Lagunitas Community School by Steve Rebscher
Project Based Learning at the Lagunitas Community School
Skate Park - Many of you have seen our new skate park but not everyone knows that the park began, and was driven each step of the way, as a stu- dent project. Our middle school Change Projects spotlight outstanding implementation of project based learning each year. Individuals, or small groups of students, develop a subject area with a personal connec- tion, a topic which they feel can drive positive change in the world. They research ways that they can affect change in our community and com- plete their project with a presentation to our community. Be sure to catch the Change Project exhibits and student presentations in Central Park, Woodacre each Spring! One middle school Change Project that stands out is the Skate Park.
I ran into an acquaintance recently that I thought was reasonably familiar with our school. He asked, “Why doesn’t our Lagunitas School use Project Based Learning?” I was taken aback. The concept of Project Based Learning has been a mainstay of our educational philosophy in the San Geronimo Valley for many years and the “projects” that our students create are often highlighted in this publication, the Point Reyes Light and the Marin IJ. We clearly need to do a better job of informing our very supportive commu- nity about the programs at our school and the progress our students make. In this vein, I want to address the question directly. What is Project Based Learning, how do we use this process in the Lagunitas Community School and what do our students accomplish in their projects? An excellent resource to better understand Project Based Learning (PBL) is the online resource created by the Buck Institute for Education (PBLworks. org). They describe Project Based Learning as “a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaning- ful projects.” In our district, PBL stimulates student thinking and involve- ment by building on four key factors. First, a project involves students for an extended period of time, usually from several weeks to months. Second, students drive the questions that need to be answered and view each ques- tion from a multidisciplinary perspective. Each project strives to generate genuine enthusiasm by focusing on one or more real world problems that relate directly to the personal life and interests of each student. Last, the final stage of each PBL project demonstrates that each student has attained a new level of knowledge in their chosen subject by communicating this information to fellow students, community members and other groups as appropriate for their project. I want to highlight a couple of the outstand- ing projects that have been completed in the past year out of more than two dozen and introduce an initiative to increase garden-to-table food capacity and improve nutrition in our school. Tiny House Project (Elementary Grades 4-5, Alex Cusick) The Tiny House Projects began with a class discussion of our community need for hous- ing and how this need affects many of our families in different ways. The 4th and 5th graders grouped into design teams of 3 students. They read about tiny homes and asked each other if they would like to live in one. Each team interviewed an adult “client” from our community about what they felt were the most important factors in a home design and grouped these ideas into “needs” and “wants”. As luck would have it, one of the class parents has built several tiny homes in buses, vans and trailers. He spoke with the student design teams about the needs of clients and the many trade offs of mobility, cost, landscapes, county ordinances, different power systems and environmental concerns. With these inputs each team set out to design a small simple home to meet the needs of their clients. To bring a math component into the project each team estimated the living space for each of their client’s needs, carefully measured the perimeter and area of the rooms they considered and created a full floor plan of their design to scale. Their designs included research into the space and energy needs of appli- ances, furniture, doors and windows. Everything had to fit in a maximum of 600 sq. ft. After each team completed their initial blueprint design they moved to the art room to build a 3-D model. These models were presented to each “client’ for their input and observations. Looking back to our PBL goals the tiny home project met all of the criteria for a successful project. Students became familiar with an important local and regional problem and worked with specific communication skills to define a need and create a solution through multidisciplinary research. They used new math skills to quantify the needs of their “client” and evaluate the results of their designs. They used their blueprints to create a scale 3-D model in the art room and presented their concept and this model to their class and to their prospec- tive “client”. From start to finish this project focused on the kind of multi- disciplinary learning, creativity and small group communication that makes PBL an outstanding learning tool.
What started with the question, “How can we create an outdoor recre- ational space for teens in the Valley?” developed into a multiyear project with a $65,000 budget, multiple presentations to the school board and the County Board of Supervisors, budget meetings, fundraising concerts and weeks of construction leading to a grand opening last year. This entire process was driven by students working through many barriers to achieve a long-term social goal. The lessons that they, their classmates, our school and our community learned truly define the goals of a successful “project” in every sense of the term. Garden to Cafeteria Project – Congratulations to Michelle Myers, and Lagunitas Community School, for receipt of a Marin County Food, Agriculture, and Resilient Ecosystems (FARE) Grant for our school. In the overarching view this grant will act as a framework for many PBL oppor- tunities in coordination with the Community Center. The end goal of the funding is to enable our school to create production level vegetable crops and build a system based in student participation to effectively use these crops in our nutrition program. Ultimately, this will generate a full loop from Garden to Cafeteria to Compost . The FARE grant will also dovetail with our recent commitment to work with the nutritional advocacy group Concious Kitchen to improve student nutrition, work closely with local organic food suppliers and encourage students to better understand nutri- tion and healthy eating through increased participation. The successful project based learning opportunities completed by our students each year reflect the evolving commitment to build on the suc- cess of our school district with new and innovative programs for all of our students. In my almost twenty years as a school board member no one has been more committed, or more successful in creating an atmo- sphere of growth, inclusion and support for students and staff than our Superintendent and Principal Laura Shain. As most of you know, Laura will be retiring at the end of this school year. I, and many many others, extend my greatest appreciation to Laura for her tireless commitment to our district, our expanding work to build a true community school, sup- port for children with special needs and insistence that we can always work to make our school a more effective environment for children to grow and learn. Thank you Laura.
SGV Community Center Stone Soup Page 9
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online