Project Based Education

The concept is based on what interest and motivates the student. Because the instructor cannot customize lesson plans for each student, he must implement student responsibility. It becomes the student's responsibility to develop and research projects and develop a plan of action. The instructor acts as a coach or facilitator. Instructors take an interest in students' projects instead of students having to take an interest in topics handed down by administrators.


This is a simplified description of the philosophy behind the students role in the creation of his/her curriculum and how that relates to the student - teacher relationship.
It came from http://www.motivation-tools.com/youth/

If I understand his site correctly (the site is huge with LOTS of information so I just skimmed it) this guy operates a ministry for at risk youth where kids and a crew operate a ship and learn from real life experiences. The goal, which is usually successful, is to teach (re-program, de-program ?) the kids to trust themselves to learn and take initiative to learn in a different way because the school system "broke" their confidence.

A lot of what he says fits how I think the schools curriculum and teacher involvement should be.

Somewhere within the pages he said that about 30% of the population does not fit into the traditional school system and that system "teaches those kids to fail" and that many of these failing kids are genius or at least super intelligent. He goes on to explain that most of these students must understand why they are learning something before they are able to effectively learn it. Traditional schools do the opposite.

Project Based Education involves either watching and helping someone actually fix a motor or just setting a kid loose with a manual, motor and tools. The traditional school system has a student memorize the names of the parts and how to fix a motor before being allowed to actually work on the motor, if they get to work on the motor at all. Project Based Education makes much more sense to me.






I have been corresponding with my girlfriend about this and it just occurred to me that I should be saving those emails. Writing them has been sort of like taking notes and has helped me get these ideas more orderly. In my head I fully understand it but have a hard time expressing it effectively to others. I am finding our correspondence to be very helpful. So, bonus to you! You will get an inside view of the processes we are going through as we found a non-traditional school.