Empowering Students Through Project-Based Learning - Britni Pascoe | E164

Discover the transformative power of Project-Based Learning as we sit down with Britni Pascoe, a fourth-grade teacher with a flair for turning classic school fundraisers into educational gold mines. Britni's unique approach to PBL has seen her students surpass financial goals and master life skills, all within the context of our Go For Gold initiative for pediatric cancer. Through Britni's narrative, we grasp how new PBL students can tackle their first project with enthusiasm, learning practical applications for grammar and math, and setting goals that reflect genuine social-emotional growth.

Imagine a lemonade stand that's more than just a childhood rite of passage—it's a strategic, community-driven fundraiser that aligns with educational standards and teaches valuable life lessons. In our chat with Britni, we dissect how she connected with partners like Alex's Lemonade Stand to create a PBL experience that's both meaningful and aligned with state criteria. As Britni explains, the shift from conventional assignments to impactful community projects made a profound difference in student engagement and learning outcomes.


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Transcript

Ryan Steuer: 0:00

Hey, movement makers, welcome to the PBL simplified podcast where we talk about how to lead with integrity, vision and inspiration so you can create a PBL movement worth fighting for. When we started PBL schools, we didn't have a roadmap of how to do this stuff. So over the last decade, magnify Learning has done just that. We've created a PBL movement roadmap for you to create a customized version of what a PBL movement should look like for your school, your classroom. Today, in episode 164, we have a movement maker with us. We've got Brittany Pasco, who is an elementary school teacher in the trenches, so it's a PBL showcase episode. That means that you get to see and hear from a teacher doing PBL in the trenches at a very high level. She's PBL certified, she's at one of our model schools and she's in the PBL movement online community, which is where you should be. If you're not, movement makers need other movement makers. That means you need to be collaborating with people like Brittany. If you have questions you want to ask her, like, just in time questions. You don't want to email me and say, hey, ryan, can you get with Brittany to ask me this question? Like, just go into the online community. We've got a private Facebook group. We've got on-demand courses. We've got webinars, coaching all available for the price of a one day conference. For the price of a one day conference, your principal either sends you out, come back with a folder, or you can get PBL support for the entire year the entire year, like this on-demand course you take on your own, but then you can also come back into the community and start collaborating with people who know how to collaborate Right. So, whether you are just getting started and you are in the builder phase in our online community, we've got resources for that and we're putting out resources every single day. You may be a little bit farther along. So you're in the builder phase of your PBL journey, meaning that you've got kids in your seat. You've ran a PBL unit in front of a couple of them. You've got a little bit different needs. We've got webinars, coaching, on-demand and conversations happening just for you. And if you're an innovator, if you've been doing this for a long time and you're just listening because you know that you can pick up some extra notes from Brittany on this podcast and then you can take them and put them in your classroom, we've got a place for you too, so you do not have to be the person that's always teaching at giving. You can come in and collaborate, innovate. We'll do some tuning protocols, give you great ideas, connect to the community partners Whatever you need. It's all happening in the PBL movement online community. Look in the show notes to get signed up and I'll see you in there. I'm in there a lot as well and the collaboration is awesome. So, without further ado, you now get to see into Brittany's PBL unit. You're going to want to take some notes. If you're just listening or running or you know in the car, like that's fine, you're going to pick some stuff up, but you might want to take some notes.

Ryan Steuer: 2:54

Brittany's been on the podcast before. It's because she's got these great PBL units that she's running with her learners. You're going to learn a lot. Enjoy. Hey, pbl simplified audience. Thank you for joining us today. Today we have a PBL showcase, which means that we are going to bring in a PBL teacher from the classroom and we're going to break down one of her PBL units. And she is a teacher from Indianapolis, indiana. She's a PBL certified facilitator, which means that she has been through PBL Jumpstart and Advanced certification. Like we've looked at her process and we're like, wow, brittany's doing amazing things. So we've been able to certify that and it's something you can do as well. We're happy to talk to you about that at any point, but let's jump into this conversation with Brittany. Brittany, thank you for coming on the podcast to share today.

Britni Pascoe: 3:40

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Ryan Steuer: 3:43

So you're in a fourth grade classroom and it's just. It's not a normal fourth grade classroom, right? Like you've got some, some learners in there that are thinking differently. You're pushing them to think differently. Can you give us some overview of this PBL unit that you guys just finished up?

Britni Pascoe: 3:59

Yeah, so we have a student in our classroom. She's in remission this year, which is great, but she's been battling a form of pediatric cancer and the teacher who used to run the Go For Gold month at our school no longer works here. So between conversations with her mom and I, it just came about really authentically that I need to do something because we don't want to not support Go For Gold month and gold is the color of pediatric cancer awareness and through so, through conversations with her mom and some of the other people that she works with at Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, it just made sense to do it as a PBL instead of me just planning a fundraiser. So it was actually very authentic the way it rolled out and landed in my lap, and the kids in my room had not done a PBL before, so it was our first one, and so we you know really baby stepped through the process and they were able to just roll through it really good, and now we're getting ready to do a second project and they're really excited.

Ryan Steuer: 5:12

Yeah, I love, I love how the authenticity of it right, like you're just, you're like your PBL antenna is just always up, isn't it? Once you get to this, this point in your career, just like I'm always looking for an in for PBL and it sounds like it was super authentic and I like that you're distinguishing between like a traditional fundraiser and a PBL, like in this instance. So you kind of gave us this origin story of where it came from One of your learners talking to a parent, like, first of all, that's super awesome. You're like we've got to do something. So, right, we're going to step in and do something. So what was your entry event for this one?

Britni Pascoe: 5:49

So our entry event was that we had a person that works at Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation zoom in with us and she asked the students to support their million miles campaign, which is all about throughout the month of September. Can we, as a nation, move a million miles? So their event had to have movement involved. And then she also asked them if they could educate people about pediatric cancer, different types of it, lack of funding, why fundraisers are important? Because they need the fundraisers to get funding for research. And so after our entry event, the driving question was how can we, as event coordinators because that was her job title raise awareness and money to help fund pediatric cancer research? And so, through her call and her letter that she sent so that way we could refer back to the things she asked us for, the kids got really excited and they planned a walk-a-thon at our school so you got now.

Ryan Steuer: 7:00

Does Alex Lemonade stand? Do they normally zoom in with you? Because I actually just jumped to their website just now, like I don't see that anywhere. So where did that come?

Britni Pascoe: 7:07

from the mother of my student worked with them because they host Lemonade stands and their communities throughout the summer. So she was able to get me in contact with that person who she's worked with and then I was able to kind of give her my little elevator speech about what PBL is and how I need you to ask these kids for what you want, but don't tell them what to do, so that they can generate their ideas. So I just gave her some talking points and I wanted to put in the educating others piece because for us that drives like the state standards, so we could just play in this walk-a-thon. It would be great. But we also want to learn something along the way and it was our first project of the year, so just learning, citing sources, writing informative pieces, text feature. So it was able for me. It gave me the opportunity to pull in those state standards, even though, like, it wasn't me asking them to do this, it was her.

Ryan Steuer: 8:07

So yeah, that's right. Well, it's such a big difference, isn't it, when there's a community partner asking you know your learners to do this, versus the teacher asking you to do these things. So it's just kind of a quick quarter twist, I would say. Got a mentor who always says don't ask, don't get right. So what I really heard you say is, like you got in touch, you did, you ask hey, could you zoom in with us and could you make a couple tweaks to your talk? And, sure enough, happy to do that. Right, so you have this authentic ask. You've got a driving question. That's authentic as well. So your learners have a task that they're completing for an outside audience. Right, and it's gonna be standards-based. Where did you go next?

Britni Pascoe: 8:51

well, they had to decide what our needs and O's were. So we were able to dissect her letter and we used different color highlighter. So, again, talking about like taking notes and tracking her thinking and writing on our paper. So, because it's the beginning of the right like, this project was done in September. So because we our event was the last week of September before pediatric cancer awareness month was over, so this is super early in the year, but it helped us build our culture. It helped us build a lot of our protocols in our classroom and so we were able to identify the three specific jobs we needed to do.

Britni Pascoe: 9:32

We generated all of our need to knows from there and that poster was full. And then I was able to create their benchmarks from there and I was also able to create a rubric so the students were able to look at a four point rubric. So the they had to have a knowledge map which was where they recorded all of their notes from their different research opportunities. They had to create an advertisement for our events and we used figurative language and text features, um, and then they had to create their written product and so they had to learn some of those basics of informative writing and they had some choice in that, whether they made like a brochure or some Google slides or, um, just like a poster, and they handed their written product out to every walker at our event. So they not only donated money and they came and walked, but they went home with some literature that was written by my students.

Ryan Steuer: 10:29

Sweet. So again, fundraiser versus a PBL, right, like there are two different things, because it's like you could do a fundraiser, you could raise money for, uh, an honorable charity, and that's, that's a great idea, right? And what happens when you turn it into a PBL, like what are the results now of this walkathon and and what you can give to Alex's lemonade stand?

Britni Pascoe: 10:50

So their original goal was to raise $1,500. And they were able to give. I thought that was a lofty goal and we also talked as sort of our culture goal setting because, um, part of our social emotional learning is how to make goals that are challenging but also attainable. And I was like $1,500 guys Like that's a that's a lot of money. I was like, but if you have faith in yourself, I'll have faith in you, like we'll figure out how to get there. Um, also, this walkathon was closed to just our students. We weren't quite ready to stay at the public, come walk, and that was a big step. So it was only a school event at school during the day. Um, but they raised over $4,000.

Ryan Steuer: 11:36

Wow so 1500? Just it just sounds big like to us, right? It's like wow so they crushed it.

Britni Pascoe: 11:45

And what was really awesome was that usually, as a facilitator, you have in your mind what you want your end event to look like and and you kind of breadcrumbs your kids there. But they came up with some really awesome ideas throughout our project. And it was a short project because we started this like probably the last week of August and we had to be done by September, so it was only like three and a half weeks. Okay. So I tried to keep it small and not too much on put too much on their plate, but they were like, well, we obviously need to sell lemonade, because people by lemonade is Alex's lemonade stand, and so we had a lemonade stand. They got the supplies for lemonade and, um, they were able to get it donated, and so then they sold their lemonade for a dollar a glass. And then, um, you know we all are obsessed with one way or another with Taylor Swift, and so they said we need to make friendship bracelets and I was like where's she do?

Britni Pascoe: 12:52

Okay, they're like. Everyone will buy a friendship bracelet because of Taylor Swift.

Ryan Steuer: 12:58

It was like okay.

Britni Pascoe: 12:59

So, um, we got just different shades of gold beads and they had a friendship bracelet making station and they, the kid, they paid a dollar. They want to make a bracelet. And then part of it was also a dress down day for a dollar. So when we take them money for the laps, the money for the lemonade and the money for the bracelets and we and the dress down day and we add a doll up, it was over four half hours of money that they raised that we were able to just give to Alex's lemonade stand, what that's crazy Because you know, like they're all learner ideas right, like they're like, the adult ideas aren't in there.

Britni Pascoe: 13:40

The adult ideas are like with the walk of the dog, they with everything else. And then one of the great things about all of that too, I think all of these other ideas they generated. It came back from the our community partner, because halfway through she zoomed with us again because she wanted to check in, and so the kids were ready with questions for her and ideas and thoughts, and so they were able to like bounce, because their job was to be an event coordinator and she is an event coordinator. So they're like how can we get, like what, if all these people can't walk or don't want to walk? So what do we? What can we do so more people can be involved? And so that's where all these other ideas came from, like two weeks before our end of it.

Ryan Steuer: 14:22

And so we're like we got to get some lemonade, we got to get some beans, let's do it Well like what a great experience, right, because we always talk about employability skills too, and I love it when they're starting this early. It's like we're talking with an event planner and I could just see your kids be like, well, we're event planners, so we're just like on equal footing, right. Like here's this adult, her entire job, right, she's got a resume, she's got all this experience around community partners or community event planning, and your kids are like people do this for like two and a half weeks, like we're pretty much on the same level, like let's ask great questions and they're engaged. That's so good. Even just the confidence to be able to ask good questions to an adult. I think that's a great skill for learners to have.

Britni Pascoe: 15:05

Yeah, it really is, and I wish that she could have been here in person, but she they are in Pennsylvania, but so it was that technology in our room and so it really opens up the the door for you, for who you can use as a partner, because we just pulled up our camera and Put it on our screen and and she was here in our room from Pennsylvania, so it worked.

Ryan Steuer: 15:32

It's so good because you've got kids that are right in Indianapolis and I'm sure some of them have never left Indianapolis and now suddenly we've opened up the world to them right Like via zoom. I can suddenly be, you know, collaborating with somebody else who's a professional and like so now why not somebody in Arizona? You know, why not somebody in Florida? And again they're fourth graders. It's so cool. So you guys crushed it with Alex's lemonade stand. So Anything else about that PBL unit before? I'd like to also Oak a little bit around, like your relationship with Alex's lemonade stand. Now, now that you guys did such a great job with that, anything else in the, the PBL unit itself that we should talk about?

Britni Pascoe: 16:17

I really, really tried hard to make sure that my assessment of state standards so it out in this project, because they am trying to encourage the other people in my building to join along the PBL Units with me as I continue to roll them out this year, and so I really wanted to showcase that like we Can still teach the same skills and hit those same standards using just a different text or a different format of learning than what is in our school curriculum.

Britni Pascoe: 16:50

And and so I made this rubric early on and I really communicated to the students what the rubric was like after we Came up with our needs knows I was able to put together what those benchmarks would be. It was really important to me to put the assessment piece in there and I feel like sometimes when you get all excited about the fundraising and the end goal, you can kind of lose sight of some of that, and the kids knew what parts of the project were really To lead to next steps, but also what parts were being graded and what parts were being assessed and what I was looking for. And I think it set the tone for future assessments here in my classroom because fear Always looking for criteria and if, like I don't have it. Sometimes they'll use that language with me. Let's say what's the criteria for this? What?

Ryan Steuer: 17:37

are you?

Britni Pascoe: 17:37

looking for. So it was nice to see some of those things roll out and still continue to take place while we're between PBL units, and the language and the culture just continue to grow.

Ryan Steuer: 17:51

Yeah, I love that you emphasize that, because you raised a bunch of money for a good cause with a great community partner and, by the way, we're still in school, right, so, like academic standards are still being taught, they need to be assessed. How do you feel like that section of the PBL unit went like on the assessment, like, did your kids get what you're, what you're put down? Or they were they writing well where they, you know, communicate into different audiences?

Britni Pascoe: 18:15

Yeah, I feel like Us as a whole gray level have really seen a gap in the grammar piece of writing, and Grammar, I think, can be one of the hardest parts to teach. That you can format your essay you know really well in a copy format, but when you like grammar then you lack the communication that you're trying to convey. So it was really nice to say like this is the grammar piece we're working on today. Now go straight into your informational writing and look through that. A specific mistake, let's fix it. So it's like I'm not learning this grammar today so I can use it in high school in four years. Like I'm learning it today because I need it today to use it today. Oh, is that remind me? I forgot another piece they did, they had. They decided they wanted a DJ to play music while we were walking. I Did not have a DJ, so I threw in a persuasive piece to. We had to write a persuasive paragraph asking a DJ to come to our event, volunteer their time. So vocabulary, cuz some kids didn't understand what volunteer meant.

Britni Pascoe: 19:20

There we go, that's good then to come and play and support our wonkers. And what I told them, I'm gonna take your persuasive writing. I'm gonna put it out to the community. So I put on some Facebook groups. I shared on Twitter, we put it in our newsletter and my students said, well, what if nobody says yes, and then we don't have a DJ run? They said, and I'm like I can't leave a magic wand and make it DJ appear kind of world is this, where there's no DJ?

Britni Pascoe: 19:56

I know and I think that was just another piece of like as a facilitator, sometimes I try to, before I start a project, get those community partners lined up know that I'm setting my kids up for success. But when the DJ piece was sprung on a Smith project, I didn't have anyone that was already committed to doing this for my kids, so it was really on them and I was able to put their first ways of letters out there and I had somebody like comment on Facebook that wanted to come. They were like this is amazing. I'm starting up my DJ business so I'm not super experienced, but I need a place to start. This sounds great. Like you need a place to start. We need someone. Free sounds perfect. And so I thought that was just another really authentic piece of PBL that the kids aren't used to because they always just think I'm writing this, my teacher is creating it, we're moving on and like you don't write well, no one's gonna say yes, so we have to really convincing.

Ryan Steuer: 20:58

Right, that's so good. It's such a great example of I like to talk about. You have to move the why closer to the learner, like you say, like Nobody's inherently excited about grammar, right, so Getting better grammar for high schools, like that's a why, that's like Three years away, right, six years away for your kids. But moving it up closer, like you need to learn persuasive writing so we can have a DJ, and we all know we need a DJ, right. So, so they've got to jump in, so good.

Britni Pascoe: 21:27

Yeah, it was great. And then when I the day I told them that I was like, somebody said yes, they're gonna come, this could be great, they're so excited. And then they're like whose letter was it? They all know. So I was like you'll never know, but somebody in here had one.

Ryan Steuer: 21:41

Good enough, and so they're so excited about the work they did. Right, they're excited about the academic work that they did and like cheering for grammar.

Britni Pascoe: 21:52

And then we were also able to tie some math. I know sometimes math can be hard for PBL because some of them roll into those reading and writing standard so easily. But with the money and the conversions, because we don't have a perfect track here at our elementary schools so we had to figure out how many, how much of a mile is one lap? So how many laps is that create to make a mile? And then we have to add them all up to see how many miles.

Britni Pascoe: 22:20

Because part of the million mile campaign was not just looking the money we earned, but they wanted you to log how many miles you moved, because their goal was a million miles and so I again I could have easily took those tallies, counted them up, logs didn't there and did all that, but I put it on them and we use some of our math standards at our math lessons to take the time to do that After the big was over and I always love it when I can pull math because it's not always easy in the elementary world. Reading is the easiest, I think.

Ryan Steuer: 22:51

Yeah yeah, it's great that you could tie it in. I mean, such an authentic project, you're just bound to have more standards that come in too, because it is so authentic. So you obviously your kids crush this PBL unit right, both on the inspirational side, the impact wise, and the standard side. What is? But you, you're still doing more work with Alex's lemonade stand foundation. So what does that look like now?

Britni Pascoe: 23:16

So exciting things have happened because of this PBL and the amount of money they raised. So we found out that we were one of the top earners in the nation for their million mile campaign not only with money but also miles. So they are sending us an award of some sort I just found out today, so I don't know what it looks like, but it was just really nice to hear that the kids are actually going to get an award. Then I'm going to get to bring that in and surprise them with that for being such like high earners. Me as a facilitator. I've got to do some interviews with people that work there because the project will be a project spotlight on their website at some point. And it was nice because I got to interview with the student's mom who inspired this whole thing, because it's her background and her experience that led us here.

Britni Pascoe: 24:14

And then, from a teacher standpoint, what's exciting is they are trying to create some resources to make doing an event like this at your school a lot more, I guess, attainable. What do you think I word? A lot more attainable in your hours of trying to get all the resources and everything it takes, because they want to put literature on their website. They want to take down those classic lesson plans and just put more resources in place. So, as a facilitator, if you want to hold an event like this, you can get all of your materials in one place and you don't have to scour the internet, like I did for articles and articles and articles that you have to figure out. How do I put this in student friendly language for fourth graders?

Ryan Steuer: 25:04

So this PBL unit, it's impacting your learners. It's impacting Alex's lemonade stand foundation, but even like reworking some of their lesson plans, so it goes on to the next classroom. So I just love the real world aspect of it is where it all started. There was an authentic need and, as your learners are solving it, they're affecting the next classroom and the next classroom, the next classroom, like generations. So it's super impactful work while they're learning grammar and persuasive writing and math all the same time. Isn't it just an exciting way to teach.

Britni Pascoe: 25:41

So exciting, I couldn't teach another way. I just can't.

Ryan Steuer: 25:45

So good. It's how you've always wanted to teach, and you're crushing it, brittany. So thank you so much for the work and the thoughtfulness that you've put into your PBL practice over the last couple of years has been neat to see your journey and I think it's inspiring, so thanks for sharing today. I really appreciate it.

Britni Pascoe: 26:03

Yeah, the quote of the project to take away is we learned about a lot of the facilities that run the research for Alex's lemonade stand, and I had a student the day we did that research talk about this facility they have, and they said I'm going to go there one day and I'm going to work there. That's what I want to do, and so a resource that I encouraged Alex's to put up on their website is just a community partner access page, because I'm like we partnered with you as an event coordinator. But what if they could have talked to a scientist, a researcher, somebody who works at that specific facility, and they could see all these other jobs that are out there that give back in this way? And so it was nice to see one of my kids who is an English language learner and sometimes they struggle with school, but now they have this goal of being a scientist and working in a lab for Alex's lemonade stand, and it just makes you know that the work you're doing is the right thing.

Ryan Steuer: 27:09

For sure it gives you goosebumps. It's like so it's like employability, skills, career exploration, like all within fourth graders right, inspiring them like what are they made to do? So good, so good. Well, thank you, brittany, for tuning in for this. Really appreciate you.

Britni Pascoe: 27:26

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Ryan Steuer: 27:28

Alright. Pbl Simplified Audience. You just heard a great PBL showcase. You got it. We just walked you all the way through entry event to final presentation. Need to knows, voice and choice. Standards-based, assessment-based PBL units. Community partners are wrapped up in there. They're solving real world problems and real is not in quotes. Right, we don't put real in quotes here. Magnify learning. We're talking about your learners, whatever grade level. It is solving real world problems and when they do, they see that impact, they get passionate about it and they start dreaming about some really big things, as they're really, really engaged.

Ryan Steuer: 28:05

Thank you for tuning in today. We hope that you lead inspired. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the PBL Simplified Podcast. I appreciate you and honor that you tune in each week. Would you please take two minutes to leave a rating and a review? When you leave a review, it lets the next person know that this is a podcast worth listening to. When they go into their player and search project-based learning and PBL Simplified popped up. When they see those reviews, they know that high quality, visionary leaders are listening, so they tune in too and they can find their way into the PBL journey. Thank you so much for leaving a review. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you.