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By: Joe Steele, High School PBL Facilitator
Columbus Signature Academy New Tech High School
Columbus, IN
Dear Know/Need to Know Lists,
As I watched my students interact with you so well this past week, it struck me that my feelings for you were more than infatuation, Know/Need to Know List. I’m thinking about you all the time, even when I am brainstorming project ideas. You give so much of yourself, while asking for so little from us. The more I thought about you, the more I realized, with it being Valentine’s Day, I needed to write you a letter to let you know my true feelings, Know/Need to Know lists; because the truth is, I love you.
The first time I saw you was at my PBL training. I thought we were all merely proving to you, this intriguing and mysterious lady, that we really didn’t know anything about Project Based Learning. Then I realized it wasn’t just a wall full of Post-It notes, outlining every aspect of our inabilities, it was you, a know/need to know list. On the last day of that conference, when I was merely moving items from one side of you to the other, you made me feel like I had conquered a mountain. Oh, I learned a lot of other stuff that week, but you really stuck with me, and have continued to give and give the longer we work together. Know/Need to Knows list, or K/N2Ks as I like to fondly call you; thank you for being there with us from the beginning of the project launch all the way to the ending reflection, helping the students visualize their learning journey along the way.
First of all, K/N2K, no matter what others say, you are the single most consequential element of PBL. Without you, I cannot teach anything to my students. The entire success or failure of a project lies in specific, essential steps taken to engage students into addressing the course standards, and I would argue: all the steps and protocols are born out of you and in service to you, Know/Need to Know List. Now, I know, you’ll say humbly, we cannot even begin a project without an Entry Event, and it is this Entry Event I should be infatuated with. You are so in service to others that you do not see that every breadcrumb in the Entry Event was purposefully placed there to be in service to you, darling.
I anticipate your structure and project-specific, standard-specific, features to teach the students, based on the actions described in all of my standards, and then I make a model of you, K/N2K. Yes, to the students, you are created organically, immediately following the Entry Event, but you and I both know it was actually for making sure YOU were everything I really needed to get out of the student. The students always think it is magic as you transform their learning from chaos to order. You move us through this amazing road map, with checkpoints and repair shops along the way, before finally becoming this beautiful pile of accomplishments my students can physically see, quantify, and use to inform their future learning procedures. I promise you, K/N2Ks, everything I could ever do in the classroom is all because of you.
If I simply launched a project, and assumed the students' excitement about the idea would carry through our work, I would be lost without you. If I assumed that there wasn’t a pressing need for a physical list that we are accountable to, students could overlook or subvert their lack of knowledge in my content in order to more quickly to solve the problem statement. You know my focus, as an educator, must always stay on our state and national standards, and looking into your eyes, I can tell that is all you want too. Without you K/N2K list, students feel my teaching is taking away time from their real work. You remind them of the skills required to do a task! It takes finesse and fidelity to the PBL process to maintain focus and for students to feel the need of our course content, I can’t thank you enough for your help in that endeavor.
Be my Valentine, Know/Need to Know List. Yes, there’s other, cuter PBL practitioners than me committed to faithful implementation of you in every project; just know I am one of your most enthusiastic admirers. You know I can’t move on to my next steps without your help, so please let me know, because I need to know:
Will you be my Valentine? (Please Circle Yes or No)
YES or NO
Yours Truly,
Joe
Joe Steele works at CSA New Tech High School as Language Arts Facilitator and also serves as a Magnify Learning PBL Certified Instructor. He lives deep in the hills of Brown County with his brilliant wife, Bridget, a middle school science PBL teacher. They have three children, Kaleb, Savannah, and Weston.
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