PBL Showcase: Community Partner Luncheon/Breakfast | E186

How can connecting local business owners and community members with schools transform education? In this episode of the PBL Simplified Podcast, you'll discover innovative strategies for making education more relevant and meaningful through community partnerships. Learn from a decade of PBL experience and see how engaging local experts can turn students into problem-solvers who feel invested in their hometowns.

Join us as we explore the practical aspects of integrating community partners into Project-Based Learning (PBL). From involving community experts at the start of a project to handling the logistics of guest speakers and recorded sessions, we cover it all. We also discuss the importance of teachers experiencing PBL firsthand. This immersive approach helps educators understand the true impact and potential of PBL, transforming them into advocates who can spark a movement within their schools.

Lastly, we delve into how community partnership events can open students' eyes to local career opportunities they might not have known existed. By training teachers and coaches in PBL, we can support those local PBL Movement Makers to implement these methods, building a thriving educational ecosystem. Tune in to find out how you can make a tangible difference in your community's educational landscape through the power of authentic, real-world learning experiences.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the PBL Simplified Podcast, where we add value to educators, because everyone wins when educators are inspired. So, whether you're leading a classroom, a school or a district, your leadership matters. Everyone wins when leaders are inspired. I'm your host, ryan Stoyer. Thank you for joining me again here on the PBL Simplified Podcast. It's the second Wednesday of the month, which means we've got a PBL showcase lined up. We're going to talk directly to an educator impacting schools today and we've actually got a really interesting episode because we just do this live coaching session where we're going to talk about community partner breakfast. How you get involved with community partners, how you really get a PBL movement started, is where a conversation goes, which is really awesome. I think you're going to enjoy it. It's super authentic. If you want to be on the podcast or if you want to get this kind of coaching or share your story, you go to pblsharecom. Pblsharecom. That's how Jenna and I started communicating. She started talking about community partner breakfast. She said she loved that podcast episode. I was like well, let's figure it out for you all right. So head on the podcast. I think you're going to love the episode. It's super grassroots. It's filled with a ton of very applicable next steps for you and your team to get a PBL movement started through community partners. Another great way to get your team moving and to get your PBL movement going is to attend a workshop. You still have a chance to attend an in-person in July in Missouri and we also have some virtual workshop options If you go to pblmovementcom. Pblmovementcom, you can get the training that you and your team need to get your movement started. If you have a small team you want to go through a jump start, you can go to the in-person in Missouri or do a virtual. If you've got a movement, have a small team, you want to go through a jump start, you can go to the in-person in Missouri or do a virtual. If you've got a movement and a leadership team, can I give you like the best option that I believe is out there is you can go to Missouri and you want to get involved in the Emerging Schools Track. The Emerging Schools Track.

Speaker 1: 2:01

As I record this, we're literally doing the one in Indianapolis. We've got two schools that are doing some amazing work. One school is out in Utah and they get learners that have neurodiversity issues or they're on the spectrum for autism, and they come from around the country and they're using project-based learning to address the SEL needs, to address the academic needs of their learners, and the success is insane. It's happening. And the other school is a charter school here in downtown Indianapolis and they have some amazing things going and PBL is part of their charter and what they do and they're ready for the next level. Right, they're ready for the next level and their leadership team is here planning out the next three years of their PBL movement. Planning out the next three years.

Speaker 1: 2:48

What if you and your team had clarity over the next three years? Here's the answer to that you could run faster, you could go farther, your teachers would be learning in a deeper way because everybody knows the direction that you're going over the next three years. It is a powerful, powerful time, my friends. So if you go to pblmovementcom that's pblmovementcom you can get an in-person workshop with our friends in Missouri or you can sign up for a virtual. I highly encourage you to jump into that. Time is running out, so make sure you get your spot. All right, let's jump into our PBL Showcase episode. I think you're going to enjoy this deep dive into this coaching session on how to get a PBL movement started through community partners and community partner breakfasts. Where are you at right now? What's your school setting?

Speaker 2: 3:39

So right now I work for the Southwest West Central Co-op through the New Teachers Center as an EIR SEL lead instructional coach. So I have several Minnesota schools that we work with as a lead instructional coach, but the one school is why I connected with you. Is we got back our student voice data with you? Is we got back our student voice data and they were saying you know, school is not relevant and meaningful, kind of slow, boring, their voice is not there, the self-awareness pieces. And we just got thinking like how do we like start to bring those authentic connections, especially in our rural communities? Because community is so big and rural they just want to leave, right, the kids just want to get out of these small towns here. And we're like if we can start showing them that there's great connections, there's great problems to solve, be solutionaries right now, even at their age they are right now how important that is. So that's what we're just trying to start. How do we get those community members in first? Just that whole process there.

Speaker 1: 4:57

Well, it's such a great initiative. So, again, it might not be the easiest thing to do but it's worth it. I have a friend named Austin Brooks who runs a program called CEO out of the Midland Institute, and I had him on the podcast before. But through his program he works with juniors and seniors and they're definitely doing project-based learning. They're bringing in community partners, business owners, to come in and help teach curriculum around how to start your own business. And through his program the number might be higher than this, but in the CEO program there's 47% of the kids come back to their hometown to do work and that's a huge number right, like purposely right. So they're in this program and they could go anywhere, but they're just like you said, they're solutionaries locally and they see the value in their hometown. Now, because they're doing work in their hometown, they're connected to business partners in their hometown and they're like, yes, this is where I want to start my business, I want to start my business. So I love that goal right Of keeping rural kids in the town that they grew up in, because they have the best solutions right In their hometown. It's probably not somebody that is outside of a town or in an urban area that doesn't know that small town feel it's these same kids and again, if they want to leave and go to Harvard and Right, great, more power to you, right, but I want you to have the option of staying locally right To help build back this ecosystem and community that poured into you. And so we see that in Austin's program and it's so strong and it's so highly connected to community partners. It is what they do so well. So I think you're on the right track, right Of getting local community partners, and you know you can get them via Zoom these days now, because everybody knows how to Zoom, yeah, so that's fine too, but if you can get local people to come in, it's super strong. One other piece I would say you know and we keep finding good questions to build this in your local areas and the school you're working with, areas in the school you're working with is that there's some good research around STEM careers specifically, that when our learners interact with STEM professionals now, they can see themselves in these STEM careers and they're like yeah, I could be an engineer. Susan came in, she's an engineer. She's like a regular person. I had no idea engineers are regular people, because a lot of our learners don't have. You know someone that's a scientist or a doctor or a nurse in their you know top five contacts. You know they might not have the you know an aunt or an uncle right. So in the school environment we can introduce them to some of these people and it turns out they're regular people and that's so true.

Speaker 1: 7:45

I'll give you another story, because this is one of my favorites, and so we used to invite in a banker who went to our school. So I taught at a school on the Southwest side of Indianapolis, an urban school, and we brought in Ryan, who was this banker who grew up in a family that was just like the kids that are in those seats. So he had to struggle to get scholarships. He applied for every possible scholarship. He even applied for a left-handed scholarship and he was right-handed but nobody else applied, so he got it.

Speaker 1: 8:20

But what we do is he would come in and we put all the kids in this one big room 125 kids in here and he would pull up in his BMW and he would park it right outside the window, right, like super purposely right, and then he'd walk around and he'd say, hey, I'm from your school, I sat in that seat. There was no silver spoon on the side right, just like you guys. And that's my car. I love that. It was so impactful Before he said anything. Right, this entire message before he said anything. You know, it was so good because he was a local guy right, it was just leaned in and would listen. And he's talking about financial literacy right, he's talking about making a budget, but kids have leaned in because he's a local community partner.

Speaker 2: 9:06

So it's so you know, because I think too, is that so many times we separate right school from real world. Well, you're going to use that right when you get out in the real world and I'm like why are we saying that? Like our learning should be real world right now and I just think if they can like see that and be exposed to different things and just find some relevancy and some joy or something in that learning. But it's what you're saying, ryan, is designing those experiences, making this happen so that the community, people feel comfortable, that our teachers and learners feel so. It's more of that co-creation and separation.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Yeah, at a deep level it is. There's co-creation. It might not be the first step for these schools that you're working with, but the first mindset step because most of this work is mindset is that the community at large wants to help us in education. Sometimes we can't feel that, but it's true. In this example, ryan, who's a VP at a bank, he can't just walk into a school at 10 am and say, hey, I'd like to help. So what PBL does is it translates a little bit. It's like, ryan, you know about financial literacy. Hey, we're doing this PBL unit. Our standards are based in financial literacy. We can connect you now right, bring your expertise in. And I think that's where PBL shines is it gives our community partners an on-ramp to come in and help.

Speaker 2: 10:35

That's a great idea. So when you're actually, I really appreciate your framework of your PBL because you're still designing around because they're like well, we have standards. Yes, we do have standards. Right, we have those. But the way that you've set out to design it's designing the experience around those standards but then bringing in those community, real life types of things there. That's right.

Speaker 1: 11:01

And I think it's encouraging as you talk to teachers in these schools that you're working with, is that they're already looking at the standards and they're this work and their job who can we help and who can come in and teach us? If you start asking these questions who's already doing this work? Who can we help, who can come in and teach us? You start to brainstorm this list of community partners that are already connected to our standards. So you're really not changing things too much right away. Now you can, you can jump in a little deeper with PBL and run through the six steps, but everybody can start by bringing in a community partner that's already related to their standards to either start a unit or on the back end of a unit where your learners can present to them. So you know, I think again, I think project-based learning leans itself towards this, but I think really any classroom can start with that step of you know, just asking who else is doing this work, who can we help and who can teach us, and just invite them in, and it changes the dynamic of your classroom so dramatically.

Speaker 2: 12:22

And I love that how you talk about starting with it too. Like sometimes, because I always think so many times we put our at the end. You know we're going to bring that person at the end. And it's like boy, if we could actually spark our learners or to have that connected right away that this is the why, this is why we are learning this. Like this is a relevance here. I think that's a. I just sparked me there. It's like now I just be at the end.

Speaker 1: 12:48

You're spot on, janelle Cause, if, if you go to the magnified learning website and go to what is PBL, there's a tab called PBL versus a project and I just gave a talk on this and the importance is is a traditional project goes, lecture activity quiz, lecture activity quiz. You know lecture activity quiz. You know you give an exam and then there's a project at the end. The project is often the most engaging portion. So it means you're pulling kids along for like three and a half weeks. Hey, this is going to be great On PBL, we just flip it right. So you're going to flip that and say, hey, here's the project right at the very beginning. Here's Ryan, the banker that does this work on an everyday basis. You guys are going to do it. He's going to come back in four weeks and you're going to present to him. That's the engaging stuff right off the bat. Now let's talk about multiplication.

Speaker 2: 13:36

Authentic audience, yeah, and having an authentic that you're to an authentic audience too. I think that's another piece there. Yeah, so this does just, and I like how you said sometimes we can't go in too big right away, right, but what a great thing to just look at your standards, what somebody in our community or not even in our community, like you said globally that we could even get on to. But, yeah, I think just trying to get also those people knowing that they can be comfortable being part of our learning process too that are in the community.

Speaker 1: 14:16

And most people I mean some community partners are a little freaked out. Right, to go talk to middle schoolers, right, like what's that look like? But when you think about the idea that they're halfway in the door, right, they want to help. So, again, like Orion in this example that we're kind of continuing on, right, he wanted to give back to the community and the school that gave him a chance to do the work that he's doing. So he wants to give back. He's just not sure how. So it's like, well, hey, ryan, what if you just came and talked to these kids for 30 minutes about what you do? Here's what we're talking about, here's the standards we're going to talk about, here's what the kids are going to create and it's like, oh great, well then I could talk about this, this and this, and it's already in their sweet spot. So it's really pretty easy for them to step into it.

Speaker 1: 14:58

Or at least on our side, as we invite them into a school, we want to make it as easy as possible for these community partners to come in, right, so, what's for your schedule? And sometimes this is a tricky part, right, I get it. When I was in the classroom, I taught English to eighth graders five times a day with 30 kids in each class, and it's like, well, technically, I knew Ryan really well so he would come in for me for the day. But what if I you know it might be?

Speaker 1: 15:26

Hey, ryan, can you come talk to first period? We'll videotape it and we'll show it to the other periods. We adjust our schedule to bring all of our learners in at one time when Ryan can make it. You know it's most people first ask are not going to come in and stay for seven hours, right, so that you can hit a first period and eight? It just doesn't work like that. So we do want to kind of bend a bit to get this community partner in, and I really like the idea of doing a videotape piece too, or a Zoom, because then you can record it for, you know, maybe learners that missed it, but our community partners want to come in.

Speaker 2: 15:59

What are your thoughts? Senator Rowe, like thoughts and around, like I think about. Even so, I always think about immersing our teachers, like before they even bring it in, so like almost doing, like a leaving to learn, maybe, as like as they come back, as the teachers are coming back, and having them even going, connecting out in the community with some of these people that would probably work with their standards that they have. Would that be a step or what are your thoughts around that? I think it's a good step.

Speaker 1: 16:33

Let me sidestep it for just a second. And what if you started with? Your teachers are coming in, right, I think we're talking like beginning of the year, right, and why not set up a community partner lunch where your teachers come in and you invite community partners in, right, and you're going to mix tables, right? So you've got three teachers, three community partners, at a table and set up questions, put two note cards on there. You know, questions for teachers to ask community partners, questions for community partners to ask teachers right, and just get some sentence starters going. And I'll tell you when we did this, one time and I'll never forget it we had a community partner say. This was an employer in the local community that said if you can get me a kid that can think critically, can work in a group and shows up on time critically, can work in a group and shows up on time, I will teach them AutoCAD and I will give them a job. Right, so it's like I can take care of the specific skills, right, you give them these employability skills right, and then we'll get them moving. And it was such a big aha for our teachers because we get so immersed in, you know these, some of these standards are. Are not meaty power standards, right? Like, as an English teacher, I'm trying to hit this haiku standard. That's way off the side. And it's like that employer doesn't care about haikus, right? They do care about argumentative writing, right? They want to. They want to learn to be able to think like these big BP standards.

Speaker 1: 18:03

And sometimes our community partners don't understand the demands that are on teachers, right, like what? You've got 33 kids in a classroom five times a day. That's crazy. Yep, that's our world, right? It's like, yes, yes, here's one.

Speaker 1: 18:18

We had a charter school down in Florida it's one of our model schools and they wanted a washer and dryer in their school and the community was a big part of what they do. So they were asking community partners hey, could you fund this? And they were like that's such a luxury, like why do you need that? As they're sitting here, the community partner says, well, what's that? So that's the basket that we have to put pants in when kids pee their pants and it sits there until I take it home and then I go and wash them and I bring them back. And there's a kid here somewhere that's not wearing their own pants because they peed their pants, by the way, we'd like a washer and dryer. And then the community partner, to their credit, was like absolutely, we'll get it to you next week. They didn't know, right, there's so much.

Speaker 1: 19:08

So just getting them in the same room, you know, just have lunch and just talk and just translate, break bread together. You know it breaks down a lot of barriers. There'll be some natural wins that will come out of that and then you can just kind of highlight those Now. Those are your wins for community partners right off the bat. Somebody will connect and they'll get into a classroom, almost guaranteed, and you just need to set the table right. So get them together. Have a couple of questions, send the starters and let them break bread, and neat things will happen.

Speaker 2: 19:40

Oh, that is a great yeah. Instead of going, and then our next step could be, like you said, the connections are probably going to be made. We where, then getting them out of the school to hmm, yeah, because the first time.

Speaker 1: 19:54

It's intimidating for a teacher to go to a business and say, hey, can we talk? Right? We don't get taught that in college, right? It's not something we do on a regular basis. You know, a lot of teachers are like you're like, hey, can you come and talk in front of these community partners? Like no, I get freaked out when I need to talk in front of people. Wait a minute. You do that 184 days a year, you know.

Speaker 2: 20:13

And it's like no, it's so true.

Speaker 1: 20:16

Yeah, but it's different. So the luncheon is just kind of that in-between, where there's low stakes and you'll find some people that get it Like they're just going to like I love talking to community partners Go send them out right, get some of those wins and other people will kind of follow when people kind of break through that, break the ice.

Speaker 2: 20:35

I really like that idea there. And then to think about like, since I mean we do have the data of our student voice data of them saying I mean this is our why of why we want to connect them to, you know, our community, our businesses, you know our community, our businesses, our whatever they're out in our community, and so to think about, like, have it as an expectation, not a compliant expectation, but to design at least maybe one thing, a quarter or two things, a semester or something there that does include designing experience around a community, their person with their standards, or yeah, it's awesome that you pulled into your learners right.

Speaker 1: 21:18

So you've got this authentic data that you've collected that learners have said, hey, I want something different. Like that's great. When you go to invite people in, to bring community partners in, the caution I would have is it's just like learners you shouldn't hold a learner accountable to something you haven't taught and you shouldn't hold teachers accountable to something you haven't taught. They haven't had training in some way. Now I think it's fair to say we're going to start small. Bring a community partner in and start to build that. That expectation makes sense to me, based on the student voice. They want to hear from community partners. That makes sense.

Speaker 1: 22:03

Where I see things kind of stumble a little bit is where we say, hey, from the top end. We see that PBL is really important. So I want you to go do it. You know, read Ryan's book and go do a PBL. You can do that. But that'll work for, like your innovators, right, Like those people that can grab it and just run with it.

Speaker 1: 22:22

But the majority of our staff is not like that. Like they need some training and you know, to go see it. They might need to see it to believe it. That's another one that I really like If you find some PBL environments that are super strong, go do some school tours. Let people kind of catch the bug. I would caution around the idea of hey, pbl is awesome, kids are asking for it. I want you to do one a semester without any kind of training, because what happens is that teachers will do that. They'll do it because that's what they is. That teachers will do that, right, they'll do it because that's what they've been asked to do, but they might not be doing it at a high level. You know that they can want and you've now defined PBL at this level, but they haven't had training to do it.

Speaker 2: 23:03

But just to keep it small like. Maybe just a small like of how you were talking at the beginning, of looking at your standards and just to think about somebody coming in to even connect standards or having them present to somebody at the end.

Speaker 1: 23:16

Just something small to start with before we yeah, and that's going to give you a good view of who your first starters are right, your innovators, the people that are going to run right and people that are super interested in this. And then you can kind of tap them on the shoulder and say, hey, you know, I saw that you ran with this. Tell me about it a little bit. You know, do you want to do some training? Next Right, and then and get them the next steps. And so now you've got these bright spots that are starting to show up and you know now you know you can start. I don't know if it's a moth to the flame, if that's the right metaphor, but once a few people stand up and others can say, oh, I really like what you did, how'd you do that? And now you're starting to build a movement, and that's something to get really exciting.

Speaker 2: 24:00

So what success right? Have you seen, like if and I know it's hard to get around relevancy of all their different content areas, when we have so many different content areas in our seventh through twelfth grade, but to actually have them the teachers, the adults experience, like a project-based learning experience, like I seem to think, how could I design an experience that would be part of the community, where they would actually be out in that community? Do you see success with them actually experiencing it, so they actually feel it and they can, or that's it.

Speaker 1: 24:39

I mean, the easy answer is yes, because that's what we've been doing at Magnify Learning for a decade, right? So right now I'm at a PBL movement conference where we're taking teachers through the PBL process to learn the PBL process. Right so we literally start with an entry event, then we take need-to-knows, we do workshops and then the teachers actually present the PBL unit that they've created to an authentic audience. Right, so they live it out, they get the butterflies on day one, right, because, oh, I've got to present this. Right, even as adults, we get, ah, and then they're forced to ask for workshops. Out of that, I said, well, I need to know this, in a couple of days, I need a workshop. And we say, yep, we'd love to do a workshop for you, right?

Speaker 1: 25:18

So I think it's the only way to learn PBL personal is to feel it, because it's so different than what you and I grew up with and what we went to college for. You know, I went to college at Purdue. There were 685 kids in my chemistry class, right, and the professor just talked at us. You know, right, right, it was crazy. Yeah, it's so different. I do think you have to feel it. But once you do, you know it makes sense because you're learning something, Because when those teachers leave that PBL unit, they're creating a PBL unit and their content and their grade level it's completely applicable to what they're doing. And they're like, oh, everything I did during these three days was for me, right, that makes a lot of sense, right?

Speaker 2: 26:02

Yes, so do you ever actually take one of your PBL units and actually run the teachers through it?

Speaker 1: 26:09

You are the learner and yeah, it's a great question. Some PBL groups do that. They call it a project slice and they kind of live it out as a student. We actually don't do that. I don't know if we've drawn a hard line on that. We have just always gotten really good feedback on doing it through the workshop process. Okay, we have just always gotten really good feedback on doing it through the workshop process. Okay, you know. So we do a jump start in year one, we call it an advanced in year two and then PBL certification in year three where they can actually get certified in project-based learning, they can become a trainer for us or other schools. So they're continuing kind of living out this PBL process.

Speaker 1: 26:50

We're so geeky about PBL that, like, every part of our organization lives it out and as we do that, you know, our teachers are just living PBL through their classroom and so we've never really done the pretend to be a student thing and maybe that's why, like you, just your question just got me to say pretend. And you know we just don't buy into the scenario process you process, it's pretending to do it, because it's not authentic. If a teacher's pretending to be a student, they don't feel the butterflies. But when a teacher has to present in three days on something they don't know anything about. There's butterflies, right, and they're asking for workshops, and so we really believe in the authenticity of a PBL unit and so I love that. You just drew that out of me, right. It's like that's actually why we don't do kind of that project piece, because once you get into the pretending and the scenario piece you lose the engagement of learners and, I think, adults as well.

Speaker 2: 27:48

And actually, when you're designing it, you are actually living through it because you're actually doing it. You know before you are presenting.

Speaker 1: 27:54

So it You're so engaged because you know, if we go to a school to do a workshop, like we're inviting your principal, we're inviting your assistant superintendent, your superintendent, right Maybe, surrounding schools and coaches, so there are literal butterflies for these adults, you know. So there are literal butterflies for these adults, adult participants, and the great part is because PBL is effective, that we know, through they go, this is going to be awesome and they're typically like this is it's awesome. How are you going to fund that? You know we might have some dollars for that. You know what you should.

Speaker 1: 28:38

I know we don't do field trips, but you should do a field trip for this and it happens almost every time because you know, I think every teacher has PBL in them. Right, there's this project, this thing they wanted to do with learners. They just weren't sure how. And through PBL you kind of get the structure, you get the inspiration right and so you can do it and the community gets really excited about it. So that third day there might still be some butterflies, but as soon as you get through one or two community partners coming through listening to your project idea, people are just loving it. People are laughing. They're collaborating, collaborating. I have such a great feeling.

Speaker 2: 29:14

it's a lot of fun okay, oh, that's good to good to know, okay. So I think what I'm sharing from you is that we need to start with getting um invites or going out to whatever our community people and getting them invited to our brunch or lunch or whatever that we have with our teachers there Probably all our staff, just different staff members there but making sure we have sentence starters for both that and do you keep them then at the same, those same business partners with those teachers. They stay there the entire time with those same ones.

Speaker 1: 29:53

That's a great question. You can try to create a protocol to rotate them. I'd be good with that. I like the kind of informal eating time at the same time, because there's kind of this informal conversation that happens. It kind of disarms everybody and then maybe you know some formal time. Hey, there's some questions on your table. Go ahead and engage those questions and I think you just have to feel the room right. If a rotation makes sense, then you could do that for sure. I don't mind kind of some geeky protocols.

Speaker 1: 30:26

What I think is really important is the reflection at the end, right? So at the end of this you don't want everybody to just go home. You want to share out, like, what were the big ahas from teachers and from your community partners? What are the big ahas? How could we move the work forward together and then have some kind of a call to action, especially for community partners. Like, hey, if we have a PBL unit coming up or you don't have to even say PBL if we've got a unit idea coming up, can we contact you? If we can, would you put your number down here or your email address, right? But don't let them leave. Don't let them leave Some kind of a debrief because it lets each person pull out what was impactful during that lunchtime and they're going to remember that feeling and they're going to want to do it again.

Speaker 2: 31:21

Do you ever then bring like learners with these business people, like at a thing like this?

Speaker 1: 31:26

Yeah, would that be? Yep, absolutely, absolutely. So it's a great time to show off what learners are doing. So, again, if you've gotten an innovator as you're starting an innovator that teacher that you know is kind of one or two steps ahead and their learners can speak to this, like talk about some of the things that they've done in the classroom. Because most community partners just assume that it's school as usual, right, that you know there's a teacher talking for 45 minutes on page six today. Tomorrow they'll do page seven, and it's just they assume that's what is happening. So if there's something different, you know we want to let them know that.

Speaker 1: 32:01

And one pro tip here is to prepare your learners. Don't just let them go in cold. Have them practice. You know, if you're going to ask them three questions, let them know the three questions ahead of time. Have them practice, like literally, hey, we are at, you know, the luncheon and you guys are going up on stage. I'm going to ask this question, ready, go Right and let them walk through it, because they're kids, right, and adults are going to stumble Right, and adults are going to stumble right. Adults would maybe hopefully practice. And so you want to let your learners practice, not because it's going to be forced, because they should still take some impromptu questions. They'll do a great job, but giving them some time to practice is super important.

Speaker 2: 32:45

Okay, wonderful, yeah, I just I think it is the importance of also having our stakeholders know their why. I mean, I just think of all like you were just saying with those people, with like knowing those critical thinkers, right, those problem solvers. I mean this is the big thing of like we're wanting our learners to have those durable, forever skills. Our content, yes, is one thing, but really I think, even just to start off our luncheon or kind of the why of why they are the important, why they are so important to us and, if you can, so I would invite two types of community partners.

Speaker 1: 33:26

You have warm community partners that are already you know they're friendlies, I call them friendlies right, they already know the district. You have a community partners that are already you know they're friendlies, I call them friendlies right, they already know the district. You have a connection. And the other one is who you want to be connected to, right, so you want to bring them in, even if they don't know you. And if you can, you might not have this yet, but you want to find a community partner that can already speak to the audience. Right, and maybe they already know the district is doing neat things. Or you're thinking Because teachers don't hear that.

Speaker 1: 33:57

Right, as teachers, we're so immersed in our content because teaching is not easy. Right, we're doing summative, formative assessments. We're doing all these things. We want to hear from those community partners. What do you want from our learners? We want to be able to read well. We want to be able to write well. Right, we want them to be able to think on their own work, collaboratively, being creative. But when you hear it from a community partner, the person that's employing our kids when they graduate, it's a different ball game and we need to hear that in education, I think that's good, probably a great way to start it off.

Speaker 2: 34:30

Um, yeah, community brunch or luncheon or something like that. Yeah, oh my gosh, that's good.

Speaker 1: 34:36

Good tips here yeah, this is, this is fun, this is awesome.

Speaker 2: 34:41

This is good, just got to put it all together here now of getting the, is it? I mean they'll come right. I mean, if they're invited, some will.

Speaker 1: 34:50

They will. So, okay. Another pro tip Friday mornings, right At like eight or nine, you know. So if I'm going to go into work as an engineer, I'm going to say, hey boss, I'm going to go stop in at the local school at nine for a community partner breakfast. Is it okay if I come in late? Yes, it is right.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Like Fridays, sometimes like casual Fridays, right, you can invite nonprofit leaders, entrepreneurs, you know, business leaders, first responders right, get community folks in there. But if you have it on Wednesday at 2 pm, it's going to be crickets, right. So we've got to find a place where community partners can come in so you can do it once a quarter, once a semester, and then invite everybody, you know, and their friends too, right. And once people come and they understand what it is, right, you're going to feed them, they're going to hear from the school, you're going to tell some great stories that they can then tell the rest of the community and you'll start to get some regulars, right, and you'll start to get some friendlies that come each time and they can start plugging in. But the community wants to be involved. So we're just trying to find ways to help them be involved and you want to hear from them too, right. So you're going to hear from them, they're going to hear from you and the schools, and it's a really important dialogue to get started. Sure, sure.

Speaker 2: 36:11

Because I do sometimes think that as educators, we sometimes know education and we sometimes forget about those skills that are needed out in our businesses. Because, you know, I think that's where CTE really came to be right, because CTE in our schools, because of that, what are those most important skills that they want in an employee, like who would they want to hire? And so what can we do, when we're designing learning experiences, to actually design for that too?

Speaker 1: 36:47

Yeah, yep, spot on, spot on. That's the why for the work right. We want our learners to be gainfully employed, right Doing work that they want to do, right, right.

Speaker 2: 36:57

Right, right, you know. And exposing our learners to even sometimes I don't think our learners even know what's in our communities. That's another thing.

Speaker 1: 37:06

Yeah, that's right. I mean, you've got kids that could be welders making $80,000 a year right out of high school, right, they have no idea. No, that's right for some kids. You know, and I'm not mad at you. No, I'm not. I'm doing pretty well. Kids, you know and I'm not mad at you.

Speaker 2: 37:21

I'm doing pretty well, it's so true, it's so true. Okay, now I have some call to action steps that I need to get organized to get this. So I'm ready to when we get back into action there of getting those people invited into.

Speaker 1: 37:38

Yeah, and if you want to put an agenda together, you can send it my way. I'm happy to give feedback.

Speaker 2: 37:43

Great.

Speaker 1: 37:44

Good, it'll be awesome. It's such a great way to start and, again, pbl isn't going to magically sprout out of that, but it's certainly a beginning seed to figure out the why in your specific local community it's so important. Right, great step.

Speaker 2: 38:00

Yeah, because I just think too, as I, as I think about this, like I said, I empathize with, like my teacher, because they know what they know. They come out of universities not with project based or place based in that and, like you just said, like how do they even find how great it is until you actually like they go and see it? That's probably one of the best things you could, I could start to do with them. I was just putting them somewhere.

Speaker 1: 38:27

You know there's a PBL Simplified series out there. If you go to pblsimplifiedcom, you know that that's a way to get people engaged, but go see it. You know, starting to talk to community partners, you know you'll find some people that will. The dissonance will just be screaming to them. Right, that? You know the lecture that they think they have to do is not what employers are looking for. It's like, oh, we should look for something different. Right, and it's not because we're doing something wrong, right, but what if there's a better out there? Right, and you know we want to serve our learners. Teaching is a super passionate profession and super personal. So I think when you get people in the right spot, the same spot, having these conversations, because it's all mindset, so it really does start out of conversations and just some thinking issues or some thinking situations are really important.

Speaker 2: 39:20

So we run PLCs. You know we have like a driving question that we do around. Yeah, but do you think that it's important for so like I have coaches underneath me like for them to be trained in project-based learning so that they, if we have those that are interested to be able to coach you know them on this journey? Is that something that would be? Get the coaches trained?

Speaker 1: 39:50

Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think, out of this breakfast or luncheon, however, you, you know, whatever works best, you're going to find some first followers that are like, yep, whatever works best, yeah, and you're going to find some first followers that are like, yep, this is what I want to do, right? And so nurturing those first followers is really important, okay, you know, just in equipping them. So now you can start to see, you know, some bright spots in your local area of PBL working and being effective. Because I can, you know, I can send you some data, I can send you research. I can say, hey, this works great in Columbus, indiana, and Babcock Ranch in Florida, and people in Minnesota don't care, legitimately. So, right, it's not your local school. You need to know that it works in your local schools and that's a totally legitimate stance, right, you should. So you need the first followers to show us that it works in our local school systems.

Speaker 1: 40:43

Now other people can say, okay, I see how this could work. I can start to see this vision. Hey, let's write a grant for this for our leadership team to go through. Let's write a grant for another 20 teachers to go through this, and then you build up the coaches to support the teachers, and so you've got to kind of look at it both ends, like there's this grassroots portion, and then you also need coaches and administrators to create structures for this to work well. So I mean, there's a bazillion different ways to start. Yeah, but I think you're like the idea, yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:17

Yeah, who is really going to be those first ones too?

Speaker 1: 41:21

yeah, okay, and you get some local stories of success yeah, yes, and that's the most powerful.

Speaker 1: 41:27

Telling our story that way, oh yeah easily yeah, easily, right, because it's so hard to argue with the fact, like here's what victor did, like he did this great pbl and he presented in front, and then somebody else is like victor, because victor has head down, like my, the entire school. You're like how would you do that? Well, here's this thing I did, you know, and he and you've got these local stories that are awfully hard to argue with, right?

Speaker 2: 41:52

that's when you start to build some momentum and I think it should naturally, like you, come just like from our, our community connections here. It really is a great starting point. I like what you, yeah, have, I'm coming, I'm going away with, so I appreciate that a lot.

Speaker 2: 42:07

Yes, okay, I think I've got some starting points, some action steps I need to take care of, though now yeah, that's awesome, that's great oh, my brain is sweating and now I have to get this to them but actually funneled into here and in here to make this happen, because I just I want it for, yeah, I just I want it for our learners, I want it for our teachers, because I do feel like if those learners are saying to us, this is what they want, and I think our teachers would even find so much joy and hope and you just fun um being engaged in this too.

Speaker 1: 42:44

So yeah, I can, and don't be afraid to use those words. Right, there's research that shows that pbl is good for teachers too. Right, because it's the way we've always wanted to teach and it does bring joy to your classroom and fun and and academic success, right, like that's. That's why we're there, right, but we can also have these other things. It's a bold and and, yeah, that's okay, it's good. Well, that was my conversation with Jenna about community partner breakfast.

Speaker 1: 43:16

Again, if you want to get your need to know your win, or maybe even just get a free coaching session here on the podcast that we share with everybody, go to pblsharecom. That's pblsharecom, and I will answer your need to know and, by the way, I answer that in an email directly to you and then we also turn it into a podcast episode or one of these blurbs at the beginning of a podcast episode so that you can get your question answered. Because we want your PBL movement to be going as fast, as far as it can, most efficiently, we want you to be sustainable. We want you to be able to do this work 10 years from now at a really high level, because you're getting better every year, so that 10th year you're going to be even better and you'll like, oh, let's go another 10 years, right, and then you're gonna have a succession plan and this work's going to be going 20, 30 years from now, but only for doing it sustainably and collaboratively. So thank you so much for joining us today. Go lead inspired.

Speaker 1: 44:15

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the PBL Simplified Podcast. I appreciate you and honor that you tune in each week. Would you please take two minutes to leave a rating and a review? When you leave a review, it lets the next person know that this is a podcast worth listening to. When they go into their player and search project-based learning, and PBL Simplified popped up, when they see those reviews, they know that high quality, visionary leaders are listening, so they tune in too and they can find their way into the PBL journey. Thank you so much for leaving a review. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you.