Ashley Blackwelder Blog Post 5

I used to think:

• It's so easy to do PBL. So many of our teachers are probably doing PBL and they don't even know it. Give the kids some ownership over their learning and let the magic happen. 
• If I could have my own classroom again, we would have AMAZING PBL units happening all year long! My whole approach would be different from what it was a few years ago.
• I'll handle it. I can do it all myself.

Now I know:

• Inquiry is not the same as PBL. Student-driven learning is not the same as PBL. It takes a huge amount of planning, prep, and oftentimes dumb luck to make the magic happen. Also, no matter how exciting the project is, there are still students who will need to be prodded along every step of the way.
• If I were back in my classroom, I WOULD do things differently than I did even when I was discovering STEM/inquiry/PBL...but it would be extremely difficult to keep the intensity of our most recent PBL unit going all year long. It was special, and different, and--while worth all of the effort and frustration--exhausting. It also took a rather large team of us to pull it off. It's easy to bring in aspects of PBL to everything that happens in a classroom, but it's also important to give ourselves and our colleagues a little grace. Real life steps in and makes things so much more difficult than they seem in the summer, when we're relaxed and idealistic :)
• The last lesson is one that I've slowly learned over the past few years, but have to remind myself of every time I take on a big project like this one. We can all pull off a PBL unit on our own, but we can provide much more realistic, meaningful experiences for our students if we can find our TEAM. Every teacher, every school, every community is going to have different resources, and it's important to make the most of them. One activity with a parent "expert," one donation from a local business, one administrator who's willing to let us take risks...these people can make such a huge impact on our students' experiences. In my last few years in the classroom, I FINALLY figured out how much better things were when I stopped trying to do it all myself and took an "all hands on deck" approach. We are stronger when we work together and support each other, and while our teams may look very different depending on what we're hoping to accomplish with our students, they are SO important if we want to give our kids (and ourselves!) the best possible learning experiences.