Project- and Community-Based Learning at Mountain View:

Changemaker Night

When your family walks into Mountain View School on Changemaker PBL (Project-Based Learning) Project Night, you exchange warm greetings, perhaps a “buenas tardes,” with the Mountain View staff waiting at the gate. You get the sense that everyone is welcome and matters in this school community. As you enter, you see students spot their friends, excited to be in this joyful, community-centered space, eager to see their teachers and show off their PBL projects. As the music plays, you’re handed an exploration map to guide your family through Universal Transitional Kindergarten (UTK) to 8th-grade students’ PBL showcases set up in classrooms and other campus spaces. Additionally, you’ll find other areas where you can connect with community partners who share resources or enrichment opportunities for your children. You can also visit the Parent-Staff Association table, the Food Pantry, or the Community Clothes Closet, which was initiated as a kindergarten/first-grade Changemaker PBL project three years ago.

The Community Schools Coordinator and team will also invite you to share your input on topics like attendance, or weigh in on the findings from a recent parent/caregiver survey. These engagement practices have been strengthened since Mountain View became a Community School, ensuring families are continuously informed and have input and voice in school decisions. Before your family heads off to explore, you receive dinner tickets as a thank-you for the time your family spent in partnership with the school.

Rooted in the school’s core values and a shared sense of purpose, teaching and learning at Mountain View include interdisciplinary, project-based experiences that invite students into changemaking through teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, and empathy.”

Changemaker PBL Project Night is one of three annual opportunities for Mountain View students to showcase their PBL projects and processes. Mountain View School values changemaking, lifelong learning, identity, and community. Rooted in the school’s core values and a shared sense of purpose, teaching and learning at Mountain View include interdisciplinary, project-based experiences that invite students into changemaking through teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, and empathy. The Changemakers PBL Project supports students in building academic skills by facilitating the exploration of real-world issues, understanding their causes, and taking action. These values are not just reflected in student projects; they also shape how educators at Mountain View collaborate and grow. Alaina Dye, a dedicated third-grade teacher at Mountain View, shared that the school community’s buy-in for project-based learning, along with “the dedication that we all have, the desire to live up to what the mission is,” has inspired her growth as an educator.

Mountain View’s Journey: Deepening Project-Based and Community-Based Learning

They also included a more explicit Community Partners component to help identify community organizations and individuals to collaborate with to make projects more community-connected. This shift also reflected a priority for San Diego Unified School District’s community schools–incorporating community-based learning that strengthens students’ academic competencies through instruction that connects the classroom to their identities and community, making learning more relevant, culturally affirming, and grounded in real-world experiences.

Recognizing that successful PBL instruction requires both skill and intentional planning time, Mountain View teachers voted to prioritize professional development and differentiated support for PBL during their professional learning communities in the 2024-2025 school year.”

During a series of PBL-focused professional learning communities (PLCs), Mountain View teachers reviewed the PBL framework components and expectations, selecting specific components to focus on. Mountain View instructional leaders, including Principal Brown and the Community Schools Site Coach, were available to offer support in different focus areas. Teachers also engaged in project tunings, a structured process for giving and receiving constructive peer feedback on a specific area of their PBL project plan. In addition, each framework component included a self-assessment, which helped guide the direction of PBL support, and will continue to do so in the next school year. Building on this momentum, Mountain View teachers later visited another school with strong PBL practices to learn how they structure and showcase student exhibitions, bringing back ideas to inform their approaches to sharing the PBL process and student learning.

The Role of SDUSD in Strengthening Project- and Community-Based Learning at Mountain View

To further support this work, Mountain View, like all Community Schools in San Diego Unified, benefits from a Community Schools Site Coach, a certificated, union-bargained 0.2 position (SDEA) created to support teachers in planning, connecting, and deepening community-based and project-based instruction. Site Coaches collaborate with teachers and the Community Schools Coordinator to align lessons with the priorities and strengths identified in each community school’s Needs and Assets Assessment. To strengthen this work across sites, all Site Coaches and Coordinators participate in ongoing professional learning focused on integrating community-based learning at their schools. These efforts are supported by the district’s Community Schools Central Office Resource Teachers, also SDEA-bargained roles, who provide guidance and help advance these practices across schools. In the next section we illustrate the way Mountain View brings community and project-based learning to life with classroom spotlights.

Site Coaches collaborate with teachers and the Community Schools Coordinator to align lessons with the priorities and strengths identified in each community school’s Needs and Assets Assessment.”

Spotlight on Practice: Guiding 3rd Graders to Learn and Lead Through Service

For third-grade teacher Alaina Dye, project-based learning becomes transformative when students are supported in applying empathy, taking action, and reflecting on their impact around a cause they care about. This year, her class began their Changemakers PBL Project by exploring the question: How can we embody the attributes of a changemaker and take action to make a meaningful impact? They studied different changemakers and explored organizations serving the community, voting to partner with the San Diego Humane Society. Alaina scheduled a classroom visit with an animal educator, who began visiting monthly, reflecting Alaina’s growing belief in building lasting, trusting, and mutually supportive relationships with community organizations.

Humane Society Visit

For third-grade teacher Alaina Dye, project-based learning becomes transformative when students are supported in applying empathy, taking action, and reflecting on their impact around a cause they care about.”

Bake Sale

Alaina also collaborated with another Mountain View teacher to bring older siblings into the classroom to help make the toys, highlighting the value of cross-grade collaboration . Further, she began documenting student volunteer hours, discovering they could be added to students’ cumulative school files. In total, the class completed fifteen hours of community service. Alaina encouraged students to take pride in this accomplishment and reminded them they can continue to build on it.

Inspired by the idea of service, she helped students consider what it means to show empathy and respond to a need, asking, ‘What can we do to help when we see a problem?’”

Spotlight on Practice: Scaffolding Real-World Learning Through Community Connections in UTK

In a recent conversation, Sonia Bouchard, a UTK teacher at Mountain View, shared powerful insights into how project-based learning can evolve to meet the needs of the youngest learners. With years of experience and reflection behind her, Sonia emphasized that the key to successful PBL lies in intentional scaffolding and in being responsive to the developmental stages of students.

“The biggest takeaway for me,” Sonia shared, “is learning how to adjust a project I’ve done before in ways that truly meet the foundational skills my current students are developing. The project may look the same on the surface, but how we approach it is completely based on where the students are.”

Rather than inviting outside organizations that might seem distant to four- and five-year-olds, Sonia imagined “community” as the people her students see daily.”

For their Living Things PBL Project, Sonia leaned into deepening classroom-community connections through the Community Schools work and the differentiated supports conversations. She set out to create a project that not only focused on real-world skill building but also made those classroom-community relationships tangible and relevant for her students. Rather than inviting outside organizations that might seem distant to four- and five-year-olds, Sonia imagined “community” as the people her students see daily. She invited a paraeducator, the principal, and the school’s office clerk to the classroom to share how they “care” for something in their lives. They brought in animals, babies, and plants, helping students learn how to care for living things in hands-on, relevant, and joyful ways.

Sonia’s approach is an important reminder that project-based learning isn’t just for older grades. When scaffolded well and rooted in the interests and realities of students’ lives, project-based learning in early childhood can build real-world skills, cultivate empathy, and celebrate and strengthen the community it reflects.”

There was a plant care station, an animal care station with veterinarian tools and pet props, and a baby doll care station where students role-played how to nurture babies. These stations were developmentally appropriate and play-based opportunities for young children to share their learning.

Sonia’s approach is an important reminder that project-based learning isn’t just for older grades. When scaffolded well and rooted in the interests and realities of students’ lives, project-based learning in early childhood can build real-world skills, cultivate empathy, and celebrate and strengthen the community it reflects.

How PBL and CBL Guide Students From Passion to Action

At Mountain View School, students are beginning to discover what piques their interests, passions, and the causes they naturally connect with. Educators’ role is to nurture that curiosity and guide students in growing as learners, pushing them to go deeper in ways that are developmentally appropriate. Project-based learning becomes a powerful framework for this progression. In the early years, it’s about helping students ask: What do I love? As they move through the grades, that curiosity grows into deeper questions: Why does this matter to others? and How can I use what I’ve learned to help or create something meaningful? This shift marks the growth of agency and purpose. Educators are not just teaching content; they’re helping students see themselves as capable changemakers. Through intentional guidance, reflection, and real-world connections, educators are laying the foundation for students to see their learning as meaningful and their voices as valuable and powerful.

Educators’ role is to nurture that curiosity and guide students in growing as learners, pushing them to go deeper in ways that are developmentally appropriate.“

Takeaways for Advancing PBL and CBL in Community Schools

1. Start with your school’s values: Align PBL and CBL efforts to what matters most to your school community, its values, mission, and vision. When students and educators are rooted in shared values, the work becomes more meaningful, and buy-in happens more naturally.
2. Honor developmental stages: PBL and CBL can look very different from grade to grade, and that’s ok. Projects that feel close to students’ lives, identities, and experiences are what make the learning meaningful.
3. Let student voice guide the work, even if the entry point is small: When teachers create space for reflection, choice, and action, students engage in learning with curiosity and care. Whether it’s voting on a community partner to invite or reflecting on how it felt to help, student leadership can take many forms.
4. Build teacher capacity slowly and intentionally: Ongoing, collaborative professional learning that gives teachers time to plan, reflect, and experiment, such as project tunings or peer feedback, builds confidence and shared purpose, especially when it leverages the expertise of teachers to guide and support the work.
5. Utilize planning tools that support reflection and flexibility: Frameworks and planners are most useful when they include space for inquiry, revision, and real-world connections. When used intentionally and in ways that honor the voice of educators, these tools support project planning as well as professional growth.
6. Make it local and build from relationships: Partnerships don’t have to be big or elaborate. Powerful learning can come from connecting with everyday members of the school community, such as office staff, parents, or community members. Nurture and deepen these relationships. Community Schools Coordinators can help support and strengthen these partnerships.
7. Recognize that teachers need support: A Community Schools Site Coach (or similar role), the Community Schools Coordinator, and Administrators can be valuable thought partners and collaborators, helping teachers bridge academic content and real-world relevance, while also honoring the priorities surfaced in the Needs and Assets Assessment.
8. Student growth is about more than standards: Sometimes, the most lasting learning comes from building empathy, collaboration, confidence, and pride. Projects that allow students to feel their impact, as helpers, contributors, and changemakers, are the ones they’ll remember.