The Negotiated Project Approach: Project-Based Learning without Leaving the Standards Behind

Before reading this article, I was really skeptical of project based learning. I had an experience with project based learning my senior year in high school, when they were trying to totally revamp our school and it was terrible. Furthermore, teaching senior project now has shown how it can be very problematic in terms of actually getting kids motivated and making sure they are learning. Its kind of difficult to teach standards in a project form, especially if the students have a wide-variety of options to choose from and grading can be even harder. How to access whether a project meets the criteria.

However, after reading this article and understanding that projects should not be semester based as both of my experiences with it are semester, I think there are some serious benefits to project based. The first is that it provides ownership. Ownership is a skill and knowledge that is severely lacking in Hawaii and low-income communities. The other is that college and the job world completely revolves around projects. Therefore, its important for us to teach these skills.