10: How Project-Based Learning Helps Students Thrive
In this episode of Unlocking School Success, high school math educators and Project Think co-founders Charles Slusher and Joe Sneed share how project-based learning (PBL) transforms classrooms. We discuss their journey from traditional math instruction to creating innovative, hands-on learning experiences that build deeper student engagement, differentiation, and real-world problem-solving skills. The conversation highlights how PBL supports all learners—especially those who struggle in conventional classrooms—by offering flexibility, choice, and meaningful connections to learning.
Key Takeaways:
Learning in Context – PBL makes subjects relevant by tying them to real-world applications and community-based projects.
Differentiation & Flexibility – Projects give teachers multiple ways to individualize instruction and let students show understanding in different formats.
Messy but Meaningful Learning – PBL embraces feedback, revisions, and growth instead of one-shot testing, building resilience and critical thinking.
Support for Diverse Learners – By emphasizing student choice and voice, PBL helps neurodiverse students and those who struggle in traditional classrooms thrive.
Resources:
Building Resilience in Students Impacted by Adverse Childhood Experiences by Victoria Romero (affiliate link)
Experience and Education by John Dewey (affiliate link)
Connect with Charles & Joe:
Connect with Scotti:
Transcript
10: How Project-Based Learning Helps Students Thrive
[00:00:00]
Charles Slusher: Learning is messy, right? Just because a student is struggling and just because of a student like might not be getting things perfectly the first time they try it, doesn't mean they're not doing well. In fact, that's probably a really important part of the learning process that we all need to remind ourselves of.
School has done a really good job of training us to think that we just have to be good citizens and check each box and we'll be fine. And if you're gonna really authentically learn, it's probably gonna be messier than that.
Scotti Weintraub: Welcome to Unlocking School Success, a podcast with the smart strategies and support parents need to help their kids thrive. I'm your host, Scotty Weintraub, parent coach, school navigator, and your go-to guide for turning School Stress and Chaos into clear strategies that work. Let's get started.
Hi, and welcome back to another episode of Unlocking School Success Today. I am thrilled to be joined by not one but two guests who are going to give us some real food for thought [00:01:00] around project based learning, which I'm really excited to share with you. And today I have Charles Flusher and Joe Snead, who are both high school math educators. And I'm gonna let them tell you a little bit more about their background. But it's a pleasure to have you with me.
Charles Slusher: Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Scotti Weintraub: Yeah, Charles, just jump in and tell us a little bit about your professional work. You're also, I should mention both of you are co-founders of a new initiative called Project Think, and so I wanna hear more about it.
Charles Slusher: Yeah. So I'll start. So my background was I was a pure mathematician.
I grew up on a farm. I was the odd ball of my little tiny community in Kansas. And I became, I went to college and became studied pure mathematics, pure theoretical mathematics. Joined a Peace Corps. And that was my first exposure to actually teaching, was in the Peace Corps I taught in Southern Africa.
Later went to graduate school in economics and then eventually ended up as a cla as a classroom teacher. And I've been both a teacher and an educational [00:02:00] learner for about the past 28 years, I believe in pretty diverse settings. Outside of the Peace Corps, I've also worked in urban areas.
As well as some rural areas and suburban areas. I've been both a teacher, just a math teacher, but also a instructional specialist and instructional coach. And really through my own personal experiences and my professional experiences I came to a point where I. As Joe probably mention too, a lot of students the stereotypical question to Matthews is, why do we have to learn this?
And I think I started asking myself that same question about so much. So many of the things we were teaching is, why do we have to learn this? And so I was really fortunate about 10 years ago to to collaborate with Joe who will introduce himself in a minute. And we created this project-based math sequence at Lincoln High School, which is where we taught teach at the time.
And, we have been developing this project-based curriculum over the past many years, and it's now led us to doing some work outside of our own schools and then developing project Think, [00:03:00] which is a really it's a nonprofit and its goals are broad, but in general, what we're hoping to do is to start off by using projects to help teachers and schools and districts build.
Deeper learning environments within their classrooms. So we really have a big holistic view of how classrooms really should look and schools should look to, to benefit students. And so our project think is geared towards helping expand that idea.
Joe Sneed: Yeah. Thanks, Chuck and thank you Scotty for having us.
Really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation. I was born in Alaska and that is where I am recording right now. I'm up here for vacation. So I went to school in Oregon. My, my undergraduate studies, I got a major in math and art. And then after I graduated, I leaned into the art side.
I collaborated with nonprofits for a number of years, designing projects that would [00:04:00] bring neighborhoods, classrooms, and local organizations into constructive projects. Directing those different organizations to build things like greenhouses. We built a greenhouse at Dignity Village, which is a really cool nonprofit in.
Portland. I worked with King K-8, elementary, and Da Vinci Arts Middle School to take a brown site and turn it into a community learning center, which was another really exciting project. Both those were durable results and that they're still active. Both those sites are still being used by the neighborhoods and by the communities that help build them.
So that from there, I meandered into education. I got my, degree, my master's degree in secondary math at Teacher's College in New York, and then I went to Lincoln after that. So as Chuck mentioned, we started collaborating early on. Really my second year, we built a new curriculum that was an alternative math curriculum where [00:05:00] students were learning math through how.
Organizations around Portland were using algebra algebra skills. And so the students would go out and visit the organizations, the professionals from those organizations would come into the classroom, and every unit was organized around that sort of experience. So that launched us. And from there, over the next decade, we built out a full project-based sequence.
And as Chuck said, we have shifted out of the classroom into a business where we want to keep providing those experiences. And really, for me, it's exciting because it's. Full loop in that I'm going back to designing designing projects, designing learning experiences that are very similar to what I was doing when I was a community artist.
So it's been fun and exciting to go back to that.
Scotti Weintraub: I just love what you all are doing and hearing your backgrounds, obviously that you bring to these conversations is so interesting too. Because I think Charles mentioned, that [00:06:00] maybe this was before we just started recording, he was mentioning that, these broad experiences that you've had that you bring them into the classroom, and that's one way in which you are really broadening the scope beyond just it being about math instruction.
So you're bringing in other elements. You're bringing in art, you're bringing in community you're bringing in all these other things that help create a richer environment. What do you think? Obviously people who are listening are parents for the most part. And what do you think are a few like overarching themes around why is project-based learning and the way that you're describing that you're, you've been doing it and now want to continue to promote.
Why is project-based learning so impactful? What makes, what's the special sauce there?
Joe Sneed: Yeah, so I've been thinking about this recently I think project based learning provides a great vehicle for as your program gets into reframing experiences [00:07:00] that students are having in the classroom, and I like two important things that it does when it's done well is the learning is happening in context.
And so that question that, that came up earlier, like, why do we have to learn this? That's answered right off the bat. And that makes space for getting into new things and really. Shedding some of the baggage that students have had as, as they've been through math classes over the year, over the years.
Another thing that it does is that. The learning and the understanding is demonstrated through projects rather than tests. And when those projects are done well, students have multiple opportunities to develop those projects. So they'll get feedback from teachers and then they get another opportunity to demonstrate their understanding by rebuilding their project and they can have multiple opportunities.
So it's just it's not a. One shot attempt, which traditional testing in a math classroom can be. And for a lot of students that's hard. It's really hard to connect with the subject when that's [00:08:00] when you're having an experience where you're struggling with the testing or you're struggling with the direct instruction at the board.
And by making those two chefs shifts of learning and context and doing the projects, I think students find a way to identify with the material and identify with what's happening in the classroom in a new way.
Charles Slusher: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I think Joe and I'll both admit that like when we started doing this, it was a little bit of an experiment and we've learned so much.
And for me, I know what I've learned. It is really just how as Joe mentioned the projects can be a vehicle. They're, the project in themselves are fine, the curriculum is fine, but really what they are is they're their access points for being able to differentiate instruction.
That's a huge thing, right? To be able to like individualize things for each student. And so what the project does for me is it gives me the flexibility to be able to, address individual needs of students and have students be able to access the way in which they learn and the way in which they demonstrate their learning in just different forms.
And so that flexibility has been just [00:09:00] really important and it's led us to not only like. Recognize the importance of the idea of the project, but also recognize, I think, some bigger picture items and goals in classrooms around, student voice and community building and student engagement.
So those things are all like, they fit really well, the idea of projects, but they go beyond the idea of projects. And for me, that's really what the project based learning has done is broaden my view of what I want a classroom to look like. And. What tools can we employ to help that happen?
Scotti Weintraub: One piece you mentioned that I think is really impactful for parents like me who have Neurodiverse kids, is that idea that of differentiation. And maybe you could just talk a little bit more about what is differentiation for parents who may be, that's a new word, and why is it so impactful to do that work?
Charles Slusher: Students are individuals, right? [00:10:00] Students learn in very different ways. And even, over the course of your own lifetime, right? You may learn in different ways as you proceed. And so differentiation has been, for a long time, as long as I've been an educator, it's been one of the, one of the goals of being in a classroom be able to differentiate instruction.
And what that's traditionally meant is, maybe explaining something in a different way using auditory versus visual versus kinetic methods for instruction. So it's, it really, and I'll be honest, I can be a little blunt at times, right? It's, it, for the most part, when you're using like a set curriculum, a textbook differentiation is window dressing.
It's like you're doing these things as a teacher to try to differentiate, but you're really not differentiating. For me, what differentiating means is like being able to have the time and the space. To learn about the student, know what their strengths and weaknesses are, and then allow them to learn in the setting that helps them the most.
So for me, differentiation is just about individualization. And one of the great things, I mean we haven't mentioned it yet, but as [00:11:00] part of the project based stuff, we also do inquiry based instruction in which, Joe and I do, like we don't stand at the board and lecture. We provide activities in which students work both collaboratively and individually.
And then we walk around and we are guides. We're both really influenced also by Montessori school models, even though we're high school teachers. And that idea of teacher as a guide is really important to us. And so the idea of differentiation is really just learning about each individual student and being able to access what we can do as a guide to help them as their, as in their own individual sense.
Joe Sneed: Yeah. Something that I would add to that is with differentiation, something that I think about a lot is providing multiple access points to what we want students to learn. And there's not one way of doing that. And I think math creates a really rich context for that. 'cause math has a lot of applications and also math can have a lot of different modalities in terms of how it's learned.
And so in a classroom. One day we may be working digitally, another day we might be working with their hands another day, students might be [00:12:00] working collaboratively. Another day we might be doing something that's art-based, where students are crafting something and making something that's uniquely their own.
Another day we might be talking as a whole group in a more Socratic sort of situation around an idea. So making those shifts from day to day. Allow students to access it in different ways and also helps you get to know your students. That's one of the most exciting things for me in the classroom when I'm differentiating well, is I realize wow, this student learns entirely different than this student and this student needs this approach.
And I get to know my students better through them having opportunities to show me who they are and how they learn.
Scotti Weintraub: I love that so much because as a parent I've often been frustrated with, the lack of differentiation or the lack of acknowledgement around different modes of learning and different ways that different brains work and.
It seems to me that math is one of those [00:13:00] places where instruction has traditionally been very prescribed and done, in very specific ways that don't always lend itself to the pieces that you are talking about that are more experiential, that are bringing in different perspectives. What have been some of the challenges in terms of.
Being able to actually move forward with this kind new maybe it's not some new, but new to a lot of people approach to learning something that's pretty traditional, like math.
Joe Sneed: Yeah. I think that came up in my initial framing around project-based learning is that students do carry a lot of experiences with them into the classroom and what I call baggage, and it can take.
Months for students to shed that baggage to shed those things that have created assumption and expectation around what a math classroom or really [00:14:00] what any classroom can look like. And again, I think the differentiation piece is really important there to where you show students that you're willing to be flexible for them, that you want to give them space to show you who they are and how they learn.
And. It just takes time and a lot of conversations and helping them reset what they think a classroom can be. Really nice. Format that Chuck and I had in our program, our project based program at our high school was that it was a three year program and most of the students that we had would start with Algebra one, two, go into geometry or Geometry and art, which is an interdisciplinary class that I taught, and then go into Algebra three, four, and some students would come in at the freshman level and right off the bat, like getting into learning through applications.
That was enough. Like they're like, I can do this. Like math is exciting to me. Now, other students, it would take a year and a half like Chuck and I would see that breakthrough after a year and a half, and then it would just continue to build. And so I think [00:15:00] for every student it's different. And it depends on what their trajectory has been in math and what they've been, dragged through in other classrooms or what positive and negative experiences they've had. And I don't think there's one way of tapping into what's gonna make it click for a student. I think you have to be really flexible and creative in terms of how you communicate and connect with the students.
But I think also just trusting the process and trusting that with time and with, a really earnest and authentic effort with the students trying to access 'em that students will begin to trust you.
Charles Slusher: Yeah. We've been incredibly fortunate to be, to have had so much support both from our administration and from our school community.
So I will say we, we've definitely, there's been challenges but for the most part, like the level of support we received has been phenomenal. Our principal has always had so much trust in us and then all the parents, all the community members that we've worked with have.
Really just put a lot of faith in, in what we're doing. But like just said, a lot of it is really just, it's a shift and I, [00:16:00] I actually don't think it's so much the project based shift. It's more of the inquiry based and, things can be messy. And I think a lot of students have a really hard time, not a lot.
Some students have a really hard time adjusting to the messiness and the fact that they won't necessarily have a clean right answer that, you know. Joe and I would go on and be like, check that's correct. Check that, or, x, that's correct. And so that idea that it could be messy and that learning can have some discomfort, I think is something that could be a challenge.
And I, that's something I'd say that, for parents, message for parents is like. Learning is messy, right? Just because a student is struggling and just because of a student like might not be getting things perfectly the first time they try it, doesn't mean they're not doing well. In fact, that's probably a really important part of the learning process that we all need to remind ourselves of.
School has done a really good job of training us to think that we just have to be good citizens and check each box and we'll be fine. And if you're gonna really authentically learn, it's probably [00:17:00] gonna be messier than that. It's gonna be messy, it's gonna be challenging. Sometimes it's gonna be frustrating.
And so I think what Joe and I have been working a lot on over the course of our time is trying to create that balance where it's like there's real authentic learning that has its challenges, has its struggles, but doesn't create frustrations that then are deterrent to, to, to more learning, right?
Because stress can cause a lack of learning as well. So I think for me at least, that's been my biggest struggle is just trying to like. Figure out that balance where it's like real learning can be hard, it can be a complex and uncomfortable. And I still want students to engage.
Scotti Weintraub: Yeah. And I think that's a really interesting perspective for us to keep in mind too, is that if things aren't easy, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
And that just because they, and I talk about this a lot in my coaching too, just because they don't know it they don't have the [00:18:00] skill at the moment doesn't mean that they will never gain it. And so I use the word yet a lot.
Charles Slusher: Yeah.
Scotti Weintraub: We're not there yet. And that yet leaves us possibility. That we're evolving.
And that's what I love about what you're talking about is that it is a process.
Charles Slusher: Okay. I say to students a lot, right? If everything is really easy I'm probably not doing you much good. I'm probably not helping you learn and grow in a way that's effective.
Joe Sneed: And I think a big breakthrough moment that I have with students is to where they do make their first project or they do their first demonstration of their understanding and it becomes clear to 'em that's not it.
It's not over that it's gonna be a process and that I'm gonna give 'em feedback and that we're gonna enter a conversation through their work. And just like Chuck tells his students what he just said all the time, I have phrases like that too, to where. It's I have no expectation that this work is going to be perfect.
If it was, we'd have nothing to talk about. Like I want to give you guys challenges so that we begin this [00:19:00] conversation and you get into this sort of evolution to where you're building things over time and over the course of the year, you can see that growth. I think when that growth becomes transparent in the classroom, and that becomes part of the conversation between students, each other, and myself and the students, like that's when it becomes really exciting in the classroom because you can see the group and you can see the students emerging within that space.
Scotti Weintraub: I'm curious if you could describe for us just some of the impact that you feel like for students that you have seen in using these kinds of more hands-on approaches to learning. And if you, if you have examples that you could share just about that real impact that I'm hearing you describing.
Joe Sneed: Yeah. One that comes to mind for me immediately and because it's so fresh, is I teach a geometry in art class that is near to me. It brings in two things that I really value, and I spend a lot of time with those kids because they're getting two credits. It's really two classes that just gets taught as one class, [00:20:00] and I have a lot of students that come into that classroom that have never felt confident and never felt like they've had a voice in a math classroom. And within the first month, we're building our first project, which historically has been optical illusions and, I have multiple students get to the end of that unit, make their project, we do an exhibit, they feel ex really good and really excited about it, and then it clicks for 'em.
The first time that it was like that was mathematical, that was math that I was learning and I found a way to express it. I found a way to demonstrate it that I feel really good about. That was received really well. And I think it's the first time for many students that it's I have a place in math classroom.
And then you see that build over the course of the year. You see them build that identity. And then after this class, they, most of them go into the next project based class. And again, it's like they, they now have a home. They have a voice, they have an identity in those spaces. And so [00:21:00] seeing that growth and seeing them carve out a space for themselves is really exciting and really fun.
You all mentioned earlier that, obviously these ideas are, can apply outside of math and I love that you brought up this art and math put together example. Tell me a little bit more about how you see this project based learning really being less about math and specific and more about learning in general and applicable to other subjects.
Charles Slusher: None of the projects we do are pure math projects. Everything has a component that brings other things. I can give you example. Joe talks about his art a little bit too, but I have, I have a project that I start my year for my advanced algebra students with where they are exploring they have options.
That's the other thing too, right? There's always options. Students have so much choice in the project with class, which is really nice. But [00:22:00] they study either looking at populations or some financial aspect or some pharmac pharmacological thing. So they have these choices where the context of the math they're learning, it fits within something that they're actually interested in.
And but I think even beyond the multidisciplinary work, but I think it's really, it. Really interesting. I, Joe gets hears this too many times, but I was an economist. I was trained as an economist. I was, I worked as a research scientist before I became a teacher. And so efficiency's a big thing.
And so the most disciplinary thing is I don't know why schools it's such an inefficient model to be like siloing each discipline from each other. In our school you go to 90 minutes, you go to your English class, and the next 90 minutes you go to your biology class. The next 90 minutes you go to your math class.
It's like there's so many overlaps and gaps. It's it's such an efficient model. But for us too, I think Joe and I talk a lot about what we value and how we show how what we value shows up in the classroom. And so much of what high school really I feel like should be, is. Learning things for sure, learning concepts, learning, developing [00:23:00] skills.
But some of the skills they're developing are things around like persevering, using feedback being collaborative, like so many of those things in many ways that those ideas drive what Joe and I do, much more so than any math concepts we're learning. We de. We teach math, but the things that we really value are what kinds of things are students gonna leave?
And 10 years from now, they're still gonna be using and they're not gonna be using the quadratic formula. They're probably not gonna be a three teaching calculus. They're probably not gonna be taking derivatives. Some might, but very small number. But will they learn how to take feedback and use it in a constructive way?
I think so will they learn how to critically think and to problem solve and be resilient in that problem solving? Probably so those are things that we really value and I think that the project based class, again provides a vehicle for really helping develop.
Joe Sneed: Yeah. Something to develop on that.
And to give a specific instance of that is at the end of the geometry and art class and the other project-based classes that I've taught students do individual projects where they've [00:24:00] gone through multiple sessions, multiple instances of building projects that I've provided guidance on, that I've provided some frame for, and that, that frame loosens up over the course of the year, and then they reach the end of the year and I open it up and say, it's your guys' opportunity. It's your opportunity to build a project now, and in the geometry and art class, that's about the only parameters. It needs to involve geometry and it needs to involve art. And as they get into that process, it's so fascinating to see students have that space in, in flounder in it and have not.
Have not had that opportunity in a classroom maybe, or definitely not in a math classroom for a lot of 'em. And for them to find their way through that of, okay, what do I care about? What do I value? What are things that I've done over the course of the year that I'm really interested in? And just the start of that project can take a week or two to figure out what they are interested and what are the things that they care about.
And then as they get deeper into that project, we really start thinking [00:25:00] about. What Chuck and I would call the deeper learning skills or the project based skills like collaborative problem solving receiving feedback, knowing how to respond to feedback.
Inquiry, knowing how to ask a question and gather the tools and resources to answer that question.
And then once you've answered the question, what's an even better question that you can ask? And so over the course of months, students build out these projects and they utilize those skills. There isn't any specific math skill or geometry. Or any specific art skill that they need. They're just simply using tools and resources to build something that they care about.
And my favorite part about that is that it, as Chuck said, it really brings in the things that we value, like over the course of my life, some of the most meaningful things that I've done are analogous to what those students are doing. Building my house, very similar skills were used in that starting a business.
I could think of so many instances where those skills that we just went through are things that I. Have needed, [00:26:00] and I've developed over the course of my life to do things that I care about and I value and sharing that with the students, it makes the job so valuable and so rich.
Scotti Weintraub: So we've talked around this, but I'm curious if you can speak directly to how you see this approach being especially impactful for students for whom.
Learning in regular school is often challenging, whether they are neurodiverse, they have learning disabilities and a lot of these families are the audience that are perhaps listening today. So tell me a little bit more about why you feel like this approach is so impactful for those kinds of students.
Joe Sneed: I think I've been I've been thinking about your audience and what I would wanna share around that. And between the two of us, Chuck and I have about 40 years of teaching experience, and the longer that we teach, the [00:27:00] more it becomes clear that every kid can become excited about learning and every kid can become excited about math given the right.
Inroad. And so something that we've done through the project based sequence, and again, it's not just through projects, that's the label and often the vehicle that gets 'em there, but there's a lot else happening is that we're giving them alternative ways and alternative perspectives on thinking about what is learning and what are ways that you can learn math, what works for you?
And if a student is struggling with math, like the, what, the way that they've been learning, it may simply not be their way, it may not be the approach that works for them. And so if I was a parent, I would start asking a question. It's okay, what are some alternative approaches that we can get at here?
And have that conversation with the teacher, have that conversation with the principal at the school around. What are different access points that my student can have and what are [00:28:00] other ways that my student can engage in the work that they're doing in their classroom, or maybe alternative classes within the school?
And that's something that Chuck and I, that's really prompted us to do the work that we're doing through Project Think right now is some schools, like the high school that we worked with, did a fantastic job of offering students alternatives and different inroads into the subjects they were learning.
Not all schools have that, and that's something that we want to invest ourselves in, that we wanna reach out to teachers, we wanna reach out to schools, and we want to create those alternatives. We want to create those other inroads for students into learning math.
Charles Slusher: Yeah, I'd say two, two things.
One is, I really, and I think Joe and I share this so strongly, is that we believe that humans are just inherent learners. Like we, we want to learn and. Struggles from students is a structural problem. And so I think what Joe and I'S goals really are both as classroom teachers and now with Project Think [00:29:00] is to try to change the structure so that those structural barriers that keep students from, being their natural learners are removed as best we can.
And so much of that with the project based classes came about because of student choice and flexibility around how things worked in general. And I guess the most, maybe the most direct way I can think about this is, students have 5 0 4 plans, have IEPs. I don't think I've.
I don't think I've ever, in a project-based class looked at a 5 0 4 plan or an IEP and thought anything other than all my students get those things. All my students have access to, to, to that, to whatever accommodations, air quotes, accommodations are being offered.
And it's just because. What I, we mentioned before, right? That individualization that, allowing students to learn. And we do, we haven't brought this up, and it, could be a whole nother conversation, right? We do a lot of metacognitive work with students too, where we, they, we ask them to think about how they learn.
We ask them to think about what they're doing and how that might be impactful in terms of both their engagement and their learning. I [00:30:00] really think that, that. The project based work and the inquiry work and the deeper learning environments we're trying to create are geared towards all students, but particularly ones where students haven't, haven't the regular school hasn't worked for trying to break down the barriers, break down the structures that have made it hard for students to learn.
Scotti Weintraub: Absolutely. And I'll be cheering you along in, in this goal because I think it's just so important. It's, you mentioned that these tools and these resources really benefit all students, and if we can help all students learn. We can also help those kids who learn differently, be able to succeed within a system that supports all students.
So I am so happy to have had this conversation with you. I think perhaps we do need another follow up conversation to talk more about these bigger issues of how students learn and how teachers can engage them in figuring that out. 'cause what I work with parents about is [00:31:00] helping them try to figure out how their kids learn, but it's also super impactful for kids to know and be able to identify that.
So I'm gonna maybe we'll have another follow up about that. But we have to wrap up for today. I to ask my guests just to share a resource that could be a website, a podcast, a book that you find useful for parents on these kinds of topics.
Charles Slusher: So it's interesting, Joe and I have this conversation and we I will say just. Full disclosure, like I have a lot of education in my background and my teacher training was. About as minimal as it could be for me to get a license as a teacher. And so we, we pull a lot we do a lot of research, we do a lot of exploration for ourselves professionally and personally, and we find ourselves often grabbing things that are not traditionally educational resources.
So this is a, it was a hard question, I think, for both of us. So what I am doing is for [00:32:00] mine is. Two things. One is a text that was really impactful for me and it's also happens to be written by my mentor and a dear friend of mine. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna include that.
So it's it's a book. It's called building Resilience in Students Impacted by Adverse Childhood Experiences.
Scotti Weintraub: Great.
Charles Slusher: It's, and it's got three authors, but the main author is Victoria Romero. She's an educator in Seattle who is a, like I said, an incredibly important person to me both professionally and personally. So that's why it is really, it's been an important book for me because bringing up the idea of childhood trauma and how that impacts students and what they bring to the classroom has been just really important for me in how I, the perspective I take on my students and the struggles that they happen to be having and allowing me to explore a lot of the ideas we talked about today in terms of individualizing and then also just from day to day, like how students show up and what might be causing them to show up.
Differently from one day to the next.
Scotti Weintraub: Great reminders that everyone comes with their background with them. I think we mentioned [00:33:00] that earlier. And just listeners know, I will be putting a link in the show notes so you don't have to remember the book, but thank you. Joe, did you have a resource you wanted to share also?
Joe Sneed: Yeah, I have one and I just thought of another. My first one is gonna be rivers. Go stand by a river. Go hike by a river. Go float a river. Go spend time on a river. Fantastic Rivers has changed my life over the last five years.
The second one is experience in education by John Dewey. That has been a touchstone for me throughout my career as a teacher, even before I considered myself a teacher and I was still working as a community artist.
It's been around for a hundred years and I still think it hits the nail on the head and around alternatives to education, to the traditional approach of education, to opening spaces for students to explore and think and become themselves in a classroom and as learners in life. And it's [00:34:00] also just really fascinating to think about how those ideas have been around so long, and then compare that where, with, where the school system is at now.
Experience in education by John Dewey.
Scotti Weintraub: Great, thanks. I'll link to that as well. And I'll second your suggestion about finding water. There's real research about water being very regulating for our nervous system. I appreciate that.
Charles Slusher: I think Joe and I do some of our best collaboration on the river
Scotti Weintraub: oh, good. Great.
Joe Sneed: And something I would like to mention this for project Think one of our business offerings is to take clients out on a float and interested, do some fly fishing and we'll talk about education.
Scotti Weintraub: Oh, that sounds really fun. I think you might get some takers. So tell me where can folks find you and find out more about project Think.
Charles Slusher: So we have a website it is project think.org. And then we're also on Instagram and Threads as at project [00:35:00] think learning. And then you can also be able to find Joe and I individually on and project Think on LinkedIn.
Scotti Weintraub: Great. It has been such a pleasure and I know I will continue to follow the work that you're doing here because I just think it's so important and I do look forward to potentially having you back on the podcast for even further conversations about this.
But I wanna say thank you for joining me on this episode. It's been a true pleasure.
Charles Slusher: Thank you so much for having us. It has been really fun conversation.
Joe Sneed: Yeah, thank you. Great conversation.
Scotti Weintraub: And thanks to all of you for listening in. Until next time.
Thanks for tuning in to Unlocking School Success. If you're finding these episodes helpful, please hit follow, leave a review, or send it to another parent who's also navigating the school maze because no one should have to figure this out alone. You'll find full show notes at [00:36:00] reframeparenting.com/podcast and you can come say hi on Instagram at Reframe Parenting.
Thanks again for listening. See you next time.
