Throughout the semester, CAST STEM Students and staff have been working diligently on their year-long PBL. Earlier this year, CAST STEM launched their PBL as a school-wide effort. Now, fifteen weeks later, it’s time to for the students to give an update on their projects. So in order to give students the most authentic learning experience possible while building relationships between the students and the partners supporting them, CAST STEM held a PBL exposé at the Toyota Experience Center this past Friday.

Project-Based Learning (or, PBL) gives students, teachers/facilitators, industry/community partners, and families the opportunities to develop real-world knowledge and skills through student-led engaging projects focused on challenges and problems faced in today’s world. Every CAST school takes part in a PBL program, although no two themes are exactly the same.

For CAST STEM, students took a more innovative approach for the issues they wished to tackle with their PBL. From apps that could help prevent cyberbullying to protective doors that would prevent school intruders, no two PBL projects were similar in their design, display, or execution. Students were able to present to and receive valuable feedback from industry partners such as H-E-B and Toyota, along with the CAST Network team as well.

After the students presented the current status of their work, industry guests were allowed to judge each PBL project anonymously in order to provide valuable feedback for the projects that will bleed into the next semester. The exposé showed just how passionate CAST STEM’s students are about their projects, and their dedication is going to pay off by the time their PBLs are finished.

“So much of what we do as educators lives in the hypothetical. We talk to kids about the ‘real world,’ but we speak about it from a perspective of never really knowing all that the ‘real world’ has in store for our kids. Opportunities like the Expose give us the chance to take kids to the ‘real world.’ It takes the abstract and turns it tangible by putting the kids in front of the folks that might want to hire them, mentor them, and help grow them. When the students get to see that their work has impact and weight, they blossom. You can see it. You can feel it in their energy. They are so proud of themselves. Being able to do that for them renews my passion as an educator.