Iowa BIG prepares students for a 21st century environment

CEDAR RAPIDS — The project-based learning program that Iowa BIG is preparing students for represents a 21st century work environment — teaching them to be a self-starter, take initiative and collaborate.

Students are hitting their stride and relearning how to learn after two years of school disrupted by the pandemic, said Trace Pickering, co-founder and executive director of Iowa BIG.

Pickering receives calls and emails weekly from educators across the nation interested in starting a program of their own like Iowa BIG. Here, the project-based learning approach is expanding.

This year, Iowa BIG opened a satellite location in Alburnett to serve students in the Alburnett and North-Linn school districts. Pickering is now collaborating with the Cedar Rapids Community School District to open a project-based learning magnet school for freshman and sophomores.

In the Iowa BIG program — a concept championed by The Gazette’s parent company as the Cedar Rapids community rebuilt after the historic 2008 flood — high school students team up with businesses to work on projects. This gives its students — mostly juniors and seniors — the ability to learn and use real-world skills such as leadership, accountability and teamwork on projects about which they are passionate, while earning high school credit at the same time.

Q: Iowa BIG launched almost a decade ago. How has project-based learning evolved since then?

A: One of the biggest drivers (of project-based learning) is the workforce world. A local business person shared with me a new study that shows 67 percent of American jobs do not require a college degree. Traditional school has always been set up to prepare as many kids for college as possible, so there’s a disconnect there.

Many of our young people are not prepared (for their career), not because they don’t know how to write or do the math required, but because they don’t know how to collaborate well with others and take initiative, and that’s what the business world is screaming for. Give me someone who is self-directed, and I can count on them. I think project-based learning seems a more efficient way of getting in those pieces.

Q: How has the project-based learning held up during the pandemic?

A: One thing we learned, and something I think all schools are struggling with, is when we got the kids back on a full-time basis, they forgot how to do school. They don’t want to take initiative or they think homework is optional. They lost a lot of their good habits about school.

For us, the project-based approach was really helpful because it’s students doing things they care about. It’s been easier to get them reengaged in learning. They may not be doing some of the homework pieces we give them any more rapidly than in traditional school, but we’re seeing in the last several weeks them start to hit their stride again.

Q: What has amazed you about the projects students want to work on?

A: I don’t think we anticipated the level of their desire to make their communities better. That has really become a driving force for our kids. They want to make a difference, they want to have an impact.

I think the derecho in general caused the kids to maybe even care more about their community after they saw how much of it was destroyed.

Q: What changes might be on the horizon for Iowa BIG in 2022?

A: Where I see BIG heading is, especially the kids who have been here and are in their second year, helping kids take deeper dives in where they want to go.

You’ve done some cool projects to help the community, and you say you want to be a veterinarian. How can we tailor your experience at BIG, so your English could look like vocabulary for veterinarians and you are reading reports from veterinarians?

Tying their projects in to their career interest is something we’ve done on a small scale with a few students and an area we’d like to expand on.

Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com