State School Dreams #3

Lodestar

“I don’t like project-based learning because it it new. I like it because it is life.”

I hope that Ron Berger will forgive me if I have misquoted him here. I am pretty sure that I am close, but I couldn’t find confirmation last night when I sought it. If it’s not him, then it certainly has his fingerprints all over it: he is the lodestar.

This is life

We immediately christened it the ‘miserable bathroom’ when we moved into our current house in 2018. It was bizarrely appointed - a tiny bath, a bidet and a sink, but no toilet! - and with no natural light, ancient décor, crumbling plaster and filthy throughout with an odd breath, its new moniker was easily agreed. That said, it adjacence to our bedroom meant that its was always going to be our ensuite.

6 years on and I have started work on it. The original door into the bathroom from the landing has now been converted into a bookcase - a dream I have held for many years - and I have cut through from the bedroom so we have access into the space to continue the work. I won’t do the electrics or plumbing, but have committed to the dry works. As I was planning the installation of the doorway yesterday - one of a seemingly endless catalogue of tasks I have had to tackle with no previous experience to draw on - it occurred to me that this was a pure form of project-based learning, though I was not at all happy thinking of this as learning. It was Sunday, Fathers’ Day and definately not work. No, this was life.

Projects for grown-ups

But the thing is, it really does have everything. Whether or not I want to think about it as PBL, all the usual milestones and way points you’d expect are here - a clear purpose driving the project, a product of real use and value, transdisciplinary, plenty of scope for reflection, evaluation and improvement, research-led with plenty of practical application, synthesis and generalisation and a seemingly endless list of problems to be solved. All this wrapped up an ongoing sense of fear and trepidation. I have sought advice from experts - online and in person - and I have brought those around me into my planning to clarify, challenge or upturn my thinking. Sometimes I have looked forward to the work. Other times not so much, but it’s the dream and the promise that drives the project forward, and you can be assured that on completion I will be bringing visitors up to see it. The only question that remains is whether it will ever be able to lose its nom de plume or whether it will simply shift from descriptive to affectionate.

King, jack, cripple

I loved the new words I learned as I watched countless videos on YouTube on how to create a doorway in a stud wall and then insert a door lining. I loved coming to an understanding of the how and the why. Finding ways to apply all this to a bespoke scenario was thrilling. I found the answer to the question I had about the need for a rebated door lining (the cavity builds in resilience to shift and twist and packers are used to secure the space) and I recorded my thinking on the wall as I went, using these rough schematics to share my nascent plans with my wife. I noted down new questions as my understanding evolved and expanded and I freewheeled between all sorts of ideas, abstracts, disciplines and domains, each without a name at the point of use. This wasn’t life, this was PBL.

Slow doing

And it will take time. Lots of it. This is perhaps the biggest lesson from life that we need to accommodate in school. Powerful, purposeful, life affirming and life enhancing work takes time. If we want it and we mean it then we need to create space and time for it to happen in all its enormity. This is PBL and this is life. Let’s built it into our state school dreaming.

To close

In Proxies for learning (15.6.24) I considered some of the nonsense we spread when searching for learning in schools (It’s not what they are doing that matters, but what they are learning). Well, if you popped your head into our miserable bathroom yesterday morning and were in anyway unconvinced about what I was learning because of what you saw me doing, then take a moment to ask yourself whether you would ask a master plasterer what he is learning as he skims your walls, or what the athlete is learning as she steps up to the podium to collect her gold, or what the musician learns as they bend the note and break a thousand hearts. My point here is not to compare my rudimentary craftmanship with the performance of experts and superstars, but simply to make a plea to your imagination:

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Sometimes we should take a moment to carefully observe and then through deep thinking imagine up the answer for ourselves. We probably won’t be far off the mark.

#pbl #projectbasedlearning #deeperlearning