Samohi has been graduating students for more than a century but every year brings something new to the tradition and the class of 2023 includes the first cadre of Samohi Project Based Learning students.
While PBL students are part of Samohi and will graduate with the entire class, their instruction differs from a traditional Samohi education in both substance and location.
According to the website, it’s a student-driven learning experience that focuses on preparing students for their future careers by allowing them to learn through their interests and build relationships with community experts.
A fifth of a PBL student’s week (usually every Wednesday) is spent exploring their interests through individual projects which involve internships, interviews, and shadow days. The idea is that students are learning what they’re passionate about.
In addition to their working internships, the students had to complete a senior thesis that included professional contacts through internships / mentoring and in a five minute, TED-style talk. The project also includes a research paper and the Seniors undertaking their thesis projects also mentored freshman students.
As PBL’s Co-Administrator Nicole Nicodemus puts it, “Students learn through experiences.”
The differences between PBL and a traditional education extend into all elements of their education. Teachers use projects as a method of teaching in every class. Core subjects are taught through projects such as “We Are America”, where 9th grade English students write nonfiction stories about their identities as Americans, which are then published in a collection by the end of the year.
PBL is a program within the larger Samohi, however, it’s not located on the same campus. In its first three years of existence, PBL was located on the Michelle and Barack Obama Center for Inquiry and Exploration; most call it the Obama Center. But just in the last year, PBL was relocated to Santa Monica College’s campus.
Nevertheless, PBL students do spend time on the Samohi campus. PBL students spend two periods per day there and take Samohi classes. While PBL students take their core subjects at PBL, Samohi electives and extracurriculars are available to them. Many are part of Samohi clubs and athletics.
“You get the same content that you would at a traditional school, except you’re going to have a different experience of learning,” says Nicodemus. The PBL philosophy is that students learn better by doing. Teachers at PBL want to know if students can demonstrate their learning in a more authentic way than just taking tests.
The experience provides students with a radically different take on high school.
“I’ve been going out… to basically fly drones,” says Owen Purcell, a current senior at PBL and part of the inaugural class. He spends his Wednesdays meeting with photographers, filmmakers, and SWAT teams—anyone who uses drones. “I trained with Oceanside SWAT Department. I’ve done work with documentary filmmakers like John Rutland… I worked with National Geographic and Disney+ to shoot a TV show called The Biggest Little Farm.”
Purcell is only 18 and is already procuring jobs where he gets credited and paid for his skills. Skills that he has learned and developed because he is able to integrate them into his education.
PBL’s other Co-Administrator Jessica Rishe said Purcell’s experience isn’t unique as all students in the program gain real-world experience.
“The kinds of the kinds of learning through interest in internships, gosh, it ranges from working with the pilots and accumulating hours towards the pilot’s license to being in a Michelin star restaurant and being like a sous chef and learning how to be a chef. There’s a student who was at Lions Gate Entertainment, learning about script coverage and film development. A student is working side by side with an occupational therapist, because that’s her interest. There is someone who’s working with law enforcement, who has been interested in ultimately being with the police department,” she said.
While the students in the program have met with great success (43% of PBL students were recognized at Samohi’s awards night and four of the 100 prestigious Centennial Medallions went to PBL students), the program’s launch was a long, challenging process.
It took almost 20 years to get PBL off the ground and when it finally launched in 2019, it ran headfirst into the Covid-education era.
“The world shut down…” says Nicodemus. “It was like, ‘How do you do an experiential hands-on program in the real world when we’re not allowed to even interact with one another?’ I mean it really delayed development of the program.”
The inability to go out into the world and interact with people heavily affected PBL students’ ability to get real-world experience. Like all students, they adapted to the virtual learning environment and many professionals were willing to conduct online learning workshops during that time.
Rishe said they exemplified a kind of pioneering spirit.
“They chose to embark on a unique educational journey and they immersed themselves in an experiential learning environment,” she said. “They launched a new pathway for the district. So they’re innovators and we’re thrilled to call them pioneering. They’ve shown themselves to be our mission statement which was to nurture, kind hearted, autonomous scholars, scholarly advocates, as well as creative and persistent problem solvers. And like they’ve lived up to that. So I think that’s notable
She said the students came from all kinds of backgrounds but bonded in the new program.
“What’s so wonderful about the demographics is that in terms of language, race, prior academic performance, before high school, in terms of what they’re interested in doing in college or career, there are no commonalities,” she said. “They’re really diverse. And it’s beautiful to see a cohort, support each other learn each other and, and grow with so many differences.”