The POGIL Project

"I think it only takes one person who is excited and engaged to get other people excited," said Ashley Hill, a high school science teacher in Fullerton, California.

POGIL has made such a difference in her own classroom and the classrooms of her colleagues, that Hill has become passionate about trying to connect other POGIL educators in Southern California. She knows how infectious the energy of an engaged community of educators can be, too.

But it wasn't until she attended a three-day workshop with two of her colleagues that she realized something important: she'd been doing it all wrong.

"I think a lot of people see POGIL classroom materials as a photocopied resource that's just handed out," Hill said of teachers who encounter POGIL worksheets and materials without being trained to facilitate activities. And, for a few years, she was one of them.

But the three-day training fundamentally changed Hill's perspective."We were super motivated, and we picked up a ton of skills and information in the three-day workshop, brought it back for next year, and completely changed the way we use it in our classroom," she said.

The POGIL workshop also provided Hill with a new community of educators to tap into, and she launched herself into trying to bring other teachers in Southern California on board with the approach. However, public school teachers in Los Angeles and surrounding counties face steep challenges to accessing professional development activities, says Hill.

In order to convince her school to let her take time off to attend her very first POGIL workshop, for example, Hill promised to slash travel expenses by staying with a relative. Teachers in the greater Los Angeles area are often responsible for paying for their own substitutes, too.

In addition to a structural lack of support for professional development, Hill notes that teachers like her in Southern California face additional challenges in the classroom. They have huge student populations to educate, and those students have a large range of needs. And, in discovering POGIL classroom activities, Hill found a great way to boost the confidence—and the performance—of students who struggled, especially English Language Learners.

Hill is also excited about the number of student teachers she comes into contact with—they're young, motivated, and excited to try new ways of instruction. "Student-centered learning and inquiry and process skills—they're really valuable resources for the next generation of students and teachers."