Full Disclosure: Mara loves this approach to teaching! She has taught PBL in the form of a class-wide project- everyone working from the same prompt to students choosing their own content. Core in her practice is that students were expected to present their projects to others, preferably beyond the classroom learners and to others from the community or experts within the given field. In addition PBL was always interdisciplinary in the content it covered whether working as a team of teachers delivering a project or herself within her own class subject. Her past learners would always come back to her and describe the projects they did in class as their favorite parts of the year. These projects make life-long impacts.
This page will include many of her tools and strategies for approaching PBL. Key is that the material shared here is taken and revised to meet YOUR and YOUR learners needs. Personalizing the learning experience will improve the outcomes.
When designing a PBL starting with Design Thinking is essential mixed with Backwards Design.


Antonio Miller
An example of materials collected for a project around the theme of safety and security for CTL Academy, Abuja, Nigeria
The big question is:
How can we help our community and nation feel (or be) more secure?
Resources to tap to use and share with students:
- Great article capturing what youth are doing to make the world a safer place
- TED talk on a researcher’s perspective about what common people can do
- A collection of TED talks on security, cyber security…
- UN article on safety and security
CTL Team- Here is a link to everyone’s pitches and the slide deck capturing the structure of the first week. Use this information to help inform you design of the details. Remember the VUCA model and the need to be Visionary, Understanding, Clear, Agile while we are in the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous state. Here is the link to the PBL Works website for more ideas and tools. Check out the resources and examples.
Here is an example of a project my daughter did in response to her Global Social Challenge of engaging in some kind of action around the UN Sustainable Goals for the month of August. This challenge was set through her participation in the Future Foundation Young Leaders program. After a bit of brainstorming of what to do particularly in her unique school environment she decided to create a website that would set challenges for each of her school hubs to engage in and then ask them to submit a form to collect information to measure the impact. Here is what she created: https://mybravestep.mystrikingly.com/ Time will tell as to the greater impact.