Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:00]:
Welcome advocates to another episode of the Leading Equity podcast. A podcast that focuses on supporting educators with the tools and resources necessary to ensure equity at their schools. Today's special guest is first timer and I'm excited to bring this guest on Miss Charity L Moran is here. Co author of place based learning, connecting inquiry, community and culture 7 place based learning design principles to promote equity for all students and that's out of solution tree folks. I'll leave the links in the show notes. Charity, thank you so much for joining us today.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:00:36]:
Thank you for having me L.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:00:38]:
Pleasure's all mine. I'm excited for today's topic. But before we get into it, why don't you share a little bit about yourself and what you currently do?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:00:44]:
Okay. I am Charity L Moran from Shreveport, Louisiana, where I started my education career as a geometry teacher. That gave me experience with the New Tech model of project based learning as the geometry component of a biogeometry course, which led me to doing some school development coaching with the New Tech Network. And that work just kinda evolved into working as a district coordinator for for federal programs and title 1 programs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which has brought me to where I've been the past 10 years now working with the Buck Institute For Education, PBL Works as a national faculty member, doing some curriculum designing there around project based learning and thinking about equity and culturally responsive teaching. And we're here now. I'm with my partners, Mickey Evans and Aaron Sanchez at PBL Path, where we're taking place based learning a bit deeper under the umbrella of project based learning.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:47]:
Alright. Well, welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for that. Okay. Let's let's get into it because PBL stands for project based learning. Is that correct?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:01:56]:
Correct.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:01:57]:
Okay. But your book is entitled place based learning, which is also a PBL. So let let's start there.

Speaker C [00:02:04]:
Yes.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:02:04]:
Project based learning, place based learning, do they are they related? Like, talk to us about what that looks like.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:02:11]:
They are related. So, place based learning is project based learning with an emphasis on asking students to think critically and creatively about how to make their community a better place or how to amplify bright things that are already in their community. So it's place based learning is also a PBL. We lowercase the b to differentiate the 2, right? But it is grounded in this, in the unique sort of environmental, cultural, socio sociopolitical, and economic, and don't forget historical context of the community. So, a lot of times we start with historical places, like the Whitney Plantation or, you know, like Native American reservations and things of the sort or monuments and museums even, but we take it a bit deeper. So anchoring projects in places.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:03:03]:
This is this is exciting. I'm I'm really because I saw project based learning. I saw place based learning. So you're saying that it's based off of a place. So is that something to where we're encouraging teachers to look at within their community and finding the place there, or is it more on a global scale? Like, talk to us about how that works.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:03:24]:
Immediate community that the school serves. And so in that way, we become intimately familiar with the assets, you know, of that specific space that we're serving. And then we can align our projects with content standards and topics that can be environmental, cultural, socio political, economic, or even, you know, attached to the historical context either of that immediate community or we can think about our content standards, think about our students and their specific desires and strengths. And then think about it all the way up to the global level, where we can explore, you know, earth as a place according to whatever the content standards are and the nature of the deeper learning experience that we want to design for our students. Or it could be as specific as a particular place such as Whitney Plantation or Melrose Plantation, which are places that I've worked with at home in Louisiana. So anywhere from the immediate neighborhood all the way to the earth, Craig.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:04:39]:
Okay. Okay. I like that. Alright. Alright. So when I think about project based learning, I often think about it from a group perspective, like a group project. So multiple people either in pairs, twos and threes, fours and fives, groups like that. And so I I'm just curious, is this something that taps into more on a community building collective side of things, or are there some connections for an individual a student who prefers to work alone? Talk talk to us about that.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:05:10]:
Right. So one of our design principles is student ownership. And that is one of the ways in which we, you know, deviate from the traditional understanding of project based learning is that in terms of student ownership, it can be individualized in terms, you know, especially in regards to the nature of the project and thinking about Eakins, you know, who our students are. There's a way of going about it in both an individualistic and a collaborative way. Throughout the course of instruction, there's always going to be encouraged some moments of collaboration as well as moments of individual accountability through formative assessments, through both informal and formal opportunities for teachers to build in ways for students to do feedback, revision, reflection. So that would then lead to some of the more peer to peer and collaborative moments. However, at its core, a lot of our, you know, strategies that we present in the book and present in workshops and with teachers really are just based on what do we know about our students. If their strengths lie in individualistic ways, you know, then we can start there and then build to get them to still be able to work in collaborative environments as necessary, but definitely paying attention to and holding great weight to the students' ways of knowing and ways of learning.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:06:34]:
Okay. Alright. I like that. Alright. So walk me through a and I'm assuming this is place based is covers all disciplines, not just the history, social studies type of thing.

Speaker C [00:06:45]:
Is that

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:06:46]:
I I should probably ask that question first before I ask my next question. Does this cover all disciplines?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:06:51]:
Absolutely. Every ounce of content can be explored through a place based learning experience.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:06:57]:
Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. So then

Speaker C [00:07:00]:
here here's my question then. Walk us through a place based learning from okay.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:07:01]:
How do I select the the place? What kind of projects how do I determine what the project looks like? Kind of give us a look. I know it's I know it's in your book. I know it's broken down, 7 principles. But give us like a short version, I guess. We're link there's links to the L notes, folks. Get the book. But I just Eakins of want to see what what just walk us through that, please.

Speaker C [00:07:23]:
Well, we do have several examples in

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:07:24]:
the book, but it is gonna really,

Charity Marcella Moran [00:07:24]:
really, really be my joy to talk about a recent example. I'm working myself and my colleagues, my co authors, we're working to support a few schools in the central region of Ghana. And so we have been what does it look like? We've been meeting in small cohorts once a week to really intentionally dig into via WhatsApp groups, right? So already we're thinking about what are the other ways of knowing for the teachers L. And so we're thinking about the schools that you serve, be they rural or in the urban center. Let's do a community asset mapping. Let's do some mapping of what's immediately around in the village. Is there a mechanic shop? Is there a, you know, macadamia nut? What's there? What is the nature of the surroundings that your students are intimately familiar with? And then we say, okay. What are some things that I know this community could benefit from, or what are the particular topics politically or, you know, just culturally in the villages that I know I need to kinda tackle.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:08:38]:
And that's where we get to pull in the teachers' passions as well. And so from that, 3 big ideas have bubbled up for 3 different pockets of schools. And so one is being really dedicated to saying, okay. The conversation turned into the girls at the village need to be empowered to understand that they too can be entrepreneurs. Like, really passionate topics important to that community. A second is about understanding the nature that these are cocoa formers and, you know, one harvest a year might be what it takes to sustain the family. So how do I encourage proper nutrition given that context place. And then there's a third place where they're borderland.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:09:22]:
It's a rural school, but it's boarded to the city because the city's pushing out. And so the students are starting to undervalue the the agricultural nature of the community. So, like, one country, one central region of the country, but 3 different pockets according to the exploration of the assets in the community. Now we say, what content are we teaching and when, public products or some of the community products are letters to folks in the community beneficial from us. So it's beneficial for us in this project. So that's really kind of the I really get excited about that. But that's really kind of the gist of where do we start, how do we start, and where do we go from there? Because now as teachers, we

Speaker C [00:10:13]:
know how to plan lessons. Now these

Charity Marcella Moran [00:10:13]:
lessons are anchored in these

Speaker C [00:10:15]:
3 big ideas that are all centered around our students and kind of getting

Charity Marcella Moran [00:10:16]:
back at the individual versus collective of the projects. Those girls can choose whether they want to create a business together or if they'd rather run on their own. You know, the agriculture project, we're thinking about ways farmland that my family is, is a bit, you know, far. So that person might be working, that student might be working a little more in an individual basis, but still coming back and getting like the thought partnership and the benefit of the in class collaboration. So really excited. That's not in the book. You'd have to, you know, eat that.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:10:57]:
I like I like I like how you did that. Okay. Alright. So alright. So what role does this do the students did the students play in this project as far as identifying those assets that you mentioned? Like, you said it was 3 areas. What role did they play in in discovering that?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:11:14]:
Okay. So absolutely. So first of all, it was the teacher saying, this is what we want. This what we think our students want. We took a moment to actually go back and say, okay, now let's let's actually ask the students does this make sense for them? Is this something that they want to learn? And resoundingly, yes. And then it was like, how do

Speaker C [00:11:34]:
you want to learn it?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:11:34]:
What do we need to think of that we haven't thought of yet? So we're still kind of in that phase of working with the students now to cocreate that map for instruction, that pathway for instruction throughout the course of the project. But that's kinda where we are now. Now that teachers have done some of the initial explorations, now we're asking students, does this make sense to you or, and does this make sense for you? And now we're gonna get to do some of those adjustments before instruction rolls out in a couple weeks.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:12:06]:
Okay. So okay. Just so I'm clear, because is this a school wide project or is this, like, a certain teacher or like a department that's L me understand how this applies or maybe this relates to the school side of things. Is this the English class that's leading this? Is this the math class that's leading this? Is this the p class music? Like, who's who's leading this project?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:12:30]:
So in this in this specific example over in Ghana, things are already, you know, cross curricular and integrated in many of the environments. That's what I like. Okay. One teacher teaching all of the things and and, you know, most of the students in this grade level. But when we, you know, take it back to, you know, just in general thinking about place based learning, the the answer to that question is kinda like a yes. It's L them. So it can be the math teacher wants to do some by various statistical analysis to show the disparities of zip codes and resources. Right.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:13:04]:
And that person would just, you know, spearhead designing that project and integrate some Eakins, and, or we like to encourage the practice of, you know, reaching across and saying, hey, English lit teacher, I'm doing this project, but there's this piece that I'd love your students to read, you know, our students to read that's on redlining. Right? So if they if you could pull that in, if not, no worries. I'll, you know, I'll make space in my math class for this reading to take place. So it can be as haphazard, you know, and organic as that or as intentional as this whole grade level. We're gonna sit down together and figure out where does our content overlap, and then how does that connect to the community or a place or topic that we can anchor and to get to this place based experience. And that's some of the work we do at PBL Path is really sitting down and fostering those cap conversations between department heads and leadership and things of that sort.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:14:05]:
Do you encourage I feel like I know the answer to this, but do you encourage the schools to work collaboratively in a sense like, okay, this is a project. English folks, you're going to, like you said, have your students read this excerpt. Math folks, you're going to have them break down the data this way. Or do you kinda like what you said, alternative would be for that math teacher to, okay, I'll just make space within my my lesson plans to have them read this piece. Like, how do you recommend these place based learning projects take place?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:14:38]:
If we were to wave a magic wand at a school and all wheels would click, it would definitely be cross curricular, fully integrated, you know Yeah. And not just in implementation. That that mandates that planning also, you know, creates space for that type of planning to occur. However, if that can occur, that does not mean that place based learning cannot occur.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:15:02]:
Okay. Okay.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:15:03]:
We have tools and processes that still walk you you through it to say, okay. I know I'm just the math teacher, but I can re you know, access resources and see what is being discussed in other classes at this time and see where can I do some intentional intersections? But it's it's not you know? Yeah. Magic wand versus some folks' reality and everything in between.

Speaker C [00:15:28]:
I I I

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:15:28]:
could just hear folks that are like, oh, you know, this sounds great, but, you know, I gotta wait for my my staff to get on board or there's oh, mister mister Jones, he wouldn't be for this. Like, you know, these are kind of things that I can see people are kinda thinking as they're listening to this. Like, oh, this sounds like a great project or a great thing to do school wide, however. And so it sounds like what I'm hearing from you, Charity, is that don't necessarily wait for, quote, unquote, everybody to be on board. There's things that you can do.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:15:58]:
Absolutely. And I and there's ways to those things such that our students benefit

Speaker C [00:16:01]:
from it. Even if I'm the only unicorn

Charity Marcella Moran [00:16:02]:
on campus who wants to do place based learning, every child that comes through my classroom is gonna benefit from that place based learning experience. I mean, would they get more? Of course, if it was school wide, duh. Start where we can.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:18]:
I got you. Okay. Okay. Alright. Alright.

Speaker C [00:16:21]:
So oh, okay. Well well okay. I'm gonna throw this out here because, you

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:16:24]:
know, we're all about advocacy and doing what's best for our kids. Let's say I am a teacher that is, like, I wanna do this, but I'm just a teacher. I'm just a, you know, that that's just my role. I'm I'm brand new. 1st year. Whatever. I don't have any clout yet. What Eakins of advocating strategies could you give to them to or who should they go to talk to in order to maybe look at this becoming something more of a school wide project?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:16:50]:
Come to pblpath.com. Contact us, we would love the thought partnership on any and all of this, but 9 times out of 10, you know, we're gonna say, what is your sphere of control? And so always start in your 4 walls. And then, you know, by way of example, because I was that unicorn for a long time. And my test results at the end of the year and on benchmark assessments were far better than any of the others, just by strength of the the level of experiences that students were getting. Then it became more of, okay, like a conversation of talking to a department head or who does your formal and informal classroom observations, letting them know that, hey. Trying, I see that it's working, what, what, what are they willing to do, you know, and just kind of talking to everyone who will listen, you know, and being respectful of the hierarchy of communication that exists in your respective space, but that would be, you know, the most too impactful things you could do right quick is hit us up, let us thought partner with you, and then start where you can and control what you can.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:18:01]:
Fair enough. Okay. Alright. So let's let's switch over gears for just a moment. We're we're gonna talk about, like, the grading, how does or the assessment piece to things. So, for example, you'd mentioned that there's this project that you have going on in Ghana. Are we how do you grade that? Like, you know, if if one of the the girls has a successful business, so they get a, like, how how does the the grading work within a place based learning project?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:18:27]:
We really encourage what we like to say, liberatory assessments. So these are things that, of course, a grade can be assigned to, but it also kinda stems from this notion of short form critiques of traditional assessments. Right? Things that are typically seen as oppressing and limiting to students' growth and development. Things like standardized tests, you know, that have been criticized for perpetuating biases. And so throughout the course of the work of the project, we encourage many, many, many checkpoints along the journey where we're, you know, providing feedback to students, perhaps assigning grades in a numerical way. Because we understand that we're still working in systems that require grades and monitoring and, you know, all of this is attached to this notion of assessment, but assessment is so much more than a grade, especially when we're talking about place based learning. So, you know, using using assessment and designing it so thoroughly throughout the course of the project and along the way, such that when students get to submitting of that final product or having that final presentation, they and educator both know what that score is because we've worked on it and refined it with such intention along the way. And because things are aligned to the standards and the standards are connected to those standardized tests at the end, we know with double the certainty that students understand the content and the standards at the depth necessary.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:20:07]:
Okay. Yeah. So that's essentially the core of it is is thinking about assessment differently in such that students and educator are so empowered along the way, alongside empowering their communities, that the content is a no brainer, and we we got that. You know? That's not we got that.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:20:24]:
Okay. So if a student transfers to another out of district school or just a school that doesn't have a place based learning centralized type of thing or just they go from one math teacher to the next math teacher, those grades, quote, unquote, grades will be able to transfer without any problem.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:20:41]:
We're still doing things like quizzes and common formative assessments and benchmark assessments. Yeah. So, you know, we we do that alongside the laboratory assessment practices knowing that we're still in transition, we haven't fully reached Utopia, but we're tinkering our way there.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:20:59]:
Okay. See, initially I was thinking like, wait, I mean, that I'd love the liberty liberation and all. Like, that sounds awesome, but they still gotta have for a lot of schools

Speaker C [00:21:08]:
and a

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:08]:
lot of classrooms, they still need to have grades. So it sounds like you're saying that they still will have tests and quizzes built in along the way.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:21:15]:
Yes. Absolutely. And activities and, you know, anything we're grading now, classroom discussions or, worksheets and things of the sort. Worksheets don't grow dendrites by themselves, but they do support learning processes and allow for, you know, formative assessments that can be connected to grades.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:21:35]:
K. I have another question. I know a lot of a tea a lot of teachers, they kinda know what this like, what their school year is gonna look like, so we might spend our summers planning the unit. And once we kinda have a core, yeah, this is what I'm gonna do, a lot of us will do the same thing each each semester or each year. By by January, we're we're supposed to be talking about this, and by February. So is place based learning something where we should encourage teachers to plan a brand new class each semester or each school year, or are they able to bring in a lot of the stuff that they typically would use into the next like like, is there, like, that core stuff that they can just keep using, or is this a brand new project every single time?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:22:21]:
Oh, man. It's kind of a yes to both because we can use the same project every semester, but because we each iteration take into consideration the current students that we're serving and as as communities grow and change, we consider the current assets of the community or the place that we're discussing. So semester 1 project around this specific unit that I always teach every semester, every semester 1. But that project is just a good solid framework that's gonna you know, some of the intricacies might change according to the students that I'm serving. So it's a little bit of both.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:02]:
Lot of both here. So okay. Alright. Well, I I mean, I'm just I mean, I'm intrigued. I I really am intrigued with place based learning. It's not something I've heard about. I'm familiar with project based learning, so this is just all brand new to me. How would you suggest a teacher that's wanting they get your book.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:23:20]:
Obviously, there's a 7 principles there. Do you recommend a teacher take take on this huge project, place based learning, you know, I don't know, on a large scale, or do you say start small? Like, what are your recommendations for someone that's, like, just kinda brand new to this whole this realm?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:23:38]:
Oh, that's such a great question. As they are going through the book and as we explore each principle, at the end of every chapter, teachers are brainstorming, documenting what they understood or learned, and ideas they have for their classroom. So my recommendation would be once you get through all of the design principles and explore some of those examples, you know, let that help you decide where you wanna start. And think about the context of the nature of the collaboration on campus. If it is easy, if your team teaching already and your team teachers on board, like there are conditions that could kind of help determine that if students have never had place based or even project based exposure before, then maybe you do want to start with 1 topic and small so that it's more about the process of projecting and learning content. And then gently expand over the course of the year or if you're you're lucky enough to loop with kids, you know, expand over the course of your time with a pocket of children. So it's a little bit of everything yet again. It's because place based learning is so contextual and so anchored to the community and the place that we're serving.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:24:56]:
These are excellent questions that we just have to think about in a one on, you know, like a context by context basis.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:25:06]:
Is this you do you recommend it? So this says grades 4 to L. So maybe not the L the lower grades for for place based learning?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:25:14]:
In terms of well, yeah. Definitely. It could still be. I think that 4 through 12 was L to lower grades. Because we know that these are those are very foundational grades and some things, you know, need to just be explored differently. So we wanna make space to give them their attention they need.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:25:47]:
Got you. Okay. Okay. Well, I'll tell you what. I I've definitely learned a lot, Charity, and I appreciate you for coming on and and sharing all about place based learning. I'd love for you to take us home with one final word of advice to our list.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:25:59]:
Okay. So in the words of Kanye West, you gotta listen to the kids, bro. Now we can we can we as teachers can design these beautiful experiences, but if the students are not going to receive it, it will be for so just like we're doing in Ghana, taking a moment to pause taking a moment to pause and check-in with the people we serve and say, hey, does this make sense for you? Is this something you wanna do? So listen to the kids, bro.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:26:26]:
Listen to the kids, bro. So I like that. I like that. So alright. Alright. Cool. So if we have some folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way to reach you online?

Charity Marcella Moran [00:26:35]:
Pblpath.com. You can email me directly at [email protected] or same for mickeyandaron, erinpblpath.com. On Instagram as well at pblpath. We're having fun.

Dr. Sheldon Eakins [00:26:50]:
Alright. Well, folks, links in the show notes. Charity, it has sure it has surely been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.

Charity Marcella Moran [00:26:56]:
Thank you,

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