This activity was put into place after a last minute schedule conflict. In the end it proved to be perfect timing and we realized that this portion of the project needed to start with an activity just like this. Sometimes there are blessings in disguise.

This lesson has a few goals in mind when setting the stage for the much larger work and thinking to come.

We developed a LEGO experience designed to help them learn how to think differently than normal modes of problem solving. Challenges were developed to give them a hands on opportunity to seeing new pathways within exisiting creative constraints. More importantly, we began to lay the foundation for giving themselves permission to tap into the genius that each student has inside them. Finally, we had a small teamwork task that placed a focus on two key areas that must be covered when doing high quality PBL with an authentic audience: teamwork and communication

These are two essential building blocks among many others that we must teach students. We often discuss the importance of group work and basically just put them in groups and say “work it out” or "do research". What does that even mean? Do we even know what this means as professionals? We wanted to avoid this type of mindset in this project because it would lead to frustration, loss of wonder and inquiry, and it would not ignite the passion of learning. To do this we created an interactive experience for them to understand how important these concepts are when working as a group.

We wanted to develop an experience that was fun, fast, and furious. We knew we had to grab their attention. We knew we had to keep them moving. We knew we had to keep them discussing and working together to build these skills out.

We knew that in order for any of this to work the learning had to stick. We had to connect to emotions, the senses, and hands on learning. Anytime you have an intro activity to grab the interest of a child it needs to make a splash and create some energy.

You can access the entire slidedeck above so you can follow the work, but we began the event with setting the stage about the importance of this work and understanding the people that we work with. I really wanted to emphasis that this work is inside all of them. They all have their own unique superpowers(Captain Planet reference) and when we combine forces we can even more amazing together(Captain Planet).

**Please note that I have kept all activities in the slides that I normally do in a 2-3 hour workshop, but we only used a handful of them in our 45 minutes together.**

Once we discussed the importance of working together and setting up expectations and norms we had them open up their bags of LEGO. I provided each student a bag of 20 pieces.

After a few warm ups we moved into some partner challenges. The goals of these challenges is to learn how to work together to problem solve, but even more important begin to remove the thinking of "Is this right?" or "Does this count?" The activiteis are designed to not have any right or wrong as long as the builder can explain their thinking. It is is VERY IMPORTANT to not make any of these builds about competition. Competition is good sometimes, but in this case it is harmful because students will shy away if they lack confidence or simply don't like to compete.

We had conversations where a team thought another team was "wrong" and we had some powerful conversations about not judging and instead listening to how they navigated between the creative constraints.

These builds create excitement and when we celebrate ideas this gets them to learn to open up and share ideas. Trust me, this is very hard for kids. We naturally fear being “wrong” even though there is no wrong. To communicate our ideas for something like this where we are trying to make the abstract concrete is challenging. Students really struggled at this phase to share ideas with confidence. This was a moment where we learned how important it is for us as educators support students to share ideas without fear of being wrong.

We had many other builds to do, but unfortunately we ran out of time. The time flew by and we had to adjust our builds and bring things to a close.

I am not going to lie, this one of my favorite days I have had in a long time. Being back in a school and working with students was wonderful to work with educators so dedicated to creating authentic learning for their students. They have taken on the challenge of designing a full scale project. The project itself will be making positive impacts across our community in a variety of ways.

I was again reminded how amazing they are when we give them the space to do so. I was reminded about how hard it is for them to open up and share ideas. It reminded me about the importance of educators and how the calling of educators stretches far beyond a simple standardized test score.

At the end of the day we further proved that you cannot treat people like machines. Humans don’t respond like machines. We cannot manage people like we manage machines. The creative process does not work like that. We must provide support, empathy, emotion, and a foundation to help people feel safe to share and build their ideas.

It was inspiring to know and work with people who are passionate about their work and passionate about doing what is right for kids.

At the end of the session we wrapped up the event by celebrating the good. The adults in the room shared out examples of what we noticed in the workshop on these topics:

• Teamwork

• Collaboration

• Curiosity

• Risk Taking

• Perspective

• Sharing

• Persistence

We wanted students to know that we noticed. We were watching and we were proud. We must acknowledge the good. We must bring light to the great things they are capable of doing.

I cannot wait to do more of this work and am already heavily invested in making more of these types of experiences for students and adults.

Check out the video below to see a recap of the day.