“Letting go” to lead a student-driven biology course The Labster Podcast

In this conversation, we meet Bonnie Nieves, M. Ed., a high school biology teacher who has taken an evidence-based, iterative approach to optimize student learning outcomes without increasing her time spent outside of class. Listen as Bonnie tells the true story of the aha! moment that followed her painful realization that her students were signing out bathroom passes more often when she was talking than at any other time during class. Equipped with nothing more than a gradebook, student feedback, and her own observations, Bonnie put her hypotheses to the test and experimented with student-driven, self-directed learning. You’ll hear everything she tried to reach the point where learning outcomes in her project-based course now rival the outcomes of traditional, teacher-driven courses - while still targeting the same content standards.