Rising Up:
Project-based learning at the Pittsburgh Gifted Center: “The sky’s the limit”

2024 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor

The district’s pre-eminent opportunity for project-based learning is at the Pittsburgh Gifted Center, located in the Greenway facility in Crafton Heights. Students in 1st through 8th grade who’ve been identified as “gifted” are bussed to the Center for classes one day a week, except those at Pittsburgh Dilworth PreK-5, Pittsburgh Grandview PreK-5, and Pittsburgh Science and Technology Academy 6-12, who receive services at their schools. In Pennsylvania, gifted education falls under special education. Like students with disabilities, students who are gifted have a legal right to an education that meets their individual needs.

According to Principal David May and other staff members, students dive right into project-based learning, even if they’ve never experienced it before. One spring day, many seem eager to describe what they’re doing. Three girls show the life-size chair they’re building out of cardboard, point to the model they made, and insist that the finished product will hold an adult’s weight. Another girl shows off her “Mini Me Museum,” which contains a poem she loves, a list of her favorite foods, and a cat basket fashioned from a champagne cork’s wire cage. In a classroom with computers, stools, and an incongruous armchair or two, a student explains that he’s figuring out how to make a digital message appear to come from a different sender. Queried about whether that skill can be used for a good cause, he says, laughing, “You shouldn’t ask that question of a child.”

Students take “strength” courses based on areas where they need to be challenged, and choose from an array of “interest” courses, for which teachers craft enticing, kid-friendly descriptions. (For a course called “Cool, Gross, and Just Plain Nasty,” the description begins, “Learn the science and history of gross things about animals, insects, the human body, and other nasty stuff.”) Teachers create the curriculum for all courses. They’re also responsible for helping children meet the goals outlined in their Gifted Individual Education Plans, developed with input from students and their parents or guardians.

Math teacher Maley Augustynowicz says she keeps students’ individual goals in mind while designing projects for her classes. Last year, two projects involved the algebraic concept of slope. For one, students learned to find slope on a graph and in a table, in order to create stained glass-type designs with paint, paper, and glue. For the other, they found the slope-intercept form of a linear equation to create designs with string. In both cases, they used math skills and conceptual knowledge to produce unique works of art.

Why are projects the preferred method for teaching students who are gifted? For Humanities teacher Elaine Yellin, the answer is straightforward: they learn more that way. She offers an example from her “Medieval Mechanics” class. Students designed carts that could cross the Sahara Desert, taking into account the need to safeguard against pirates, and using at least three simple machines (such as axles, pulleys, or levers). They were responsible for selecting materials, making models, and deciding how to test them. “It gives them the freedom to be creative problem-solvers,” she says. Barbara Bradley, K-4th grade gifted liaison, adds that when students are solving problems, “The learning takes place in what doesn’t work.”

Yellin also appreciates the freedom to let students shape the content. Sometimes that means taking an inquiry in a new direction. During a conversation in her “Revolution” class about the Boston Tea Party (when American colonists dumped tea into Boston Harbor to protest British taxes), a student remarked, “There had to be a better way.” “Let’s explore that,” Yellin responded. Students talked through nonviolent alternatives and wrote letters to the “Boston Gazette” as if they were colonists. They transformed the classroom into the Green Dragon Pub, where the actual plotters met, and invited their own families to a tea party. “That whole culminating project sprung from their questions,” Yellin says.

With experiences like this, “The sky’s the limit” at the Gifted Center, she says, for teachers and for students.