 Charter Academy in Chicago created a book to honor heroes in their community who are working as "Peacekeepers" to quell neighborhood violence. The project began with an in-depth study of the U.S. Constitution, which moved into a study of Second Amendment rights. This is a powerful issue for students. Gun violence is so extreme in the neighborhood surrounding the school that 96% of students personally knew someone who was a victim. The students worked with and interviewed local activists and civil servants, wrote compelling profiles of them, photographed them professionally, and published this book. They worked with those activists to create a citywide "Day of Peace"--a cease-fire--that sent a message of what is possible when neighbors work together. You can see that project here.
The full collection in the Center for Student Work is open to the public, with all examples free to view and download. It can be found here.
One of the best ways to understand the power of all three of these overlapping practices is to view a classroom where they are done well. You can view a short video of such a classroom here.
Responses From Readers
John Larmer from the Buck Institute for Education:
I agree with what all your contributors say. In 2012, I wrote a blog post to try to sort it out. Note: Sometimes people who saw just the bottom part of the chart in the post (when it was shared by cutting & pasting without the context) got the impression I was being critical of problem based learning - I'm not. Some problem-based learning folks objected to my saying it was more often single-subject, didn't always have a tangible product, and wasn't always "fully authentic" but a simulation. I think my words are accurate in terms of what is most typical, but yes, there are plenty of examples of problem-based units that are in fact interdisciplinary, with tangible products, and fully authentic.
Thanks to Jeff, Nancy, Derek, Christopher, Heather and Ron, and to readers, for their contributions!
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