PBL 101 Workshop ($1,300) - SOLD OUT

For teachers, coaches, school and district leaders

This foundational three-day workshop in Project Based Learning—based on our model of Gold Standard PBL—is the best way to begin your PBL journey. In this workshop, you’ll design a Gold Standard project for your students and you’ll learn equity-centered teaching practices to facilitate high-quality PBL. The PBL 101 workshop models the Project Based Learning process.

In this workshop, you will:

• Increase understanding of the Gold Standard Project Design Elements
• Build a project based on student strengths, interests, and needs
• Develop an awareness of the Project Based Teaching Practices and how they inform project design and implementation
• Deepen understanding of formative and summative assessment practices that support PBL design and implementation
• Reflect on the needs of your learners to incorporate scaffolding strategies that support learning throughout a project 
• Explore, use, and reflect upon project management tools and processes that can transfer to the classroom 

This three-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.

PBL 201: Equity & Gold Standard PBL ($1,300) - SOLD OUT

For teachers, coaches, school and district leaders
Prerequisite: PBLWorks PBL 101 Workshop

PBL 201 Workshops are three-day sessions that provide experienced PBL practitioners with in-depth instruction on PBLWorks Gold Standard Project Based Teaching Practices. You will leave each workshop with a new or revised project as well as a deeper understanding of effective PBL facilitation practices.

This workshop invites experienced PBL practitioners to explore four key "levers" for fostering equity in the PBL classroom: Knowledge of Students, Cognitive Demand, Literacy, and Shared Power. You will reflect on your own identities and mindsets related to equity. You will refine a project design with educational equity in mind, and plan for project implementation with an eye toward creating meaningful, challenging, and culturally relevant learning experiences for all learners, particularly learners who have been historically marginalized by our educational system. (Note: You should come to this workshop with a draft project design that you will reflect on and refine throughout the experience.)

In this workshop, you will learn how to:

• Develop and implement strategies and practices for building relationships with students and designing and facilitating projects that capture students’ interest, honor their strengths and identities, and meet their needs
• Provide a balance of challenge and support via cognitively demanding tasks and appropriate scaffolds so that all students are able to access deep levels of inquiry
• Identify key literacy skills and make a plan to support them in order to help students access content/ learning and deepen students’ ability to communicate within and across disciplines
• Co-create a learning community where students have the opportunity to shape the direction of the process and products as appropriate for the task, content, and age level of the students

This three-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.

PBL 201: Improving the Quality of Student Work ($1,300) - SOLD OUT

For teachers, coaches, school and district leaders
Prerequisite: PBLWorks PBL 101 Workshop

PBL 201 Workshops are three-day sessions that provide experienced PBL practitioners with in-depth instruction on PBLWorks Gold Standard Project Based Teaching Practices. You will leave each workshop with a new or revised project as well as a deeper understanding of effective PBL facilitation practices.

In this workshop, you will investigate and deepen specific teaching practices and strategies that can help to strengthen the quality of student work in a PBL classroom. You’ll design/revise and reflect on a high-quality project, and then plan how to implement your project in order to improve student products and enhance learning. This workshop focuses on four teaching practices of Gold Standard PBL: Align to Standards, Scaffold Student Learning, Engage & Coach, and Assess Student Learning.

In this workshop, you will learn how to:

• Articulate a vision for your classroom that supports high-quality work
• Align projects to significant content and skills
• Scaffold students’ capacity to think critically
• Use a warm demander stance to promote productive struggle
• Identify effective critique and revision processes

This three-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.

PBL Coaching Workshop ($1,300) - SOLD OUT

For instructional coaches, school and district leaders
Prerequisite: PBLWorks PBL 101 Workshop and/or experience with Gold Standard PBL 

The three-day PBL Coaching Workshop is based on our PBL Coaching Cycle and aligned to our model for Gold Standard Project Based Learning. You will actively engage in developing a PBL Coaching Toolkit that will be shared with all participants in the workshop. You will leave with a ready-to-implement PBL Coaching Toolkit anchored in the teaching practices to facilitate high-quality PBL. 

In this workshop, participants will:

• Create a PBL Coaching Toolkit
• Articulate best practices related to coaching teachers for each phase of the PBL Coaching Cycle
• Plan and implement coaching conversations and other peer-driven feedback protocols

This three-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.

PBL Leadership Workshop ($1,300) - SOLD OUT

For teams of school and district leaders
Requirements: Due to the collaborative nature of the workshop, participants are required to attend as a team of three or more individuals. Both new and experienced practitioners of PBL are welcome. 

*PBL Leadership Workshop includes a Project Slice workshop

This workshop is a three-day intensive dive into how school and district leadership teams can support the conditions for Project Based Learning to thrive in their system. The workshop is designed to help leaders launch or advance the work of Project Based Learning in their setting. Considering their current reality, participants will work in teams to design a customized strategy to implement PBL and foster a project-based mindset for teaching, learning, and leading that moves them forward along the PBLWorks’ Leadership Continuum.

In this workshop, teams will:

• Experience PBL as learners
• Assess your school’s current reality for PBL
• Identify and address a key challenge to the implementation of PBL
• Identify key action steps for implementing PBL in your school or district
• Engage together as a community of leaders and learners.

This three-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.

PBLNow Middle School Science ($1,300)

*New in 2023!

This workshop is for science teachers in grades 6, 7, and 8.

This three-day workshop — based on high-quality Project Based Learning materials developed by PBLNow — is a great way to begin your PBL journey. In this workshop, you will learn about PBLWorks’ Gold Standard Essential Design Elements and Project Based Teaching Practices and use this knowledge to tailor a PBLNow unit to implement in your classroom. You will leave this workshop with a personalized project calendar and an understanding of how to navigate and utilize the tools and resources you need to implement the project successfully with students.

In this workshop, teams will:

• Apply knowledge of the Seven Essential Project Design Elements to identify and tailor a PBLNow project for your students
• Have a clear understanding of the project’s learning goals and be able to assess formative/summative student learning evidence using the project
• Incorporate a variety of unit resources (assessments, scaffolds, culture building) to personalize a calendar to implement in your own classroom

This three-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.

Project Slice: Making Space for Change ($300)

*PBL Leadership Workshop includes a Project Slice workshop

A Project Slice demonstrates what it’s like to be a learner in Project Based Learning, by engaging participants in an immersive one day PBL experience—a “slice” of a project.

Participants in this Project Slice explore the driving question, “How can we redesign a public space to promote a social benefit?” Each team focuses on creating a plan for a public space (park, library, etc.) that facilitates a different goal, such as increasing opportunities for civil and democratic discourse, or enhancing public health and physical fitness.

In this workshop, participants will:

• Work with a team to prepare and present a final product
• Gain knowledge of PBL design practices and principles
• Develop empathy for the learner experience that will enable them to better lead Project Based Learning for students

This one-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.

Project Slice: Sustainable Future ($300) - SOLD OUT

*PBL Leadership Workshop includes a Project Slice workshop

A Project Slice demonstrates what it’s like to be a learner in Project Based Learning, by engaging participants in an immersive one day PBL experience—a “slice” of a project.

The driving question for this Project Slice workshop is “How do we manage shared resources for a sustainable future?” Teams explore and apply economic and environmental science theories related to the “commons.” They create case study presentations focused on local and global situations in which the needs of individuals come into conflict with the needs of the collective, and present possible solutions to these challenges.

In this workshop, participants will:

• Work with a team to prepare and present a final product
• Gain knowledge of PBL design practices and principles
• Develop empathy for the learner experience that will enable them to better lead Project Based Learning for students

This one-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.

Project Slice: Art of Persuasion ($300)

*PBL Leadership Workshop includes a Project Slice workshop

A Project Slice demonstrates what it’s like to be a learner in Project Based Learning, by engaging participants in an immersive one day PBL experience—a “slice” of a project.

The driving question for this Project Slice workshop is “How can we use graphic design to inspire change?” Participants work together in teams to design digital poster art about an issue that is important to them. To support their work on this project, they will explore political poster art from the past and the present, and learn how to use graphic design principles to craft a compelling message. 

In this workshop, participants will:

• Work with a team to prepare and present a final product
• Gain knowledge of PBL design practices and principles
• Develop empathy for the learner experience that will enable them to better lead Project Based Learning for students

This one-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.

Social & Emotional Learning in PBL ($300) - SOLD OUT

This one day workshop provides an overview of PBL as a transformative approach to social and emotional learning (SEL). Participants will collaboratively examine a Gold Standard project to explore the degree to which the project incorporates the attributes of Transformative SEL (identity, agency, belonging, curiosity, and collaborative decision-making). You will then reflect on how you might integrate the elements more robustly into your own project designs to support the development of social and emotional competencies.

In this workshop, participants will learn to:

• Describe the connection between the development of Social Emotional Competencies and Gold Standard PBL
• Articulate the attributes of Transformative SEL
• Identify opportunities to strengthen SEL competencies through Transformative SEL within a project

This one-day workshop is a blend of direct instruction, video analysis, hands-on work, resource sharing, and peer collaboration and feedback. Your workshop will be facilitated by PBLWorks National Faculty members—all seasoned teachers, administrators, and coaches who are PBL experts.