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 Science, Math and Regeneration Middle School Learning Experience Designer (Teacher) Kenny Peavy ..read more

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 Co-Founders Ali Durban and Tamaryn Yatu have assembled at Gesher School; a through way school for children from ages 4-16 with mild to moderate needs. In this episode, we learn as student-centered practitioners: How to design and build mor ..read more

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 mindset and learning design.  We learn: How to transform existing units to be more hands-on H ..read more

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 teaches us how to:  Build adolescent learning experiences around 4 key 'bricks' or ..read more

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-based opportunities.  How we CONNECT students, by connecting them mean ..read more

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-centered practitioners, do we ensure our exhibitions provide this opportunity ..read more

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 'exceptional learners.' All learners, year 1-12 have analytical/reasoning/creative thinking ..read more

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 students to help choose how to fill it? What might student engagement and empowerment look ..read more

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 Experiential Learning Facilitator leads teams of students in these kind of experiences on a r ..read more

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 question in the context of her teacher leadership at her PBL School, B ..read more