Breakout EDU Spotlight: Sarah Bidwell
A professional development Breakout like no other!
Every year towards the end of August, like many schools, my district provided back-to-school professional development (PD). About five years ago, the PD rocked my pedagogical core.
Typically, these back-to-school sessions would kick off with a motivational speaker. A similar theme year-to-year was that students need to be engaged to learn. While the message was appreciated, none of the speakers I heard ever shared the secret sauce for engagement. Regardless, we were all able to agree on the dream of students arriving each day wanting to learn. It was the HOW to achieve this that remained elusive.
After the speaker, we would then spend some time with our professional learning communities (PLCs). For many years, each PLC was seated at large tables in the cafeteria where we would tag standards and map out learning objectives. Around 2018, there was a shift. We were thrown a curveball.
Our PLC was invited to go to a separate room where a friend and colleague from a neighboring district, Rachel Murat, was standing at the front of the room with a large cup of Dunkin iced tea and an even bigger smile. She told us we were going to do something fun together - something she had been trying and finding success with in her classroom.
Our department was divided up into groups of three and Rachel gave each group a box with locks on it, a few additional “tools,” and an envelope with a paper or two inside. She also gave us the following directions:
You may or may not use all the tools in front of you
You will need to think outside the box to get into the box
You have one “hint” card to use if you get stuck. Hold it up and I’ll come over.
Consider us intrigued! The puzzles we were given weren’t academic in nature. She didn’t want us focused on content - she wanted us focused on the process. I can’t recall the specifics at this point, but I do remember completing a digital puzzle, using a blacklight to find text on a page, and calling a fake phone number to get a clue. I had never seen anything like it. A digital timer was going on the smartboard at the front of the room as she walked around smiling and watching us try to figure this game out.
As we navigated the game, we didn’t even consider looking at how the other groups were performing because we were immersed. The volume of the room was slowly rising as people shouted with excitement or bemoaned a dead end. We had to finally cave and use our hint card - that fake phone number really threw my group for a loop. I remember Rachel simply saying “looks like a phone number doesn’t it? Have you tried calling it?”. It was awesome!
At the end, when all the groups had finished, she talked to us about Breakout EDU. We looked at all the different games available on the website and learned that digital and physical kits were available. Rachel then asked us to imagine what our classrooms might look like if we had our students doing this activity - with content. Jaws hit the floor.
Such a simple yet ingenious concept! The last few weeks of summer my PLC partner and I spent revisiting lesson plans. What social studies units lent themselves to Breakout EDU? What predesigned games were available and how might we make our own? How could we differentiate the tasks so every student gets to experience healthy struggle and the thrill of victory? What safeguards could we use to make sure one class didn’t give other classes the solutions?
From then on, my classroom became known as the Breakout classroom. No one batted an eyelash when they heard yelling coming from my room - it was just the sound of a team “breaking out.” It became standard practice for “Bidwell’s kids” to be in the hallways with blacklights or in the library looking for a specific page in a specific book to find a clue. On a Breakout day - my students were never tardy. They needed every second they could to Breakout. It was a guaranteed good time, but it was also content review and skills practice. Even my most unenthusiastic learners became leaders in Breakout EDU land.
Achievement also rose. My classes continuously scored amongst the top of our region on Global History and Geography regents exams. I also noted the number of students who scored a “5” on the AP US History exam increased each year. I can’t conclusively say that one thing led to the other (I’m not a researcher), but I do believe Breakout EDU was a contributing factor. And Rachel? She went on to become the 2020 NYS Teacher of the Year and 2021 NEA Excellence in Teaching Awardee. Obviously.
Like the paid motivational speakers always tell us - students need to be engaged to learn.
