean up their credit, so “it’s really a project about trying to transform the community around the school and hopefully stabilize the neighborhood.”

Another project that “brought tears to my eyes,” recalled Sonya, was done by their life skills class (Special Education) students. It began in the previous year. There was a washer and dryer in the students’ classroom, and the sports teams would come in and do laundry, but sometimes not pick it up. “So the life skill kids said, we can do this for them, why don’t we take this over?” Their teacher developed this into a project to create a laundry service, which expanded to serve a local homeless shelter.

“Some of the kids are nonverbal, or have cerebral palsy or other physical conditions that limit what people think they can do. This project showed how much they can do. It opened a lot of eyes.” The best part of it, Sonya said, was at the exhibition night. The students’ teacher, who is with them all day, is allowed to stay with them during such events because it’s in their IEPs. “But the kids said, no, you have to leave, we’re going to do this by ourselves.” As people came around to their table, “the teacher stood in the aisle and cried (happily) because they didn’t want her to be around, they knew they could handle it on their own.”

Purposes of public exhibitions of project work

Our guests mentioned five reasons:

1. Promotes a shared instructional vision - “Not only among staff, but also it gets external stakeholders excited. It shows we don’t just have a test-prep mentality; parents of high-achieving students concerned about test scores saw the depth of learning.”
2. It's a great marketing tool - “When people from the business community and parents came in, it gave them a different perspective on the students and what they’re learning.”
3. Helps inspire teachers and generate ideas - “From a teacher’s perspective, I don’t get to go to a lot of other classrooms. It was great to see what other teachers were doing, what was working for them.” “Teachers who had not been not involved in PBL were seeing other teachers – ones they respect – having success with their students and saying, this makes sense to me.”
4. Increases student ownership and engagement - “All year we’ve been collecting data on student engagement; it increased so much during the year as they worked on these projects. Walking around classrooms we were amazed at how engaged they were the week and the day before spring break, leading up to exhibitions, it was 100%!”
5. Celebrates student success - “It improved their 21st century skills, like communication, and it was an opportunity to practice those skills with someone besides their teacher.” “A lot of students see school as something they just have to do; it was really refreshing for teachers to see students get excited about what they’re doing in the classroom.”

Lessons learned and final thoughts:

• Eric: Give voice & choice to adults when planning exhibitions, so it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.
• Sonya: From a district level, start planning early, meet often, and communicate thoroughly; set strong deadlines.”
• Karen: “Give students voice and choice too, get them more involved in how to share their work.”
• Kristin: “Go for it, you’ll make mistakes but learn from them. Involve as many students as you can, reflect on it, and go at it again next time!”

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