Teachers at Sammamish High School meet for collaborative PBL curriculum planning. (Photo courtesy of Gabriel Miller/Edutopia)
Changing a high school curriculum — such as moving it from traditional pedagogy and assessment to problem-based learning (PBL) — is a huge challenge, and one that the faculty and students at Sammamish High School in Washington state’s Bellevue School District know well. They’re three years into a five-year transition to PBL with support from an Investing in Innovation (i3) Development grant.
Since the inception of i3 project in 2010, teachers and administrators at Sammamish High School have collaborated and redesigned 30 courses to incorporate PBL. They believe it will better prepare their students for college and careers by making content across the curriculum more engaging and relevant to the world students will encounter after high school. “Turning the school inside out,” is how Suzanne Reeve, a Sammamish High teacher leader, describes it.
Sammamish High teachers describe the process of integrating problem-based learning into a traditional curriculum through thoughtful planning and implementation.
Collaboration has been key for teachers and students as they make the transition from Sammamish’s traditional curriculum to problem-based learning. Seventy-five teachers so far have worked in subject-area teams to create rigorous coursework that engages all students. It’s a “really challenging mental shift” for the teachers, according to Adrienne Curtis Dickinson, another of the PBL teacher leaders, but the course redesign process is giving teachers a voice and the ability to decide where best to integrate problems or projects into the curriculum.
Dickinson, who is social studies teacher at Sammamish, is reporting on her school’s journey in Edutopia™, part of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, that is collaborating with the Bellevue schools on the implementation of its i3 project. Click here to read her latest report and watch a companion video in “Case Study: Reinventing a Public High School with Problem-Based Learning.”
Restructuring the core subjects of math and English were especially challenging. But with thoughtful planning, student-designed games enhanced a unit on probability by increasing the engagement of students who struggled with math. In English classes, students are engaging with literature texts in different ways, such as writing about how the big ideas in classic works are relevant to their lives and society today. Across the curriculum, students find themselves more engaged in the coursework and collaborating with each other for projects as they take ownership of their own learning.
Holly Clark is a management and program analyst in the Office of Innovation and Improvement and the program officer for the Bellevue School District i3 grant.
This blog is cross-posted on the ED Homeroom blog, where you may find additional comments. Click here to see the Homeroom blog and comments.
I am surprised that PBL is not already a standard method of teaching at high schools all across America. The problem may be that teachers, in general, who spend their whole working career in the classroom, have no real world problem solving experience into the classroom. Teachers, like those who have transitioned into the classroom from the U.S. Military, can bring a wealth of problem based learning experience into each lesson. Great to see this school district moving forward with PBL.