From High Tech High to project-based learning in the UK:
my teaching story
High Tech High teacher John Bosselman tells Emily Drabble about
massive potential of project-based learning and why he's working to spread the
practice in the UK
It wasn't my childhood ambition to be a teacher. I wanted to be a professor of history or a manager of a business – anything other than a teacher. I didn't really know what a teacher was apart from what I saw in the classroom. What really flipped it for me was working with a program called Upward Bound while I was doing my history degree at the University of New Hampshire. It's a programme to help first-generation college students go to and thrive at university. During the summer holidays high school students come and live on campus and do academic courses. I worked with them as a tutor-counselor and academic advisor and that was how I learnt how to connect with young people as a mentor and facilitator. It changed my career path totally.
I decided to do my master's of education (MEd) with University of New Hampshire and was embedded in a school called Oyster River High School where I had my own class from the start. I worked with an amazing teacher named Pam Raiford who really helped shape the teacher I have become. I think the biggest thing Pam taught me was how to listen. Pam is an amazing listener of her students and helps them to process the content she teaches.
After I completed my teacher training, I worked for a year in a traditional comprehensive school in New Hampshire. Then I found out about a job as a humanities teacher at High Tech High, Chula Vista.
I'd read a lot about High Tech High when I was training and was very drawn to it. In a nutshell High Tech High is about personalising learning for students. Teachers have the freedom to design their own curriculum and everyone has a common intellectual mission. So when I heard about the role I flew to San Diego. I remember thinking after the interview that this was where I wanted to be and I was so happy when I got the job.
Working at High Tech High exceeded all my expectations. It is everything I went into teaching for, with the focus on relationships and the freedom for intellectual exploration.
Project-based learning (PBL) is at the centre of High Tech High's way of working. I believe in it so deeply because I know that through PBL my students truly are engaged in their learning. They have a thorough understanding of where their work is going. With PBL you get to know your students really well, you get to know them as learners. I see between 55 and 60 students a day and most of my classes are two hours long. Teachers are normally tied to one year group and generally connect content with a teaching partner. As I'm a humanities teacher I share my students with a maths/science teacher.
The impact of PBL on students is huge. You see the evidence of soft skills straight away, so the communication and teamwork is excellent and you see kids excelling when they go to university because of that. They are the ones who suggest setting up a study group and who can confidently present exhibitions of learning and can develop their skills, because that's what they've been doing for years at school.
This academic year, I'm in the UK working with five schools in the UK on the development of PBL. I've found all the teachers I work with incredibly receptive. The schools I'm working with are all very different, so the way PBL materialises is very different. All the teachers I have met here would like to try PBL and are very interested in collaborative models of working. The problem is always time. Obviously all teachers are very busy. At High Tech High we've made the time and space to collaborate, it's all set up that way. I meet with my co-partner for an hour before school and have another hour of common planning built into the timetable.
If I were abducted from my current role and plonked into a traditional school which didn't support PBL here's what I would do: firstly I would be an advocate for making change. Secondly, if I had to work within the model of teaching the normal 50 minute lessons, I would rethink homework quite dramatically. I would see the lesson as facetime and develop the projects through tools such as Google+. There are ways to introduce PBL even if the conditions are not very agreeable!
I'm missing my students so much. I will be heading back to the States in July next year. There's a place for each and every one of my ex-students in my heart and I've got to know them all so well because with PBL you get to spend so much time with them.
My aim for the future is to work with my students and my colleagues and hone my craft. When I look back in 30 years time I want to be part of people realising the important role educators have in society. It's one of my aims to make education and teaching a preference for people who want to make an impact on their community and the world.
John Bosselman is a humanities teacher at High Tech High, Chula Vista in the US. For the 2013-14 school year, John is on leave from High Tech High and is working for the Innovation Unit in London as a project-based team coach, working in five schools throughout the UK coaching teachers in their development of project based learning.
It wasn't my childhood ambition to be a teacher. I wanted to be a professor of history or a manager of a business – anything other than a teacher. I didn't really know what a teacher was apart from what I saw in the classroom. What really flipped it for me was working with a program called Upward Bound while I was doing my history degree at the University of New Hampshire. It's a programme to help first-generation college students go to and thrive at university. During the summer holidays high school students come and live on campus and do academic courses. I worked with them as a tutor-counselor and academic advisor and that was how I learnt how to connect with young people as a mentor and facilitator. It changed my career path totally.
I decided to do my master's of education (MEd) with University of New Hampshire and was embedded in a school called Oyster River High School where I had my own class from the start. I worked with an amazing teacher named Pam Raiford who really helped shape the teacher I have become. I think the biggest thing Pam taught me was how to listen. Pam is an amazing listener of her students and helps them to process the content she teaches.
After I completed my teacher training, I worked for a year in a traditional comprehensive school in New Hampshire. Then I found out about a job as a humanities teacher at High Tech High, Chula Vista.
I'd read a lot about High Tech High when I was training and was very drawn to it. In a nutshell High Tech High is about personalising learning for students. Teachers have the freedom to design their own curriculum and everyone has a common intellectual mission. So when I heard about the role I flew to San Diego. I remember thinking after the interview that this was where I wanted to be and I was so happy when I got the job.
Working at High Tech High exceeded all my expectations. It is everything I went into teaching for, with the focus on relationships and the freedom for intellectual exploration.
Project-based learning (PBL) is at the centre of High Tech High's way of working. I believe in it so deeply because I know that through PBL my students truly are engaged in their learning. They have a thorough understanding of where their work is going. With PBL you get to know your students really well, you get to know them as learners. I see between 55 and 60 students a day and most of my classes are two hours long. Teachers are normally tied to one year group and generally connect content with a teaching partner. As I'm a humanities teacher I share my students with a maths/science teacher.
The impact of PBL on students is huge. You see the evidence of soft skills straight away, so the communication and teamwork is excellent and you see kids excelling when they go to university because of that. They are the ones who suggest setting up a study group and who can confidently present exhibitions of learning and can develop their skills, because that's what they've been doing for years at school.
This academic year, I'm in the UK working with five schools in the UK on the development of PBL. I've found all the teachers I work with incredibly receptive. The schools I'm working with are all very different, so the way PBL materialises is very different. All the teachers I have met here would like to try PBL and are very interested in collaborative models of working. The problem is always time. Obviously all teachers are very busy. At High Tech High we've made the time and space to collaborate, it's all set up that way. I meet with my co-partner for an hour before school and have another hour of common planning built into the timetable.
If I were abducted from my current role and plonked into a traditional school which didn't support PBL here's what I would do: firstly I would be an advocate for making change. Secondly, if I had to work within the model of teaching the normal 50 minute lessons, I would rethink homework quite dramatically. I would see the lesson as facetime and develop the projects through tools such as Google+. There are ways to introduce PBL even if the conditions are not very agreeable!
I'm missing my students so much. I will be heading back to the States in July next year. There's a place for each and every one of my ex-students in my heart and I've got to know them all so well because with PBL you get to spend so much time with them.
My aim for the future is to work with my students and my colleagues and hone my craft. When I look back in 30 years time I want to be part of people realising the important role educators have in society. It's one of my aims to make education and teaching a preference for people who want to make an impact on their community and the world.
John Bosselman is a humanities teacher at High Tech High, Chula Vista in the US. For the 2013-14 school year, John is on leave from High Tech High and is working for the Innovation Unit in London as a project-based team coach, working in five schools throughout the UK coaching teachers in their development of project based learning.