How can parents help with PBL? How do we build parent support for PBL (Project Based Learning) in our classrooms? By utilizing and informing the caring adults that raise and encourage our students, we can increase engagement and involvement. According to an article in “Public School Review,” parent involvement leads to better classroom behavior and increases academic achievement. Read more about ways to incorporate your caring adults and build a successful PBL classroom community below.
1. Communicate
- Newsletter with PBL Elements
Sending home a newsletter each week has been an encouraged means of classroom communication for decades. With Project Based Learning, this tool can still be an effective way to keep your caring adults informed. Within your current newsletter, consider including areas that your PBL unit covers. You might also add important dates and images from your PBL benchmarks or events.
- Pictures of Student Work (Collecting Artifacts)
If you use a digital platform to communicate with caring adults, consider posting images from your unit regularly. For student privacy, try taking pictures of materials, stations, and activities without students present. There are many digital platforms that allow you to upload photos.
- Related Reads & Activities for at Home Extensions
When utilizing your communication tools, like newsletters and digital platforms, consider including short videos and articles that teach your caring adults about Project Based Learning. Most websites cater to facilitators but here are a few that can be adapted to answer caring adult inquiries.
- John Spencer
- Magnify Learning PBL Simplified Videos
- Edutopia
- Elementary Project Based Learning Facebook Group
- Communicate PBL Unit Ideas from Home
As we teach our students to look for issues around their communities for PBL unit ideas, they begin to develop a lens for problem-solving that doesn’t turn-off when they leave the classroom. Take some time to explain this outcome to your caring adults. Provide a space for students to bring ideas from home or for caring adults to communicate those ideas to the class. Then, follow-up with those families and students to ensure that they recognize the effectiveness of sharing these thoughts with you. Here are a few suggestions for bringing ideas from home.
- Create a Google Doc (™) to collaborate on
- Make a “Parking Lot” in the classroom and send formatted slips to keep at home for whenever an idea needs to come into class
- Post a prompt on your digital platform on the same day each week to encourage families to comment
2. Educate
- Host a PBL 101 Night
Before you jump into your first PBL unit, inform families that you will be pursuing a new methodology with students. Model cooperative learning strategies and protocols, encourage dialogue between families, and utilize some of the important components of a PBL unit, like a Know and Need to Know chart.
- Post Informative Articles and Videos About PBL
Be specific about sharing articles and videos that answer questions from your caring adults. Post helpful resources for families to learn more about PBL. Set a goal that by the time your students and their caring adults leave the classroom, they should be “experts” on PBL.
- Lean-in to “Pain Points”
Teachers are typically empathetic and sensitive people. We care. Sometimes, this can work against us when we are building relationships with caring adults. This is especially true for PBL facilitators. Often comments that are said out of frustration and fear, cut us deeply as compassionate and dedicated educators to the quick.
By leaning into “pain points”, we hold onto a universal truth. People want to be heard and feel seen. Acknowledge and address concerns head-on. Validate “pain points” and lift the veil of confusion around practices by increasing communication and building awareness. Think about common concerns PBL parents have and try to address them before they become issues.
3. Encourage Caring Adults to Participate in Different Ways
- Community Partners
Send out a PBL specific skill survey to ask caring adults about their interests, hobbies, and professions. Reach out to parents or guardians who are experts in the field that pertains to your PBL unit. Learn how to utilize community partners more effectively here.
- Audience Members
Presenting is a cornerstone of Project Based Learning. But if students don’t have an audience that is relevant and participates, then the presentations become meaningless and fall short of their intended outcome. With this in mind, caring adults are often the perfect audience members. When encouraged and given guides, they give quality feedback and can add an element of “pomp and circumstance” to presentation day.
- Problem Seekers
With so many caring adults in each classroom out in the world, we can increase our ability to bring the real-world issues of our community in ways that are amazing. Encouraging caring adults to send us issues or problems they notice or experience, can take the stress out of coming up with PBL unit ideas. In addition to what has already been stated above, consider these other strategies too.
- Encourage caring adults to make “problem seeking” a regular part of their drives or grocery trips.
- Encourage them to ask their kiddos
- What issues or problems do you notice here?
- Do the adults seem happy or stressed? Why do you think that is?
- If you could change something about this place? What would you change or do differently?
- Remind caring adults and students that they are “problem seekers” regularly. Include a note in each newsletter. Include it in your dialogue. Make “problem seeking” a part of your classroom culture.
- Applicable Connections
As stated above, many caring adults serve as fantastic community partners. But, it can be easy for us to forget that caring adults are community professionals. As PBL facilitators our classrooms can often be our best networking tools.
Another way to utilize these applicable connections is to ask “who knows someone who…” on your classroom communication platforms. When this becomes a regular part of your classroom culture and practice, you encourage caring adults to reach out without being prompted.
Example: “Hey, I saw the class is doing a PBL unit to provide fresh produce to our local soup kitchen. My cousin has a greenhouse. Would you like for me to introduce you to her?”
- Community Building
When I was about 4 years into my PBL teaching experience, I was asked to go and observe another school’s Town Hall. As I watched their meeting, not much struck me as different. Each grade level shared what they were doing, there were announcements and encouragements.
But what struck me as unique were the caring adults lining the gymnasium walls in folding chairs. About 20-30 caring adults had come to the Friday morning meeting to listen to what students were doing. This blew my mind!
When I asked one of the teachers, I was told that there was a standing invitation to the caring adults of the school to come to Town Hall each week. I loved this idea! What a fantastic way to include one of our most valuable stakeholders in the PBL process!
However, you choose to invite caring adults to your classroom, consider making an open invitation to Monday’s Morning Meeting or your monthly school-wide convo. Encourage caring adults to not only attend but also participate in the meeting. You might even consider asking your PTO to present to the kiddos. This creates a building-wide community that fosters discussion and collaboration between caring adults, staff, and kiddos.
4. Reflect on your own Practices
This can be a hard pill for some facilitators. I will be honest, when I first started teaching I thought I knew exactly what to do and how to do it. When errors were made, it wasn’t because of me but rather outside sources. About 6 months into my teaching career, as I sat on my classroom floor at 10pm sobbing to my husband “What am I doing wrong?!” I realized, humbling myself and learning to reflect on my practices were my first steps.
By asking caring adults for feedback and reflecting on their responses, we open ourselves up to a lot of hurt. But we also open the door for dialogue that can improve our PBL units and generally our teaching practices.
The next time you have an Open House, consider utilizing a protocol for feedback with your caring adults or hand out a survey with thoughtful questions. Including and applying caring adult feedback into your practice can help your caring adults feel valued and like they are valuable stakeholders.
Now that you have read a few ways to incorporate your caring adults and build parent support for PBL, comment below with how you include classroom caring adults in your Project Based Learning units. Share your strategies with us and help us grow.