Wheaton High School classmates Sarah Reside, Elise Fisher and Luke Inman faced a dilemma: What should they call the new body organ they’d invented to solve common digestive problems such as acid reflux and peptic ulcers?
Perched on stools in a biology lab one morning in early May, the team bandied about a few ideas. How about “the potato organ,” suggested Sarah, a freshman in Wheaton’s biomedical magnet program who wants to be a doctor. No one bit. Then Elise, a sophomore in the engineering magnet, came up with the more medical-sounding “esophageal gland.”
But a quick Google search by Luke on a classroom laptop revealed that the esophageal gland already existed. Thinking fast, Elise suggested that he try “macroesophageal gland.”
Luke, a freshman also studying engineering, tapped out the letters. No hits. Now the team had a cool name to go with the fantasy organ that they created out of deep-red modeling clay in the shape of a hot dog. Weeks of research led them to envision that the organ would make sodium bicarbonate to help the pancreas neutralize stomach acid, relieving the symptoms of troublesome digestive problems.
“Basically, it’s your own biological Tums,” Sarah says.
The three students were nearly ready for May 21, when all of the teams in Talia Turner’s honors biology class would present their ideas for improving the human body to a panel of AP biology students. The prize wasn’t that important—the winning team would receive lunch at Chipotle—but hopes of earning good grades and impressing the upperclassmen who sat on the panel had raised the stakes.
“The AP bio students are gonna try and nitpick and see if we’ll crack under pressure,” Sarah warned her team.
“The AP bio students are scary,” Elise agreed.
In mid-April, Turner told her biology students that their final project would be on body systems. But the students were the ones who decided on the driving question: How can you make the human body run more efficiently in today’s environment?
Students were required to research the body’s eight systems, pick one and then form a team with other students interested in improving the same system. The teams would spend the next five weeks researching ideas on classroom laptops and in textbooks, developing solutions and preparing for their final presentations. The work would require problem solving, critical thinking, communication and collaboration; team members were assigned jobs, including project manager, graphic designer and engineer.
Using those skills and technology to investigate an open-ended query or to solve a problem defines project-based learning, touted by top educators as the best way to teach skills that today’s students will need in the 21st century workplace.
Project-based learning inverts the traditional classroom model—students are in charge of their own learning, with teachers serving more as facilitators than directors. Partnerships with local businesses and organizations create real-world learning opportunities through internships and mentoring.
The idea is quickly gaining popularity as educators acknowledge that traditional teaching methods—think of a class taking notes as a teacher lectures—no longer engage today’s tech-savvy, multitasking students.
“Those of us who have taught it see how successful it is, how much it makes sense,” says Lisa Gerhardt, co-coordinator of project-based learning at Wheaton. “This is what kids want, this is what kids need.”
Educators and schools have embraced the idea of learning by doing for decades. Project-based learning has long been the hallmark of magnet and signature programs in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), such as the Communication Arts Program and the Science, Mathematics and Computer Science Magnet Program at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, and the Ulysses Signature Program at Northwest High School in Germantown.
But this year, Wheaton becomes the first traditional MCPS high school to offer project-based learning in every class—from AP courses to special education to those for students learning English as a second language.
The school, which draws students from Silver Spring, Rockville and Wheaton, was chosen as the vanguard of project-based learning for several reasons. First, it already had success with the approach. For more than a decade, Wheaton has been offering project-based learning through courses provided by Project Lead the Way, a national nonprofit that supplies programs in math, science, technology and engineering to 5,000 elementary, middle and high schools in the country.
Wheaton is also in the process of building a new school, scheduled to open in January 2016, which provided the perfect opportunity to plan for the 21st century classroom. Designed specifically for project-based learning, the new $97 million Wheaton, under construction next door to the current facility on Dalewood Drive in Silver Spring, will provide more than 330,000 square feet on three floors. Gone are traditional computer labs and classrooms where teachers deliver lectures behind closed doors. Instead, the school will feature wireless Internet access so students can work anywhere, and large, open spaces where they can collaborate.
Classrooms will have chairs and desks that can be rearranged easily into different configurations and walls partly covered with whiteboards. Glass windows into hallways will allow others to see what’s going on inside. Some classrooms will include smaller, glass-enclosed areas where students can work on projects under supervision.
Wheaton’s auditorium will seat 900 people and will be the first MCPS high school to have a balcony. A glass-walled gallery on the school’s first floor will display student projects.
“The basic idea is to have flexible space, and space we can use to help facilitate project-based learning instead of hinder it,” says Kevin Lowndes, a former Wheaton principal who is now the MCPS director of school support and improvement for high schools.
The $119 million project includes construction of a new home for the Thomas Edison High School of Technology, another MCPS high school that shares Wheaton’s plot of land. That school is expected to be completed in 2018.
Finally, MCPS officials say it was important to choose a school with diverse demographics. During the past school year, about 90 percent of Wheaton’s 1,336 students were from minority groups and nearly 59 percent qualified for free and reduced meals, according to MCPS.
“Doing this work at the school with our most vulnerable and impacted population is a clear statement of our commitment to equity because our kids who have the greatest needs need us to invest more,” MCPS Superintendent Joshua Starr says. “And we’re doing that with the idea that it’s for everybody at that school and for everybody across the district.”
NO ONE NEEDED to tell Turner that traditional teaching methods were failing to engage today’s students. A teacher at Wheaton for six years and the head of its biosciences academy, she says teaching “by the book” sometimes felt like a fight to keep students’ attention. “It was boring,” she says. “It was not really engaging.”
Turner began experimenting with project-based learning in her biology classes two years ago after undergoing training for Project Lead the Way. She had more fun as a teacher, and she says her students were more engaged.
One late April morning, Turner’s biology classroom buzzed with the voices of 32 students as they researched questions on laptops, flipped through textbooks, and pulled out models of body parts and craft materials to work on their projects.
Turner walked through the classroom, dangling a model skeleton of a human leg from her right hand. She stopped at a long black lab table to hand the leg to a team that was researching how to reduce the number of injuries suffered by athletes.
Teammates Mimi Ho, Jayna John and Reina Melgar were debating their theory that thickening a part of the tibia, one of the body’s most commonly broken long bones, could help prevent fractures.
At the next table, Sarah, Luke and Elise were discussing their solutions for digestive problems and preparing to call a local gastroenterologist to check whether their ideas were feasible. In addition to a new organ, the team proposed straightening the small intestine to reduce the risk of bowel obstructions. “Are you guys fine with these plans?” asked Elise, who was in charge of creating drawings of the proposed improvements for the team’s website.
