Performing for Yourself and Others: The Paideia Coached Project

Teachers seeking ways to motivate their students and to make the curriculum more relevant have found an answer in the Paideia Coached Project. When students know that their project or performance will be presented to an audience outside the classroom, they are inspired to produce work of the highest quality.

By Terry Roberts and Audrey Trainor

DURING THE past decade, the staff at the National Paideia Center has done an increasing amount of survey and interview research with the individuals and schools that have chosen to implement the Paideia Programs. This work often involves asking teachers what frustrates them most about their dealings with students. Across the country, teachers almost universally cite the lack of student motivation for learning as the single most serious issue they face. "Simply put," said one honest teacher, "they don't find what we have to offer all that relevant to their lives. How do you present a sterile, standardized curriculum in a way that students can care about it?" Our attempts to answer that question have led us to create the Paideia Coached Project.

A coached project is a unit of study that leads to a student production or performance that demonstrates mastery of a subject to an audience outside the classroom. It is designed to provide students with a strong, experiential connection to the curriculum, thereby making the curriculum both more relevant and more interesting. Ideally, the coached project provides both teachers and students the opportunity to produce rigorous, relevant work and to measure the quality of that work against authentic standards. For teachers who are used to a more traditional approach to teaching and learning, it can be challenging to rethink the many aspects of how they deliver their curriculum. For those who do, however, the rewards can be amazing.

The Origin of the Paideia Coached Project

Paideia, as its derivation (from the Greek pais, paidos, the nurturing of a child) suggests, has to do with the proper upbringing of a child. It has strong connotations of a holistic education that leads to physical, emotional, and spiritual health as well as intellectual health. The Paideia Program is a systemic, whole-school transformation project based on the work of philosopher Mortimer Adler, who argued that American classrooms could be made simultaneously more rigorous and more inclusive.1 In other words, we could raise intellectual standards while at the same time engaging more students. In order to do this, Adler described three types of teaching and learning: didactic instruction to transmit information, coaching in academic skills, and seminar discussion of ideas and values.2 Adler believed that didactic, teacher-centered instruction dominated American classrooms at the expense of the other types of teaching and learning. As a result of this belief, he and his colleagues in the original Paideia Group focused their efforts on defining the Paideia seminar. They were so successful that there still exists a common misconception that the Paideia Program is solely concerned with the use of the seminar. In fact, the seminar takes up only 10% to 20% of teaching time in a Paideia classroom, while the rest is devoted to high-quality didactic instruction and coaching.3

In the mid-1990s, when the staff of the National Paideia Center began to work extensively with whole school communities, it became obvious that we needed to develop a much clearer picture of intellectual coaching and that we needed to show teachers how the three types of instruction could work in concert. The result of our efforts was the Paideia Coached Project, an organized unit that employs all three instructional approaches. As mentioned above, the coached project results in a student production or performance that has authentic value to an audience outside the classroom.4

While designing the Paideia Coached Project, we studied the extensive body of research on learning as well as the work then going on in a number of instructional reform movements. By far the richest vein of research-based information on teaching and learning that we discovered was the 1993 report by the American Psychological Association's Presidential Task Force on Psychology in Education titled Learner-Centered Psychological Principles: Guidelines for School Redesign and Reform. The authors' objective was "to provide useful information consistent with research generated by psychologists and educators in the areas of learning, motivation, and human development."5 Indeed, the authors drew on years of research into the psychology of learning to develop a set of guidelines that are, in the truest sense of the phrase, "research-based." Included in these guidelines are 12 "learner-centered psychological principles," the first of which states:

Learning is a natural process of pursuing personally meaningful goals, and it is active, volitional, and internally mediated; it is a process of discovering and constructing meaning from information and experience, filtered through the learner's unique perceptions, thoughts, and feelings.6

In essence, personally relevant classroom work contributes directly to student motivation, and students must actively construct meaning in order to effectively learn. The seventh principle furthers this insight:

Curiosity, creativity, and higher-order thinking are stimulated by relevant, authentic learning tasks of optimal difficulty and novelty for each student.7

Not only are most students capable of intellectual rigor, they require it in order to function at the highest level. We will succeed, however, only if we couch high standards in tasks that are authentic and relevant to the student, as well as the teacher or administrator. Furthermore, the American Psychological Association (APA) emphasizes the strong research base supporting the social aspect of learning:

Learning and self-esteem are heightened when individuals are in respectful and caring relationships with others who see their potential, genuinely appreciate their unique talents, and accept them as individuals.8

We designed the Paideia Coached Project based on these principles, as well as on one other fundamental human urge: the desire to build or perform something tangible out of one's growing mastery of a subject. We share this idea, of course, with a number of our colleagues in school reform, notably Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, whose emphasis on student performance flows from the same stream.9 We believe, however, that the desire to construct a tangible product of the highest quality is a powerful motivator for students, especially when that product has both intrinsic value for the students and value to an authentic external audience. Only when they sense the relevance and authenticity of classroom work will most students commit to the very real labor of learning. Only then will they engage in what the APA described as the "problem solving, planning, complex decision making, debates, group discussions, and other strategies that enhance the development of higher-order thinking."10 The difficult truth at the heart of the APA report (and the heart of the Paideia Coached Project as well) is that all students can learn -- when they are challenged in a way that they accept as authentic.

Since the development of the coached project in the mid-1990s, we have had the opportunity to work with teachers across the country as they have led students through the production and performance of high-quality academic work. In doing so, we have refined our description of the project as a unit of study that enables students to engage in self-directed learning activities in conjunction with the curricular objectives for which they are responsible. We have spelled out this amplified definition in terms of the following 12 principles. The Paideia Coached Project is more intense, more lasting, and more meaningful, the more that

1. students discover and construct their own meaning out of the project in a personally significant way;

2. students exercise their own power of choice in an increasingly responsible and mature way;

3. students build on the past and anticipate the future -- their own and that of others;

4. individual students define themselves through the process, both interpersonally and intrapersonally;

5. individual students validate their sense of control and competence as expectations of success are confirmed and challenged;

6. the various tasks that are part of the process are relevant to individual students and have obvious value in the world outside the classroom;

7. the various tasks involved in the process are challenging and novel;

8. students are motivated by positive thoughts or emotions -- not those associated with competitive grading;

9. students successfully communicate and cooperate with a wide variety of others in a wide variety of settings;

10. individual students treat one another with respect and courtesy, recognizing that each has unique and valuable talents;

11. cultural and environmental differences among individual students and among others associated with the project are not only accepted but valued; and

12. students periodically review the process and evaluate how and what they are learning (or not learning).

The role of the teacher in the coached project is like that of the master craftsperson who works in a shop surrounded by apprentices. He or she is a recognized expert in the subject area and is actively involved with the apprentices as they create the product or performance that gives the "shop" or classroom its reason for being. In this role, the teacher becomes the students' coach rather than their antagonist, as teachers are so often viewed in the traditional classroom. In their role as apprentices, the students work closely with the teacher and with the other apprentices to master the various tasks involved in learning the discipline and producing the product.

Perhaps this transformation of the classroom into a much more active and product-oriented environment makes more sense when you consider the learning possibilities provided by this model. A social studies class can mount historical reenactments, publish journals, or produce videotapes of archival materials. Language arts classes can publish anthologies of creative work and collections of essays or write and produce their own dramatic productions. Science classes can design and carry out research in the rich world of the surrounding environment. Math classes can write and publish collections of open-ended math problems, write problem-solving strategies and post them on the Internet, and create student guides to standard textbooks. Indeed, the possibilities for products and performances as well as interested audiences for them are all but endless. The only requirements are teachers with rich imaginations and students who are dedicated to finding and exploring the connections between the standardized curriculum and their own lives.

Coached Projects in the Real World

Over the past few years, a number of creative Paideia teachers have worked with their students to devise impressive coached projects that took them beyond the boundaries of the traditional classroom into the realm of the highest standards of their subjects. As we have continued to stress the vital importance of student production and performance before an authentic audience, teachers across the country have risen to the challenge of leading students into intensely active engagement with the curriculum. And along the way, they have grown as teachers.

At the Paideia Academy at Oakhurst (a public elementary school that serves many at-risk students) in Charlotte, North Carolina, music teacher Laura Cook received a grant from the local Cultural Education Collaborative to introduce opera to the teachers, students, and parents of this urban school. At first the project seemed overwhelming -- opera! -- but Cook recruited the fourth-grade teachers as well as other specialists on the staff, and soon a team of nine teachers was working together to plan a fully integrated project. Rather than giving in to the temptation to build their unit around external sources, the teachers decided to use the "Music! Words! Opera!" process to coach the students in the creation of their own production.

Even once they had committed to a student production, however, the Oakhurst teachers found the task intimidating. "But then," said Cook, "we divided up the whole project using the three columns [didactic instruction, coaching, and seminars] to guide us. I offered didactic instruction on opera using Puccini's Turandot as our example, and then we all led student seminars and even, eventually, a community seminar on this classic." The nine teachers divided up the task of producing a student opera into five areas, each of which would be handled by its own team: technology, costumes, scenery, props, and performance. Language arts classes began to produce a script about Blackbeard the pirate, part of North Carolina's standard course of study for history, and Cook's music classes began to work on an original score. All three classroom teachers involved aligned parts of their standard curriculum with the project, so that they could justify the amount of time they were dedicating to the production. Because students were allowed to choose from the five production teams based on individual interest, they "were intrinsically motivated from the very beginning," says Cook.

The eventual production opened on Thursday night, 22 March 2001. Blackbeard: A Pirate's Tale was an original three-act opera written, scored, and produced by the fourth-graders at Oakhurst. It was performed before a packed house of community members.

Under the influence of the beautiful captive Estrealena, Blackbeard decides to reform his evil ways. As the curtain falls at the end of Act III, Blackbeard sings:

Estrealena, Estrealena
How I loved you!
Wanted to save you
Couldn't abandon you
Now I've lost you

How can it be
A wretch like me
So cruel and mean has not seen
What's in my heart
Now we're apart

Estrealena, Estrealena
Crimes and meanness
Bring me sorrow
I'll change my life
When the dawn comes tomorrow.11

The audience gave the students a standing ovation. This was truly an authentic assessment. But at the same time, the teachers realized that they had learned as much as their students. "For me," Cook says, "the experience was invaluable. I learned things about music I had not known before. I learned things about staging and blocking I had not known before. I also learned humility and how to ask for help from my colleagues in areas in which I had no expertise. We all learned that we had to work together in order to be successful. And the production? It was sensational!"

Like the teachers from the Paideia Academy at Oakhurst, the art teachers at Bridgeton Middle School (BMS), which serves a primarily urban population in Bridgeton, New Jersey, wanted to motivate their students to create truly inspired work. In talking with students, the teachers realized that one reason the young people seemed so alienated from and uninvolved in school was the climate of the building itself. Teachers Liz O'Brien and Linda Delgado wanted to use their students' talents to "beautify [their] building by getting rid of the plain maroon stripe that ran down the hall." They asked their extended-day art class members for solutions, and the students suggested a design based on the art curriculum at BMS. The students didn't know they were advocating for the New Jersey Core Content Standards, but O'Brien and Delgado knew that if they were successful, future art students would become an authentic audience for the project.

The teachers and students divided the long stretch of hallway outside the art classrooms into three sections, one for each of the middle grades. The sixth-grade section included Egyptian, South American, and Greek art; the seventh-grade section included Impressionism, Cubism, and fabrics; and the eighth-grade section included modern, contemporary, and Asian art. The mural artists, including all of O'Brien's and Delgado's students, worked for eight months to produce a living art curriculum on the walls of Bridgeton Middle School. Students used the knowledge gleaned from O'Brien's and Delgado's didactic lessons as well as the insights from their Paideia seminar discussions about art to inform their work on the mural. According to the art teachers, their students "worked very diligently, painting, touching up, taping, and even repainting when necessary. During these months, we observed students develop friendships with other students that would not have occurred if they had not created this mural together."

In addition to the painting itself, the students and their teachers planned an opening reception to unveil the mural. The entire school district, members of the press, district administrators, and parents were invited -- expanding the audience for the project beyond future generations of BMS art students. The quality of the student work on the mural has been universally applauded. Perhaps just as significant, however, is that the students of Bridgeton Middle School have taken care to preserve the mural in mint condition, proving to O'Brien and Delgado that, in addition to learning the standardized art curriculum, they have learned important lessons about pride and self-efficacy.

In August of 1998, co-author Audrey Trainor, then a special education teacher from Northwest Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, was introduced to the coached project. During the training, she heard many teachers on her faculty voice the same concern: "Seminars and coached projects are great for our advanced kids, but the kids who have problems are not going to do well with this." As a special education teacher of both self-contained English 10 (all class members had a variety of mild to moderate disabilities) and inclusion English 10 (regular and special education students team-taught by a regular and a special education teacher), she questioned the validity of that widely shared sentiment. She shares her experience below.

"All Quiet on the Western Front was the first novel we read that year, and I decided to use this text for our first coached project. For many of the students, reading this novel was an accomplishment, regardless of the fact that the majority of the book was read aloud during English class. The students, mostly boys, were enthralled by the subject matter, especially Remarque's gory descriptions of soldier life. My goal for our first coached project was to have the students choose a project that required thought and planning, as well as a substantial amount of effort.

"I followed the steps for designing a coached project outlined during our training. I began by identifying which knowledge, skills, and values I wanted to emphasize, and I brainstormed products I thought would be appropriate. Instead of leaving the project ideas as wide open as my training manual suggested, I decided to provide some explicit guidelines and allow students to choose within the boundaries I identified. The final product of my students' efforts was to be an illustration of any scene from the novel. I detailed ways in which the students could accomplish the task and then developed a rubric for evaluation. As for an audience, I contacted the school media specialist, who arranged to create a display case for the projects just outside the library. All 10th-graders were reading the novel, so the display would be of interest to many teachers and students.

"Perhaps the most satisfying thing about effectively coaching special education students is seeing the ownership they come to assume for the quality of their final products. In my traditional approach, I quickly tired of putting more time into creating tests than my students put into preparing for them. On more than one occasion I stayed up late grading papers at home, only to later find the returned papers stuffed in the trash can or scattered carelessly among student belongings. Much to my surprise, not one student in the class neglected this assignment, which is no small victory in a self-contained setting where homework completion is rare.

"For the first time, several of my students went above and beyond to create something they were proud of that truly reflected their knowledge of a piece of literature. They articulated this to me by talking about their project designs and sharing their feelings of pride and accomplishment upon completion of the project. Once the projects were displayed, many teachers and students commented directly to my students about how great their creations were. For many of my students, this may have been the first time that they were praised by peers or teachers for their academic accomplishments.

"I was left with the overwhelming feeling that the Paideia Coached Project can be just as successful in a special education classroom as in any other learning environment. Like the Paideia seminar, it can motivate students whom many people (including the students themselves) have written off as learners, and for me, intrinsic student motivation is a key ingredient in their achievement."

Lessons Learned

These examples serve to illuminate several important elements of the Paideia Coached Project. Teachers in training often ask what is the difference between their more creative units of study and a coached project. We emphasize the integration of formal seminar discussion to explore the ideas and values embedded in the unit, the benefit of which has been well documented. We further stress the importance of a high-quality product or performance presented to an audience outside the individual classroom. Teachers who have legitimate questions about the benefits and costs of these sometimes difficult innovations, as did Audrey Trainor, have identified two important results of our emphasis on real-world production for a real-world audience.

First and foremost is student motivation. Because of the emphasis on authenticity in their productions, students experience a standardized curriculum in the context of real work performed for real people. They derive pleasure and, eventually, pride from what they do in class every day. Audrey Trainor's special education students, Laura Cook's fourth-graders, and the art students of Liz O'Brien and Linda Delgado are all actively engaged in relevant work, not silently enduring another boring standardized lesson.

Second is the reawakening of the students' desire for quality. Because they are producing work to be judged by a legitimate audience (not just the teacher), these students were willing to go above and beyond the call of daily classroom life to produce exceptional work. One of the most salient characteristics of the Paideia Coached Project is the emphasis on student assessment. Students learn during the coached project to practice strict quality control in order to produce a final product that will be of the highest value to the audience. With each successful coached project, students increasingly appreciate quality and recognize the hard work that it requires.

It is our dream that the students in Paideia schools will eventually experience their classrooms as invigorating, even inspiring, environments -- places they look forward to going to and places they hate to leave. It is our dream that they will come to know themselves as masters of the various crafts practiced in these classrooms: arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and languages. It is our dream that through the active engagement of Paideia Coached Projects, they will come to love the process of learning itself by connecting it to the world outside of school and by making it their own.

2. For a practical exploration of all three kinds of instruction, see Terry Roberts and Laura Billings, The Paideia Classroom: Teaching for Understanding (Larchmont, N.Y.: Eye on Education, 1999), which focuses not only on the three types of instruction but also how they complement one another.

3. For the most recent information on Paideia seminars, see both the elementary and secondary versions of The Paideia Seminar: Active Thinking Through Dialogue (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The National Paideia Center, 2003).

4. For the most detailed discussion of the Paideia Coached Project, see Intellectual Coaching and the Paideia Coached Project (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The National Paideia Center, 2002). This manual contains numerous examples and detailed guidance for teachers in the planning of a coached project. It is available on the National Paideia Center website at www.paideia.org.

5. Presidential Task Force on Psychology in Education, Learner-Centered Psychological Principles: Guidelines for School Redesign and Reform (Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association/Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory, 1993), p. 4. In addition to the 12 principles discussed here, this report gives "implications for school redesign and reform," divided into seven sections: instruction, curriculum, effective assessment, effective schools and classrooms, teacher education, parent and community involvement, and policy implications for learner-centered redesign.

6. Ibid., p. 6.

7. Ibid., p. 7.

8. Ibid., p. 8.

9. See Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, Understanding by Design (Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1998). In addition, our design of the Paideia Coached Project flows out of the same instructional tradition as project-based learning (see the Buck Institute website at www.bie.org) and the Foxfire school reform movement. It also makes use of the insights generated by the recent developments in learning styles and multiple intelligences.

10. Presidential Task Force on Psychology in Education, p. 10.

11. The Paideia Academy at Oakhurst's Fourth-Grade Students, Blackbeard: A Pirate's Tale: An Original Opera, 2nd ed. (Charlotte, N.C.: The Paideia Academy at Oakhurst, 2001).

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