i was likely one of the teachers at my school that was able to attend pdl world over the summer , which was a conference all about project-based learning there we were each able to develop and create a unit that we are planning on implementing that is coming this school year. through that process we or able to gain a deeper understanding of all the different components and we were able to bring those back to the rest of our staff -- we have already started. we will be developing and implementing professional development for the rest of our staff and helping them create more project-based learning unit so we can all begin this implementation throughout the school year. we are all really excited to do this. and we are implementing the full block schedule, which is really giving us more time to successfully implement these with students. we are also very excited because it is giving us a chance to create units that will allow us to give students more -- make the units more authentic, give them more voice and choice in their learning, or time for student reflection and revision and critiqui

we would be one of the pilot schools for the middle school redesign, we had the opportunity to go to pdl works conference and learn more about them and how to implement it into our classrooms. that was a huge advantage for us as teachers. we are now able to come back to our school with our early release one days and we are doing teacher led meetings for staff. they hear from us teachers how we are implementing it in our classroom instead of some to come in that has not taught for a while. i think all of our staff is really loving these early release one date -- wednesdays. we now have more than three hours of common planning time as teachers, to work together. last year we only had an hour a week to work together. we couldn't always be more aligned. this year, we have three hours to work together. we are able to plan project -based unionist -- units that allow students to have voice and choice and work well with our students. it has definitely been a positive experience so far this year and i'm really excited. thank you. [please stand by] >> and also as a parent of a fifth grader at one