What happens to student empowerment when we move from the the front of the classroom to a gentle facilitator on the side? We get more self-directed learners. More student voice, opinions, and ideas. A range of diverse work products. Making this shift is NOT easy. It requires a mindset of trust, and the facilitator 'moves' to support this kind of student-centered environment. Andrew Faulstich, a Montessori Adolescent Guide and Facilitator of these kind of learning environments teaches us how to m...
Sep 04, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 84
If I walked into your classroom, would I find students seated neatly in rows facing the front, or in small interdependent table teams? One of the best ways to shift from a teacher-led to a student-centered environments is to re-arrange your furniture. In this short bonus episode, I unpack simple ideas for creating this kind of collaborative environment, strategies for developing interdependent student teams, and the implications it will have for your classroom in the new school year. Take the 12...
Jul 30, 2024•12 min•Season 1Ep. 83
In a world with advancing AI, personalized chatbots, and ready made content at student's fingerprints, how do we engage them in work that they find personally meaningful? This short episode helps unpack the conditions necessary to engage students in this kind of work, irregardless of age or school subject. From podcasts, to state of the art green spaces, discover how to have students create professional, beautiful work. Shift #5/6: From worksheets - - - - > High-Quality, Real World Work Take ...
Jul 25, 2024•12 min•Season 1Ep. 82
What happens when we allow learning to move outside the siloes of our classrooms? In this episode, through a real case study, we learn how to design empowering, trans-disciplinary experiences with teachers across mutiple subjects. And all it takes is a few shifts in how we approach learning design. Take the 12 Shifts Scorecard: https://transformschool.com/12shiftsscorecard/ Pre-Order the 12 Shifts Book: https://transformschool.com/whereistheteacher/ Attend the Launch Party to Connect to Global P...
Jul 22, 2024•10 min•Season 1Ep. 81
What happens when we lead learning with big questions, rather than mandated curriculum content? Four year 7 teachers across 3 different subjects wanted to find out. Over a seven week unit, they devised activities, lessons, and hands-on learning that helped students dive deeper into big questions around developing future societies. As a result...agency, empowerment and engagement went through the roof! Learn more about the story of how they organized the learning and how you too can shift from co...
Jul 17, 2024•12 min•Season 1Ep. 80
Fifth grade teacher Linda Amici's most 'dreaded standards' became her favorite after making one simple shift.... She turned them over to her students. With this new agency, students worked harder than they ever had before. Learn about Linda's story of co-design, and simple strategies for co-designing learning experiences with your own learners in the 2024-2025 school year. Take the 12 Shifts Scorecard: https://transformschool.com/12shiftsscorecard/ Pre-Order the 12 Shifts Book: https://transform...
Jul 14, 2024•10 min•Season 1Ep. 79
How do you design learning in your classroom/school? Imagine inviting student input on everything from the way the timetable is organized, to the design of learning experiences, even to how they are assessed and evaluated. That's the kind of voice and choice The Green School Bali provides its learners. And their learners are empowered as a result. In this illuminating podcast episode, Head of the Upper School/Learning Dialogist/Writer/Podcaster Dr. Benjamin Freud and I unpack: Practical methods ...
Jun 05, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 78
What is deep learning? Is it students engrossed in semester long units or learning experiences? Inquiring, probing, investigating, and making meaning of their learning. Perhaps. But most of us don't have that kind of time, or freedom with our curriculum. What if deeper learning didn’t mean re-organizing everything we had, but simply making a few tweaks to what's already there.. Gathering students around a kitchen table we brought in for more balanced discussion Extending time of activities by a ...
May 22, 2024•51 min•Season 1Ep. 77
Imagine a school where you take your shoes off every time you enter the classroom. You shared the space with local bugs, insects, bees, and biodiversity surrounding you. You rode a bus to school powered by used vegetable oil. The curriculum was built around the natural world surrounding you. You got to take up action projects to save the planet, whether protecting local reefs, or buidling roads out of hardened volcanic ash. These are daily experiences for students at the Green School Bali. And S...
Apr 17, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 76
How do we EMPOWER our SEN learners? What if by accomodating for their unique needs, we were able to create a more student-centered environment for ALL learners? Provided alternative methods of assessment. Allowed for hands-on projects. Built learning around common themes. Emphasized life skills as much as academic ones. That's exactly what founder Ali Durban and Head Teacher Tamaryn Yatu have assembled at Gesher School; a through way school for children from ages 4-16 with mild to moderate needs...
Apr 03, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 75
How do we cultivate and unleash student creativity in our classrooms? Right now it's happening on the peripheries. In makerspaces, STEM projects, electives, and arts/music/drama classes. But how do we make creativity a core part of day to day learning? Building opportunities for students to tinker, build, create, and problem solve on a daily basis in ALL classrooms? In this short episode, Adam Hill, STEM consultant and creativity guru teaches us how to achieve this through a few simple shifts in...
Mar 20, 2024•43 min
How do we EMPOWER adolescent learners? Anyone who works with this age group, knows that they have a unique set of needs. Adolescent learners have unique needs for increased social connections, purpose, autonomy, ownership, and real-world purpose and pursuits beyond the walls of the classroom. As student-centered adolescent educators, how do we design experiences and environments that allow for these? In this short podcast interview, expert adolescent educator and Montessori guide Julien Lamorte ...
Feb 14, 2024•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 73
Taking the first steps 👣 into design project-based experiences can be a scary thought for a lot of teachers... It certainly was for me. How will I ensure students acquire the mandated curriculum? Assess learning? Where will I find the time to plan, scaffold the experience, and ensure students reach meaningful outcomes? Chris Bush , Economics Teacher, and Head of Student Voice and Leadership at University High School had similar reservations. But with the help of Chat GPT and AI acting as a co-p...
Jan 17, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 72
What if you could re-imagine schooling to be student-centered? Build from the ground up? That's what Connect Academy did when it was given carte blanche to re-imagine schooling for students in the Poway District. It re-imagined: How we organize learning experiences, by making them interdisciplinary, and community focused. How we organize learners, by making classes mixed grade level, and inclusive of all abilities. How we organize the school day, by creating extended blocks of time, and project-...
Dec 19, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 71
How are you finishing off the semester before Winter Break? While many classrooms finish with final exams, as learner-centered practitioners, we understand that it's far more POWERFUL to let our students share their learning. Public Exhibitions are one of the best ways to do this. Exhibitions provide the perfect platform for learners to share their learning journeys, artifacts/products and work they developed along the way, and the transformations they experienced as a result. How, as learner-ce...
Dec 06, 2023•23 min•Season 1Ep. 70
How do we better include learners and learning profiles often left behind in traditional settings? What if we could custom-fit learning experiences around their unique strengths, gifts, capabilities and needs? What if understanding the brain's intracacies and high yield therapeutic approaches helped us support and empower them in the learning process? In this episode, Cheryl, Founder and Acting Head of Cajal Academy addresses these questions in context of a program tailor-made for what she calls...
Nov 22, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 69
How much voice and ownership do you provide students in their learning journey? I understand the fears the fears of inviting too much input: What if students go in a direction I can’t support? Steer too far away from mandated curriculum? Decide on projects and products I’ve never developed myself? And so oftentimes we keep learning experiences locked in a tightly sealed, ‘teacher-centred box.’ But what happens when we open up that box? Provide some basic parameters and frameworks, but invite stu...
Nov 07, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 68
There are several skills that are hard to build in students within the walls of a classroom. Skills like leadership, community building, survival, mentorship, global citizenship, and expedition planning. On expeditions outside of the classroom, these skills come naturally; whether it's assisting farmers plant in the marshes of Indonesia (pictured above), or cultural treks to learn about isolated tribes' way of living in the jungles of Thailand. Justin Bedard, co-founder of Jump! and expert Exper...
Aug 09, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 67
Designing a learner-centered experience isn't that complicated. It requires only a few shifts in the way we currently design projects, units, and lessons. Building a learner-centered environment to allows the experience to fly? That takes years. It requires a long term commitment from staff, leadership, parents and students to create a culture built around the learner. I call that PBL 2.0. How as a learner-centered leader do you move from PBL 1.0 to PBL 2.0? Ms. Amina Usman helps us answer this ...
Jul 26, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 66
AI is here. And while many schools are still wrapping their heads around how to best use it, some classrooms are already using it to enhance learning experiences. Whether that's in animating student written memoirs; or acting as a co-pilot in student research and investigation. AI can improve learning outcomes and make our lives easier when we have the courage to embrace it. In this episode I sit down with technology/instructional coaches Cora Yang and Dalton Flanagan to learn more about how the...
Jul 12, 2023•49 min•Season 1Ep. 65
What happens when we co-design learning experiences with our students? Give them choice over the product they create. Questions they pursue. Teammates they assemble. This was Maheen's big pondering when she began sharing ownership of PBL experiences with her year 3 students. The results were immediate. Learners inquired more critically, brought in talents she never knew they had, and planned presentations of learning that made adult jaws drop. Learn more about Maheen's story of transformation fr...
Jun 28, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 64
We talk a lot about tips, strategies, frameworks, and components of project-based experiences, but we don't talk a lot about mindsets. How do you develop the mindsets that allow for creativity, agility, uncertainty, and experiences that move in several directions? In this episode, Thompson Morrison and Kavita Tanna, Founders of Ustawi Movement Global expose us to a process that builds these mindsets in both students and teachers; changing them from compliant learners to creative geniuses. We pee...
Jun 07, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 63
As an edu-transformer, if someone asked you point blank, what are the top 10 ways to re-imagine the schooling experience, what would you tell them? That's what I asked longtime experiential educator, innovator, school designer, podcaster and project-based learning practitioner Steve Shapiro. And because Steve believes in continually being counter-culture, he gave me 11. This episode unpacks those lessons. From obvious lessons around having a growth mindset, to less obvious lessons like making qu...
May 02, 2023•59 min•Season 1Ep. 62
Why do we still use traditional transcripts to report on learning? As if academic marks are all that matter. Transcripts don't tell the story of a learner's strengths, special talents, competencies, certifications, or skills. Or their abilities as critical thinkers, leaders, creators and collaborators. But what if they did? What if in a highly visual way, they created a narrative for the WHOLE CHILD? That's what Hamza and his team at 'Start Up Early' have developed in their co-curricular transcr...
Apr 19, 2023•34 min•Season 1Ep. 61
As learner-centered practitioners, I imagine we are all firm believers in the benefits, and postive outcomes project-based experiences have on our students. But what about our learners? Do they feel the same way? In this short podcast interview, I chat with two learners, Stanley and Flora at experimental PBL School VIS Better World Lab in Taiwan to get their take on how project-based experiences have IMPACTED them. From how they have grown as people, to how it has affected their view of learning...
Mar 29, 2023•31 min•Season 1Ep. 60
What do all of these assessments have in common? 💡 A field guide to the of the local flora and fauna in the region. 💡 A community garden. 💡 A recipe book for healthy meals using only 5 ingredients. 💡 A tourist handbook of the ‘hidden gems’ of the city. 💡 A podcast featuring community stories of hope. 💡 A published paper in a professional magazine around how to protect the local wetlands. They are all authentic products created by students to demonstrate learning, and make a difference in t...
Mar 21, 2023•20 min•Season 1Ep. 59
Why do we grade students? Is it to measure and evaluate learning? Provide students an incentive to do their work? Reflect the ‘rigour’ of our classroom? Research shows that grades don’t accomplish any of these things. What if there was a better way to measure, monitor and evaluate student growth? And share a story of their learning journey... What if we eliminated grades entirely? That’s exactly what Gary Heidt, 10th Grade Humanities and Social Entrepreneurship Teacher, did in his high school's ...
Feb 28, 2023•45 min•Season 1Ep. 58
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become a focal point for many schools. But few are taking real ACTION on a local level to make these goals become a reality. What would happen if we shifted the focus away from seemingly out of reach global goals, to more tangible local goals? 'Think global, act local,' is the motto Paul Karpawich as adopted to achieve this aim through REAL project-based experiences on the ground level. Paul has narrowed his sights on projects that help schools in...
Feb 15, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 57
It's not unusual to find MakerSpaces popping up on several school campuses as a way to offer students hands on learning opportunities. But does 'making' have to be confined to the MakerSpace for only a few classes per week? What would happen if ALL educators adopted a 'maker' mindset, and provided hands on opportunities that spanned all classrooms, subjects and learners? My guest and MakerSpace Founder Mark Loundy discusses how to adopt this mindset, and the transformations we can see in schools...
Feb 01, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 56
It's easy in project-based experiences to get caught up in the shiny final 'product' at the end. But just like the tip of an iceberg, the product is only a small part of a much deeper PROCESS of learning taking place underneath. How do we capture that process, and make it more visible? What simple tool might allow learners to document that process on their own? Welcome to Unrulr, a social learning app that makes holisitic learner growth visible through capturing authentic moments throughout the ...
Jan 18, 2023•42 min•Season 1Ep. 55
