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| This flyer was designed by learner, Caroline Perry |
Written by Steffany Batik with many thanks to the instructional leadership team that helped make this learning experience happen: Norrie Brassfield (a special thanks to Norrie for setting up the contacts with our Coppell neighbors and for considerable legwork on getting the baskets set up), Carolyn Daniel, Anthony Hufford, Brandy Osterberger, Raheela Shaikh, Garrett Voelker.
This past summer, I had the opportunity to attend my first New Tech Annual Conference (NTAC) with a few of our staff members. One of the sessions I went to was a competition-based session dubbed PBL Chopped. In the session, school teams competed against each other to create the "tastiest" project using secret standards, a project slide template, and about 20 minutes on the clock. After observing this session and sharing with the other members of our team at NTAC, we felt that this could be an experience we could use for the facilitators in our building in a future staff development.
Fast forward several months, and our instructional coach team was needing to design a day of learning for our staff in the middle of April. April can be a difficult time to work on professional learning because it is so close to the end of the school year and it is even closer to state and AP testing. We felt like it would be a good time however, to engage our staff around the general practice of project design and thinking about the next school year. As such, we designed a learning experience that took key elements of the PBL Chopped competition but also added elements that were specific to our mission statement: Empowering learners as they pursue their passions, collaborate to solve real world problems, and practice leadership in their community.
Thus was born: New Tech Iron Chef. To launch the learning for our facilitators, we began with a baking/cooking competition that was the source of our morning breakfast. Staff members volunteered to participate in the cooking competition by using a secret ingredient: fruit. [As a quick aside, you don't know just how competitive your staff is until you hear them discussing the culinary definition versus the botanical definition of the word 'fruit'...] From breakfast, we then launched our learning with our Iron Chef challenge. I served the role of the Chairwoman and introduced our staff to our competition. The facilitators had been pre-assigned to groups based on grade level (for the most part) and had already preselected team names. From there, they were invited to compete in a challenge to see "whose cuisine would reign supreme!" 
After finding out that the secret ingredient for the day would be "authenticity," our staff was then delivered baskets that held several kitchen items (mostly for decoration and ambiance) and the rest of the "ingredients" for the day. Our staff found out a couple of important things, including: Driving Question: How do we use community resources to develop authentic projects?
Problem Statement: How do we as NTH@C educators create cross-curricular projects that will solve real world problems?
While everyone was going through the items in their baskets, it was announced that there would be an additional secret ingredient! Each group was assigned a location in our city that they had to utilize in the design of their projects (examples included: library, community garden, chamber of commerce, parks, etc.). The task was to create a cross curricular project, using a location, that involved high priority learning standards from each group member's content. At the end of 2 hours, the groups had to present their projects to the rest of the staff and be evaluated by the "celebrity judges." To help the judges evaluate, the following guidelines were utilized:
Your completed project planning template using the 6A’s rubric included in your basket. (60 pt)The benchmark calendars included for each facilitator are optional.
The bulleted checklist below (40 pts)
Your completed project planning template using the 6A’s rubric included in your basket. (60 pt)The benchmark calendars included for each facilitator are optional.
The bulleted checklist below (40 pts)
- High Priority Learning Standards (10 pts)
- Cross-curricular including all group members (10 pts)
- Connections with assigned Coppell location (20 pts)
- Use a real world problem that would be found at the site or that your site might try to solve
- Use experts from the site to contribute or evaluate your project
- Use the site as a part of a final product/presentation
While I feel that everyone was a winner from the learning that took place, you can't have a competition without crowning an actual winner. The winner of the tastiest project went to several members of our Rookie (that's what we call 9th graders) team. See below for
the project developed by our Rookie facilitators: Janelle Bence, Danae Boyd, William Daughtrey, Laura Hynson, and Katherine Saucier. Also, please make sure that you read through to the end for a reflection about this process by one of our facilitators, Janelle Bence.
P@ved Paradise: Now What? (Slides presentation)
The Iron Chef PBL Design Challenge helped me re-examine the order of things. Most of my previous projects were products of arduous hours of planning. In my mind, there was this necessity of setting aside huge blocks of time in order to have an engaging, meaningful, authentic learning experience. And although I still believe this is true for most projects, having 30 minutes to meet with an already set community partner followed by an hour and a half of interdisciplinary planning with my talented colleagues resulted in a powerful connected project that solved a community need.
The expectations were clear. The context was set for us to determine how our learners could serve the City of Coppell Animal Services. We knew about the 6 As rubric, our planning template, our high priority standards, and we began to build. We delegated. We split off. We came back together. Before we knew it, it was done. And it was good. It made sense.
Sometimes, it takes hours or days to make something worthwhile. But sometimes, you’re fortunate enough to have a willing community partner. You know exactly what questions to ask. You know your standards and how they will translate into the necessary skills that fit the need of our partner. And you realize, there’s a different way to design, one that shakes up and interrupts your preconceptions.
Luckily, working at New Tech High at Coppell has invited us to take risks and experiment. And this low-stakes, high-reward design challenge was exciting, energizing, and empowering.
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