Lasting Effects of Project Based Learning, from Kindergarten to High School
We are Nola, Ruby and Jess from the Lawton family. Back in 2013, Nola, now age 16, was in kindergarten at a brand new school in Los Angeles - Citizens of the World Charter School Mar Vista (CWC), and Sara Lev (Ms. Lev to us) was her teacher. A few years later, my youngest daughter Ruby (who is now 13) was also in Ms. Lev’s class - this time it was Transitional Kindergarten (TK). So both of my girls had the experience of starting their academic journeys under Ms. Lev’s guidance.
We recently sat down to reminisce a bit about our experiences at CWC, and in particular the first year of school for each. It struck me that even this many years later, both girls had clear memories of planting gardens, drawing pictures to tell stories, and building an outdoor play space. They remembered the safety of braiding their teacher’s hair after falling off a trike, and the power of feeling like they could have an idea and then simply create it.
As a parent who spent a lot of time at the school volunteering, I had the opportunity to engage in the many projects at the school. CWC Mar Vista was a brand new school, and like many charter schools, it was making the best of borrowed space and not enough resources. In a style that I see now as very much in line with project based learning, parents and teachers creatively and collaboratively solved many challenges to the vision that our leader and principal presented us with — to provide a fun, safe and inspiring space for our children to learn. We were encouraged to provide ideas for setting up our physical space and parent committees that would make up the foundation of how the school operated, from the best system and location for swift drop off, to teacher support systems and facilities concerns. Parents pitched in to clean the school each year before children returned, built and staffed a library, and participated in classroom activities like showing the kids how to make homemade air conditioners when we had a heat wave.
Jess helps children paint a mural for the TK Yard.
We were working for the common goal of achieving this best space, and were seeing the same successes that the kids had when they built their community and learning spaces. We were thriving. In those collaborations, where the end goal was a place for all the children to share and enjoy, we built a lot of lifelong connections. Many of my closest friends today are parents from that time, sharing the same project based mindset that our teachers were showing to our children. We were all living it.
Jess: Building a Culture for PBL
Even though Nola went to preschool, it was only part-time and the learning was held outside and included a lot of open-ended play in nature. Kindergarten presented a big change. I was full of feelings and when I came to pick Nola up at the end of the first day of school. I noticed the big chart paper from the lesson they’d been working on that day. The heading, Nola’s first lesson in kindergarten was “How to Make a Friend” and I saw a lot of ideas that were written by Ms. Lev but were clearly the kids’ words, like “Ask them if they like cookies too” and “Show them your favorite toy”. All the suggestions came from the kids themselves. It was so simple and so completely perfect. It not only helped the kids who might not know how to reach out, but signaled to all how important friend-making is to children at this age, and to actively seek it out. My worries abated in that moment and I knew she was in the most capable hands.
Classroom agreements from Nola’s kindergarten class (2013)
That same kindergarten year, Nola remembers writing stories with “brave spelling” (or what is called “invented spelling” - using phonetic spelling strategies to attempt to spell unknown words), and making instruction booklets for herself. Nola’s booklets were mostly full of drawings. Instead of telling her that she was supposed to be writing with words and letters, her teachers said how her pictures helped to tell the story and encouraged her to continue to use drawing as a tool to express herself. She felt proud of her work and eventually started to add more words to support her pictures.
Ruby’s first days also reflected the importance of creating a strong community in the early days of school. Our school had moved to a new building that year, and needed some love. The TK classroom had a little patch of its own fenced in yard that was empty, so naturally the first term project was for children to conceive of and construct their own play area. It was exciting because it was something that was important to them, their play space, and they were in charge. You saw them have a sense of ownership over the project from the very beginning, like the kids were the ones driving the project and teachers and parents were there to assist. Ruby felt like everything was their idea in the first place and Ms. Lev was just there to listen and help make their ideas come to fruition.
For both girls, although three years apart with different personalities, the projects they did provided a safe practice space for them to explore new ideas. For me as a parent, I could see that project based learning allowed the space for my girls to be curious, ask questions, make mistakes, and collaborate with peers respectfully.
Nola watering a seed during the class’ garden project (2013).
Ruby: Reflections on the TK Yard Project (2015)
The first step of the project was to decide on what would be included and everyone had so many ideas. Some of the ideas were really out there, like a “zoo in the yard” sort of ideas. Ms. Lev never said that something wasn’t possible, instead she asked questions about how it would function and guided us to see for ourselves if it wasn’t a realistic strategy.
Once the brainstorming was finished and we knew what we wanted in our yard, we got into groups with other kids who had similar ideas. Then we worked together to come up with something that included everything. Sometimes it was hard to keep everyone’s wants in the project, but mostly it was really fun to work with other kids. Everyone had really good ideas and it felt like it got better when we worked together. We built prototypes of things like a ball track, to come up with the design of the space.
When something looked like it wouldn’t work out, it could be challenging to restart but Ms. Lev would help guide us to take pieces from the old idea and combine it with new ideas to see if that worked. I remember worrying to Ms. Lev that something might not work, and she just said, so then it doesn’t work and we try something else. I wanted the tricycle path to take a direction that cut directly in front of the gate that entered the yard. When discussing the plan with Ms. Lev, she opened up the gate in front of the proposed pathway and she asked me what might happen if someone opened the gate? I saw that it would be dangerous because the tricycle rider could get a gate swung into them while passing and the person entering the gate could get hit by a tricycle. I still made the path go that direction, but made a detour at the gate. Before the final path, we tested the plan many times by opening the gate while I drew the track.
We visited an architect’s office to help us decide how to lay out our different stations in the space we had. It felt like we were doing important work and we were making sure that we thought of everything. We saw that some things needed to be put in different places than we imagined.
When we had trouble making the ball go down the track the way we wanted, we sat around our prototype of taped up paper towel rolls and tried different strategies to fix the trouble area. After a while, I figured out how to move the track to make it work and we arranged the paper towel creation to test it out. When the ball went just where I hoped, I couldn’t believe it. Everyone was congratulating me and I felt like a rock star.
We had tricycles and drew a track that looked like a road, around the playground. I was really interested in roads and cars driving on them. I thought it was so cool that I got to help draw the road myself. I was really excited about that. Sometimes when I drove the tricycle around the track after it was finished, I’d look at the lines and just feel so happy that I was the one who drew it.
There was a problem with the tricycles though. They were one of the most popular stations in the yard. Kids were fighting over their turn and trikes were getting left laying around the yard and kids would trip on them. Ms. Lev asked us how we could have a place for storing the trikes when we weren’t using them. We thought of painting a parking lot with parking spaces for them, just like real cars. Ms. Lev encouraged us to resolve the fighting over whose turn was next, and we made a bus stop where kids waited in line for tricycles. Nobody got upset about waiting at the bus stop because we thought of it ourselves. I only remember how exciting it was to be standing there, the next in line to get the tricycle.
When other classes wanted to use the yard, Ms. Lev asked how we felt about that. We worried they wouldn’t know the rules and break things. She wondered how we could be sure to communicate those rules and we came up with the idea to present them to the other classes. We took care of our yard and followed the rules because we made the rules and the yard. We thought of the reasons why the rules were necessary in the first place, to make our yard work the way we had planned, so we actually wanted to follow them. We respected the space and made sure that others did as well.
Ruby presenting her TK yard design at a visit to an architecture studio (2015).
“My advice for teachers is to let kids take the lead, it means a lot to us to have an idea and to feel like we guided ourselves through the project. Instead of saying no, lead kids to see it for themselves if you can. Write ideas in their words. It means a lot to kids when you notice details about our work, and point out something that we did well and can be proud of.”
Children’s self-created rules about the bikes in their yard.
Jess: Lessons Gained Through PBL
The lessons gained from this style of learning were plentiful. I see a real fearlessness to try ideas and not get discouraged when some parts don’t work. Ruby holds the vision of what she wants to accomplish and just makes adjustments along the way. She developed an attitude that when initializing and implementing a new project or procedure, to expect unanticipated challenges as part of the process and to be adaptive to them. Sometimes she figures it out on her own, but doesn’t hesitate to reach out to the person who can help. Ruby rarely gets frustrated or upset when something doesn’t go her way, but that doesn’t mean she gives up on getting it, she just tries it in a different way. She is resilient.
Nola still expresses herself through drawings and creatively uses this skill to enhance her schoolwork. She learned early on to be proud of her talent and explore it fully. She asks as many clarifying questions that she needs during a project, never feeling like she has too many. In group work, Nola knows the value of collaboration and overcomes the awkwardness of getting her group talking, often leading the discussion even when it isn’t comfortable for her.
Teachers leave a lasting impression. Ruby really admired Ms. Lev’s confidence and poise in the classroom, in particular when she was taking questions and leading discussions. Ruby developed a new professional persona — calm, engaged and in charge. And it was entirely Ms. Lev. I’ll never forget her taking questions in a third grade classroom, after presenting another project later in the year - all by herself because she was the only one in the group that day. When she was finished, she announced with authority that she would take questions now. She was inspired to be strong and confident by the way she saw her teacher leading.
“When I read the language Ruby chose to describe her experience, I noticed her using words like, “Ms. Lev asked us, showed us, helped us, listened, wondered, guided, and encouraged.” To think that my daughter learned all those skills from project based learning and Ms. Lev didn’t have to “tell” her anything.
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Reflecting on these early experiences reminds me that the foundations of learning are truly set at the very beginning of children’s educational journeys. It seems imperative that before kids are fully open to learning, they feel confident and good about themselves. I can see it clearly as my kids now move through high school that all of the ways they developed and refined their learning during those early projects will have a profound impact on their perceptions of school and beyond.
Nola, Ruby, Sara (Ms. Lev) and Jess (2024)
Jess Donovan is a stay at home mom and still has hands-on involvement in her girls’ educational journey. They split their time living between the heart of Venice in Los Angeles and rural Canada, on 8 acres of land surrounded by a flowing river and tall pine and oak trees. Sometimes schoolwork is on an airplane, sometimes a cafe or riverbank. Together, the family likes road trips, travel, hiking and singing our favorite songs in the car.
Nola is 16 is going into grade 11 next year. She loves playing cello and sketching pictures. Ruby is 13 and starting high school next year, grade 9. She loves playing hockey and acting.