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By: Aimee Scott, Youth Services Manager | Director of Afterschool for Magnify Learning
John Boner Neighborhood Centers
Indianapolis, IN
Each year at the John Boner Neighborhood Centers, we engage with families from the start of the school year through Parent Orientation. We have five afterschool programs, which are funded through the Department of Education’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) program. Through Parent Orientation we hope to build strong relationships with the youth and their families so that we can serve holistically through a two-generational approach. A two-gen approach builds family well being by intentionally and simultaneously working with children and the adults in their lives together. This begins with building relationships with the youth and their family in order to serve the whole family. We recognize that time is valuable and we are grateful that parents choose to spend some with us. We strive to create a welcoming and inclusive environment and an event that is informative and valuable. Last year, we asked our students for their help in planning this annual event and we were excited to see the positive outcomes! We used the framework within Project Based Learning to guide planning and were able to include all of our students in the process. Many of our students were leaders at orientation, which impacted parent attendance and led to a successful event!
Each elementary site serves approximately 50 youth in grades K-6 each day. Those students are typically split into smaller groups by age group; K/1 Group, 2nd/3rd Group, 4th-6th Group. The secondary sites spend more time in mixed age groups; 7th/8th or 9th-12th. With that in mind, we decided to give each group a different project.
Each group was given a unique Problem Statement and Driving Question which would contribute to the overall success of the event. A Problem Statement simply states what the real world problem is. The Driving Question frames the problem throughout the duration of the project. I have included a couple of examples of each of these PBL elements from our own Parent Orientation PBL. (See examples below).
Each group began with Knows and Need to Knows and then brainstormed their ideas for an End Product using the Affinity Mapping Protocol. Students were engaged in this from the start. In my experience, students are almost always engaged in something that protects the program or puts the program on display. It is interesting because we so often hear youth sharing that they don’t want to be at the program or we see this in their actions, which are often inaction/not wanting to participate.
One of the challenges we continue to face is attendance. There are several contributing factors to student attendance and we often have students who stay only a few times a week while others stay every day. This can make it challenging to continue a project because a student may miss important information, which causes them to be frustrated and confused and also causes their group to become frustrated with having to catch them up. With the help of our PBL Coach, we developed a resource to guide a meeting before and after each activity and allowed for important information to be recorded and then shared at the next meeting.
As we continued through the project, it became apparent that the students and staff were engaging in authentic learning and through that, they were developing 21st Century Skills. Developing a pre and post meeting guide is relevant to any team who may have absent team members. Youth and staff continued to learn information about their task while learning how to communicate with one another. Students were practicing presentations knowing they would be speaking in front of many adults. There were miscommunications along the way, like the time the K/1st group at Thomas Gregg cut only the faces out of the photos of youth workers instead of including their hair and neck (see photos for better understanding), and with each miscommunication there was a learning opportunity (and sometimes a funny story).
Parent Orientation was a huge success. There were 53 parents in attendance (an increase from 18 parents last year). I had the privilege of being at the check-out table and loved hearing parents tell me how excited they were that their student was speaking in front of a group of adults. Several parents let me know how informed they felt, sharing that they didn’t know much about our outcomes until now. Although we share our goals and outcomes each year, it was clear that the information was better understood when the students were the ones sharing.
We learned that it was a great idea to implement a project that has a problem statement that is in line with our current program goals. We were more confident in implementation because we were so familiar with the content. We were also motivated and engaged differently because this was real work for us. Parent Orientation is something that we would have had to plan anyway so not only was this a way for us to truly work alongside our students, we were not adding to our workload. Students were also engaged differently because the project content was not traditional academic content. We have continued to learn and grow in our PBL journey throughout the school year and plan to do some awesome projects this summer, as well. We continue to implement PBL because we have seen the positive impact on our students and our team. Together we are developing stronger communication and collaboration skills and together, we are shifting the culture of our program.
Overview of Afterschool PBL Orientation PBL Unit
Project Description: Parent Orientation will be this Thursday from 5:00-7:00. Parents can come by anytime and will stop at booths to get info. We have a lot of information we want to communicate about the EDGE staff and program. We want you to find ways to share this information with your parents.
K/1st
Problem Statement: We want our parents to know who our amazing youth workers are so they have an idea of who is working with their child daily. We know that not all of our parents will get to meet every youth worker at orientation and need to find a way to introduce our amazing youth workers even if they do not get to meet in person.
Driving Question: How can we introduce our parents to our youth workers and let them know something about that youth worker?
End Product Criteria/Expectations: Staff Introductions Booth- Introduce Youth Workers-You are in charge of the Staff Introductions booth. We suggest you come up with a 5-10 min activity or way to get parents this info. We would like for parents to know each staff person's name, their role and what makes them the coolest person on earth.*Note that not all staff will be at your booth so you need to find a way to introduce them without them being there.
Student Created End Product: Poster-Students decided to make posters with photos of their youth workers’ faces with a drawn on body. Each photo was accompanied by information about the youth worker.
*Secondary students made their own posters using the K/1st groups’ idea.
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2nd/3rd
Problem Statement: We know that not all of our parents will be at orientation and we still want them to get this important information.
Driving Question: How can we communicate the important information regarding behavior expectations with parents that do not attend?
End Product Criteria/Expectations: Share info with parents who cannot attend
Student Created End Product: Fliers- Students made fliers that included information that was shared at orientation. These informative handouts were also given to parents who attended.
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4th-6th
Problem Statement: We would love for parents to know about all of the awesome community partners that we work with. We know that many of our partners will not be at orientation and need to find a way to share information about our community partners even if parents do not meet them in person.
Driving Question: How can we introduce our parents to community partners and communicate their goals and outcomes and what they do with EDGE?
End Product Criteria/Expectations: Introduce Community Partners
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7th/8th
Problem Statement: We think it is very important that parents understand the behavior expectations. We want them to understand what happens if their child is meeting those expectations and also what happens if their child is not meeting those expectations.
Driving Question: How can we communicate the EDGE Behavior Expectations and Parent Communication Regarding Behavior?
End Product Criteria/Expectations: Create a document/visual to provide information regarding Behavior Success.
Student Created End Product: Flyer & Poster-Students created an informational flyer to handout. They also made a poster, which was utilized to present information to parents who attended orientation.
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9th-12th
Problem Statement: Research shows that parent involvement is a key indicator to student success and this includes student success in EDGE. We think it is important to communicate the Goals and Outcomes of EDGE to parents and let them know how they contribute to the success of meeting those.
Driving Question: How can we let parents know how they contribute to our success?
End Product Criteria/Expectations: Create a document/visual to provide Information regarding program goals and outcomes.
Student Created End Product: Flyer & Poster-Students made an informational flyer to handout. They also made a poster, which was utilized to present information to parents who attended orientation.
Aimee Scott is the Youth Services Manager at the John Boner Neighborhood Centers, where she oversees youth programming including five afterschool and three summer camp programs for youth K-12. Aimee is working with Magnify Learning as the Director of Afterschool to bring PBL to other afterschool programs across the state. When Aimee is not working to improve quality and access to afterschool programs, she enjoys playing with her two pups and spending time with friends and family.
*For more about Aimee’s personal PBL Journey you can read her blog, My Journey with Afterschool and Project Based Learning.
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