Using Urban Communities As A Resource: PBL

In both traditional and online educational programs, there must be a combination of 1 on 1 individual learning and group project. The reason for projects is for the student to pair up with other students and learn from their own peers as well as the community. Education is multidimensional, students can learn from everyone involved in their education including parents. Just like the real world, students should connect to a variety of sources, including teachers, fellow students, teachers’ aides, their parents, principals, local business, and any others that surround them.

Project-based learning fosters one of the most important and critical skills that students will take with them to a four-year University, Community College, or trade school. We also know most careers rely on a certain level of collaboration for their employees to be effective at work. When our students volunteer outside of the school, the one thing they stress on having is the ability to work with others.

How do we begin working with the community?

So how should a teacher begin? Well, first think of overarching themes, individual units, and supported text students can read in relation to your project. The project can be a cause, campaign, or current issue that your community partner is trying to address. This is a great way to use the world as your classroom and extend any classroom experience.

Project based learning: Gold Standard

1. Know Your content and the community needs: We know this by asking, many times teachers go to trusted community members on a one-sided mission. Share the project idea with them and together see if there is a way both needs can be met and together co-collaborate ideas together. (This is a learning experience for you to go to their space and really listen)

2. Invite community experts to your space: After you and your community member have created a rough draft of your goals and expectations, its time to introduce them to the class. You can either invite them to the class environment or zoom them it can be fun.

3. Empower your students: Allow them the contact community partners under parameters, with students, create scripts and questionnaires. this is where teacher organization is important, we want to make sure students are not calling the same people. If students are in groups, having roles or deligating tasks would be great here. (We took a walking field trip to many of the local spaces)

4. Be creative and involve others: many times other teachers have connections you may not know about. Share your idea with others teachers maybe they would like to get in on the fun. Sometimes brainstorming possible solutions. (One brainstorming session led to a service-learning project)

5. Display research and work: Our final presentation day, the community members came to listen to the final projects. They engaged with each presenter and learned formed the research we found to fit their solution.

What is an example of a Community Project?

There was one school that used the theme of “You are what you eat”. Her farming lessons can include science lessons, lessons, economic lessons, and biology lessons. When the project was done the students grew their crops, took their crops home to sample them or they donated them to the organization (10, et al, 2018). In this case, the donated food benefited the company and the growth and development of every student benefited every student who participated.

Just start, it only gets better!

There are several ways to effectively implement project-based learning in the classroom. Keep the number of students in a group to four or five. Before the project begins, schedule a short period where all students can brainstorm together. Again, when they have completed their project, all students must present their part of the project that they are responsible for. If the project learning lessons are implemented for students who are in middle school or high school, we encourage the use of technology. visual, animations, videos, pictures, and any other software. Overall, project-based learning encourages their students to think on a higher level, teach the students about organizations and practices, and allow the students to organize information on their own (Grossman, Pam, et al, 2019).

References

10, et al. “7 Examples of Project-Based Learning Activities.” The Tech Edvocate, 24 July 2018, https://www.thetechedvocate.org/7-examples-project-based-learning-activities/. 

Gold Standard PBL: Essential Project Design elements. PBLWorks. (n.d.). Retrieved March 18, 2022, from https://www.pblworks.org/what-is-pbl/gold-standard-project-design

Grossman, Pam, et al. “Preparing Teachers for Project-Based Teaching.” Kappanonline.org, 25 Mar. 2019, https://kappanonline.org/preparing-teachers-project-based-teaching-grossman-pupik-dean-kavanagh-herrmann/.