Sammamish High School is a comprehensive high school that is on the cutting edge of public education. Like many schools, we serve a diverse student body, with 45% of our students receiving free and reduced lunch support. We also serve a high percentage of special education students relative to other district schools, and currently house the district-wide program for beginning and intermediate English language learners. We have had good success with college matriculation rates, but as a community, we saw an opportunity to better serve our students and foster in them the skills and habits of mind that will make them competitive in the new economy. Along the way, we are challenging ourselves to re-imagine how school can better serve students through collaboration, authentic problem solving, and opening windows between the disciplines of school and the broader community.

Since I started in education, I have been trying to find ways to connect students' learning beyond the classroom walls. Initially, the task presented many hurdles. Infrastructure was limited, devices were bulky and slow, and the access was not quite available. In order to connect students with the outside world, a permission slip and a school bus were needed. Today, many of those hurdles have been overcome, and connecting students beyond the classroom is a viable option. To make those connections, I use Google Hangouts.

"The inspiration behind the residency model is that teacher candidates learn on the job, similar to the way a master artisan would have learned her craft." -- Dr. Annamarie Francois, Director, UCLA Center X Teacher Education Program

Here at Edutopia, we talk a lot about project-based learning, or PBL. Whether you call it deeper learning, inquiry-, problem-, or challenge-based learning, all are variations on the same idea -- that young people can learn more deeply, and retain the information better, when they can work collaboratively in teams to explore and solve real-world problems. Many would say that PBL can be a more effective way to teach - but anyone who has tried it agrees that doing it well is not easy.