From Classroom to Career: How AVID Future Lab Prepares Students for What’s Next, with Dr. Michelle Magallanez

In this episode, Dr. Michelle Magallanez, Head of Interaction Design at AVID Center, returns to Unpacking Education to share how AVID Future Lab is equipping students with the durable skills they need to thrive beyond the classroom. The conversation explores how project-based learning (PBL), student voice and choice, and real-world issues—like the impact of social media on mental health—prepare learners for the future of work and life.

 Learn how the free resources within AVID Future Lab, supported by Adobe Express, give students authentic opportunities to research, create, and present solutions to real problems—all while building confidence, collaboration, and creativity. Regardless of your familiarity and experience with PBL, this episode offers accessible strategies and free classroom-ready resources to help every student see themselves as a designer and change-maker. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

Michelle Magallanez 0:00 And one teacher shared that his students saw themselves as designers and change makers for the first time. So students said that the experience felt real and that it gave them a chance to talk about things that they care about in a creative way, and that was the magic that we hope to unlock.

Rena Clark 0:21 The topic for today's podcast is, "From Classroom to Career: How AVID Future Lab Prepares Students for What's Next" with Dr. Michelle Magallanez. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org. Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I'm Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:55 I'm Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:57 and I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann 1:00 and we're here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 1:05 Education is our passport to the future.

Rena Clark 1:10 Our quote for today is from Dr. George Valenzuela in the introduction to his book, Project Based Learning Plus Grades Six through 12, Enhancing Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. He writes for teachers to feel confident using PBL in their classroom, they need to understand what PBL is, learn ways to boost their learners' EQ, know the students they serve, and adapt practical strategies for planning and facilitating PBL using strategies with high influences on student engagement and achievement. Woo, mouthful, but very important, y'all. So Paul, Winston, responses?

Winston Benjamin 1:52 First, that sounds kind of scary. I know that's a lot, right, and it sounds like a lot of work to do. But I think in the terms that's really valuable for me is knowing your students that you're serving and being able to adapt to their actual needs as a part of your strategic move. I think that's an underlying assumption that all teachers really want to do.

So I think by by starting with there, I think it gets back to the confident level. Because again, the reason why you're doing the work and even trying to improve your classroom space is to really serve your students the best you can. So I think just by like, doing that, that really undergirds that idea of confidence in doing PBL. It's not just for you as the teacher to, like, lighten your load or make it heavier. It's really giving your students the opportunities to really express their intellectual ability. So that's what I really enjoy about this quote.

Paul Beckermann 2:49 Yeah, I'm with you, Winston. I think PBL is really one of the great ways to differentiate for students and give them a chance to really glow where they want to glow. I think sometimes, though, people think in contrast to a lot of work, they think, "Oh, you just give them a project and let them go," you know?

But I think it's important to know that PBL is not a free for all. There's thoughtful planning that's required to make it successful and make that unique accessibility for each of your students. While it does provide voice and choice, it is guided so that students can be supported in that journey and experience increased success. So it's that balance, right?

Rena Clark 3:28 Yes, and so I'm excited because back with us today is Michelle Magallanez. We love having Michelle, and she is the head of interaction design at AVID. So she's back with us again. And Michelle, we're just hoping you start out by telling us a little bit about what is AVID Future Lab, what inspired its creation, and how does it reflect AVID's commitment to student centered learning.

Michelle Magallanez 3:57 Well, it's such a pleasure to be back with you guys. I always love being able to come visit, because you guys host the most intriguing and meaningful conversation. So thank you so much for having me.

Paul Beckermann 4:09 Of course, grateful you're here.

Michelle Magallanez 4:12 And to tell you a little bit more about AVID Future Lab, it was born from a deep desire to connect classroom learning with real world purpose. So we wanted to create a space where students could explore relevant, complex issues like the impact of social media on mental health through a hands-on project that reflects their lived experience.

At its core, AVID Future Lab embodies AVID's long-standing belief that students thrive when they're seen, heard and challenged in meaningful ways, and put students in the driver's seat, empowering them to think critically, collaborate and create change, all the while building future-ready skills.

And we were able to do this thanks to a grant from Adobe Express, and so that's why there is such a strong focus on creative future skills. We are looking to ensure that students have a platform to build podcasts, websites, animations, to explore what the impact of social media means on them and the community that they're solving for.

Rena Clark 5:27 I love that.

Winston Benjamin 5:28 The work that you're describing is so powerful. It took me a second to really like, you know, think through one I can envision some of my students being able to like, utilize that in a powerful way for their future. But the question that I have is, why is project based learning such a powerful tool to implement an activity like this, for preparing students for the future work, the future of work and life, right? Like, why is it such a valuable tool?

Michelle Magallanez 5:58 I love that question. Thank you, Winston. And one of the reasons why we leaned into project based learning is because it immerses students in authentic problem solving. So rather than learning in isolation, students engage with content through real challenges that require teamwork, innovation and adaptability—exactly the kind of skills the workforce is demanding.

So PBL helps students connect the dots between what they learn in school and the impact they want to have in the world. It also fosters confidence and agency, helping students see themselves as capable contributors, not just as consumers of information. And so for us, project based learning became the key vehicle to allow students to solve a meaningful problem that would give them an opportunity to help build the skills that they need in the future.

Paul Beckermann 6:53 So here's a follow-up question on that, because I agree those durable skills are so important. So how does AVID Future Lab help students develop those skills like collaboration, communication, creative problem solving, those things?

Michelle Magallanez 7:06 Thank you. And AVID Future Lab was intentionally designed to nourish the kind of durable skills that outlast any single job or technology. Every lesson asks students to tackle open-ended problems that require critical thinking and creative ideation. They work in teams and give and receive feedback. They iterate on ideas and present their solutions to real audiences. These experiences build resilience, communication savvy and the ability to collaborate across different sets of skills that are important in life as they are in career.

And to make this as easy as possible for teachers, we've aligned every lesson to the ETS skills for the future taxonomy. So we're providing both teachers and their students the language that they need to label the durable skills that they're practicing in each of these lessons, because we know how important it is to experience something and then label it so that you can own it in your own cognition and be able to talk about it as you continue to grow and learn in the future.

Paul Beckermann 8:18 That's cool. I really like that idea of naming it and being able to call it out. I'm gonna put you on the spot here a little bit too, Michelle. Do you have like, a specific example of a lesson that sort of encapsulates this?

Michelle Magallanez 8:31 Well, since the lessons are PBL, and it's PBL that's built around a design thinking framework, they flow. And so one of the things that we wanted to do was to make these lessons as flexible as possible. So if you have a teacher who is really interested in helping their students dive deeper in research, they can go into a lesson that really focuses on, where do I start? How do I formulate my question for insight? How do I do library research, internet research? What are the digital literacy skills that I need in order to determine that a resource is authentic and not going to be leading me astray?

So it's hard to choose just one lesson, since each can potentially stand alone or could serve as an entire process from coming up with the idea of the problem that you want to solve all the way through presenting it to the authentic audience. And so we align it to design thinking stages through each step of the lesson, and with each of those steps, we pull to the surface our students working together to collaborate on problem solving. What does leadership look like at every single level of teamwork? What does negotiation look like as they're working on iterating a prototype? And so by organizing these lessons on a design thinking framework and laying the ETS skills for the future on top of it, students begin to see that as they work through problems, they're also developing these really rigorous skills that they may not have known how to label but have actually done in the past.

Paul Beckermann 10:22 That's cool. I love the flexibility and how you've got those real-world skills really embedded in that process. That's that's powerful, cool.

Rena Clark 10:30 So I have kind of to follow up. We're just following up to the follow up. But I, for those of you that I'm just curious, if you can tell us what ETS is for. You know, there's so many acronyms. I feel like this is a national we don't, we don't know what that means. Some of us, if you could move to start with that one.

Michelle Magallanez 10:48 Definitely. Thank you for good call providing context. So ETS is an organization that is working with the Carnegie Foundation to re-envision what learning looks like in the future. And so historically, the Carnegie Foundation were the folks who determined, back in the early 19th century, how to measure learning for students, and that's why we've had seat time. But they've come to the realization that, hmm, are students really learning if we just make them sit in class for X number of hours? Not really.

And so they've partnered with ETS and are looking to build a new form of assessment that is more around competency-based learning. And the Skills for the Future Taxonomy is the foundation of that assessment process. And what is wonderful about this is that ETS and Carnegie Foundation are working together to assess not only how learning is happening in the classroom, but is happening in real life for students. So the teachers are able to assess the community is able to assess how a student is building critical thinking, because it might not just be happening in the classroom. They might have an after-school job at their grandparents' auto shop. Well, they're building some really amazing competency skills in that as well, and they need to be recognized for that experience.

Rena Clark 12:12 And then it kind of relates to the quote we had at the beginning, because we talked about, you know, there's lots of voice and choice, but if this is PBL is guided, so we want to, you know, that's kind of we think of these lessons. So when we think of these guided lessons, what role do students have, like, what role does voice and choice play in the Future Lab lessons, how guided are they? They're not just wide open. Because I think some of our listeners want to know, "oh, this sounds a little too wide for me".

Michelle Magallanez 12:43 I love that, yes, because open-ended learning can feel really overwhelming, less so for students, but for teachers, because you're under so much pressure to achieve so much in a short period of time with students. And because of that, we wanted to make sure that we made this as easy to implement for teachers as possible.

And so these are ready-made lessons that are built on a 5E model scaffolding, as I said, design thinking, including all of the student handouts that they need, rubrics for teachers to be able to provide formative assessment for students along the way, reflection prompts and examples of what student work could look like.

And what we're really happy about with these experiences is that the lessons also include scripts for teachers, because some of the feedback that we had in pilots as we work through lesson development with teachers, was that "I really want to do PBL, I try, but it's overwhelming because of all the research and prep that I have to do".

And so that's why we chose a particular topic that we thought would be meaningful to kids, and that is this impact of social media on mental health, because we knew that would really resonate with them based on everything that's coming up from the Pew Center of Research, which is saying 70% of kids know that social media is not good for their mental health, and they recognize that.

Giving them an opportunity to solve that problem, but providing teacher scripts that introduce each section of the PBL process and align it to the Design Thinking framework gives teachers, not only the introduction, the transition between each of the 5E sections within that lesson, as well as the transition and the setup for the next lesson. So if a teacher just wants to plug and play these resources, they can easily do that.

Rena Clark 14:40 And then can I just, I want to reiterate, but within those plug and play resources, students still are having some options, some voice and choice?

Michelle Magallanez 14:48 Exactly, because agency is at the heart of this. We wanted to give as much structure as possible for teachers who were new to PBL who were just overwhelmed, but wanted to try. But it was the exact opposite for students. We wanted to make sure that they could lean in and really determine what are those skills that they want to practice as they define the solution for their target audience.

So we lean into creative skills, and because we've had this awesome grant for Adobe Express, we recommend Adobe Express, because it's free for all educators and students. But if your district does not have that available, AVID is tool agnostic, so we have hooks for Canva, for educators, for Google, for Microsoft, so that you can use the tool that is readily available at your school and district.

So that students have an opportunity to decide, "hey, for me, I want to solve this problem by putting together a social media campaign". How do I do this? Another group of students might think, "well, I want to build a website with resources that talk about this for my specific target audience". And a third group might say, "oh, you know what? I think a video is going to be more impactful for the people that I'm trying to provide a solution for".

So students have an opportunity to really lean into their passions, and we've provided the support structures through each of the lessons to help them do that. So the lessons provide a deep framework around research prototype iteration and provide them with industry standards for feedback, like the Google Five Act Interview process, so that students know that they're not building it for themselves, they're building it for their audience. But how do they get that feedback from the audience? And so it provides a really robust frame for students to be as creative as possible.

Winston Benjamin 16:41 I love that. There seems like there's several supports embedded in the how, the why, the what, the who, right? But there's, I have, I think the two-part question first is, Who are you trying to reach in terms of age, grade range? One. And the second question is, as we stated earlier in the quote, to be confident in PBL, a teacher has to have a lot of experiences, knowledge of students and all these other things. How are you communicating to the veteran teacher and the novice teacher? Right? Because both of their learning and experiences are so broad. How do you communicate to such a wide community of teachers within this thing?

Michelle Magallanez 17:31 Thank you so much for pointing out grade level. I should have mentioned that from the very outset, these are resources that are really geared for high school students. So they are aligned to national standards, Common Core, NGSS, ISTE, as well as the AVID essential skills across grades nine through 12. And so teachers have can evaluate each lesson to determine does this even fit into what I'm targeting to teach my students?

For the second question, it's one of the reasons why we chose the 5E framework, because it is so robust and it provides teachers a very flexible framework in the way in which they bring inquiry-based learning into their classroom.

And so it supports both the newbie who may be curious about PBL but is a little overwhelmed about dipping in their toes. For those teachers, we provide scripts to what they literally can say to set up each section of that 5E lesson to guide their students through the process. And for those teachers, we also provide a multitude of examples of what each stage of the design and development process for their solution looks like.

For those teachers who are on the opposite end of the spectrum, who are like, "Oh my gosh, I love PBL. I'm so excited to dive into this". We provide questions and prompts of how they can take it even further. And in the teacher resource guide that we provide, we recommend that teachers sort of read the preface to begin with so they can get an idea of how did they want to approach this for their classroom.

Do they want this to be a really rigorous, four to six-week experience of 10 lessons, or do they want this to be a semester long experience where they really provide students an opportunity to build something very robust using tools that are available to them? And so between providing student agency and the different level of pedagogical supports that we've included within the lessons as well as in within the teacher resource guide, we're able to meet the needs of both a teacher who is new to projects based learning, as well as inspire those who love it and want to take it even further and really put their students in front of a global audience. So.

Paul Beckermann 20:00 Yeah, that's awesome. Now I'm kind of curious, have you had a chance to try these out with any students and teachers? And if so, what kind of feedback did you get?

Michelle Magallanez 20:10 We did and we we followed the design thinking process. We love it. So we really co-designed with teachers, and this was what was something that was super important to us. So we had a group of teachers in Missouri at two different public high schools who provided us feedback all along the way. So each lesson we developed, they tested it out. They told us what worked and what didn't, and really what resonated with their students.

And the feedback was incredibly affirming. The teachers tell us that the students who usually sit quietly in the back of the room suddenly come alive when they're leveraging these lessons, asking deeper questions, collaborating more confidently, and pushing their ideas further. And one teacher shared that his students saw themselves as designers and change makers for the first time. So students said that the experience felt real and that it gave them a chance to talk about things that they care about in a creative way. And that was the magic that we hope to unlock, because we know between creativity, curiosity, critical thinking and collaboration, you've unlocked how to work masterfully in a collaborative team setting, which we know is how the workforce functions and how the work world is telling us that these are the skills that adults are actually lacking right now. They don't know how to do this as a functioning team, and now we're giving students an opportunity to do it before they even graduate high school.

Rena Clark 21:43 I love that, and so. So if I you, you've, you know, I'm just hooked. This sounds amazing. How do I access this? How do I access AVID Future Lab?

Michelle Magallanez 21:56 Well, thankfully, the other piece that I forgot to mention is that it's free. Nice. Hey, so thanks to this beautiful I know, right, it's the best price ever. Teacher's favorite exactly. That's why we love Adobe Express the fact that they gave us the opportunity to just share this not only with our AVID network, but with educators around the country.

This is a free resource that will be available on AVID Open Access, which is the home of Unpacking Education. If you go to avidopenaccess.org, and under the Grab and Go lessons, there is a section called Project based learning, and all of these lessons and the resources associated with each will be available for free, for download, for teachers. And so we're really excited to share this with everyone and get some more feedback on what's working and what's not. So following that design thinking process, we can continue to iterate.

Paul Beckermann 22:57 and we'll be sure to put a link in the show notes too. That'll be two places you can get to it. Yay.

Rena Clark 23:04 So we know that we can get this for free, and we're going to you know you can try it out and give us feedback. So, Michelle, looking ahead, how do you see AVID Future Lab evolving, maybe developing, especially to meet the changing needs of our students and the workforce?

Michelle Magallanez 23:20 I love that. Thank you. That's an awesome question, Rena. So the future of the workforce is just rapidly evolving, and so so was the definition of what career readiness is going to look like. And so we envision Future Lab expanding into other ideally high-interest topics, like AI and sustainability, and always with a focus on student agency and real-world impact.

So it would be amazing if other resources were developed in this vein that really help students dive into topics that are meaningful for them as they continue to grow and change. And so the resources that we've developed at the moment include, as I mentioned, a teacher resource guide, lessons, student portfolios, so students have a way in which to track their work and be able to share that with others as they continue to evolve in their either college or career pathway, and as well as all of the resources a teacher would need to bring it to life, the teacher decks and all of the handouts that they would need to share with students. So what I would love to see, as this continues to evolve and change, is hearing from folks what's working and what's not so that we can continue to authentically meet needs.

Winston Benjamin 24:41 Absolutely. So it seems like you want your teachers to be part of your toolkit. Now it's time to get to our next section.

Transition Music with Rena's Children 24:50 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit, what is in the toolkit, what's in the toolkit? It. Check it out.

Winston Benjamin 25:01 What are you taking away in your toolkit? Toolkit? Hey.

Paul Beckermann 25:09 You can never have enough tools in the toolkit, for sure. You know, if you just want a little background about PBL you can go to pblworks.org, and just get a little bit of general information from the Buck Institute before you come and dive into these specific lessons. Or we can go back and forth however you want. It's just another resource you can check out.

Rena Clark 25:27 and I'm sure as you get into the Future Lab lessons. But I have been loving using Adobe Podcast. So podcast.adobe.com and I mean using it from the youngest students to the oldest it's been fantastic. And then all of their educational products, so adobe.com/education/express, and you can sign up free account, which it will walk you through as well, but you can access completely free accounts and just try some things on, play around.

Winston Benjamin 25:55 And I'm taking the idea of design thinking. I really like that, because for me, it changes the concept of a teacher from being a sage on the stage to one that organizing and learning experience, right? So what are the ways that you're designing the thinking experience, and also dig into how that actually relates to what you're doing with PBL, right? How are you designing thinking experience? So I love the thinking tool. Michelle, I'm going to ask you, what's a tool you'd like to add to our toolkit, other than what you've been giving us?

Michelle Magallanez 26:25 I love that. One of the pieces that I really want to highlight is the new edition of PBL Plus from Dr. George Valenzuela. He has been essential in the development of our work and such a supporter. So being as Paul called out PBL works, George's work is really helpful, in the sense of our teachers really understanding who the students are in their classroom and best meeting their needs. And I think he does a beautiful job at helping mentor teachers build that relationship with their students.

Paul Beckermann 27:02 I love that. Perfect. All right. Well, let's jump into our one thing.

Transition Music 27:07 It's time for that one thing, that one thing.

Paul Beckermann 27:18 All right, one thing. Time. Time for a final thought for the day. Rena, how about you? Why don't you start? What do you got?

Rena Clark 27:24 I just love that this is going to be relevant and meaningful for students, also for educators at relevant and meaningful for students and impactful to career and potentially future. And nothing engages kids more than when they think it's actually relevant and meaningful. So that will be helpful as well.

Winston Benjamin 27:46 Winston, what about you? So I've been hanging out with a lot of couple of friends since I'm going home soon, and they always complain about education as we didn't learn this in school. We didn't learn how to do this in school. School didn't prepare us for life. But right now, I think utilizing PBL is one way that we can actually prepare students for life. So I think hearing my friends say that, and then hearing this conversation, it really makes me think about like, how we're shifting to really support student learning, yeah.

Paul Beckermann 28:22 and I'm going to piggyback off that, Winston, because it's, for me, it's the durable skills. We we give students voice and choice, but because there's that voice and choice and that that freedom to kind of find their own direction, they have to develop those durable skills. I mean, that's what we do every day on the job, when there's not a scripted way to get to the end, and I think that is just super powerful. All right, Michelle, your chance to drop a one thing here, what's what do you want to leave our listeners with?

Michelle Magallanez 28:51 Building on what everyone has said here, just really highlighting for teachers that this is a relevant topic. The latest that we've heard in research that's been called out by the Pew Research Center is that roughly half of teens say that social media has the most negative effect on people in their age group, which is up from the 32% just two to three years ago.

And so knowing that to engage students in meaningful learning, we need to put topics in front of them that they can unpack and learn about and provide them with creative ways to design solutions. Really gives students an opportunity to shine and grow, but it also provides teachers with insights into "Wow, I did not realize I could bring something so complex into my classroom and my students would be able to rise to it and really thrive".

And I think that's something that we heard from the pilots. Is the beginning, it feels overwhelming because we're asking students to do research, to get feedback. Back to iterate on their ideas and to present it to an authentic audience, whether that's a school board or sharing their video on social media, and teachers are like, "are they really going to go for this?" And they did, and they loved it, and it was such a memorable experience for everyone. So encouraging teachers to take the risk to try something complex and rigorous, because their students are going to thrive.

Rena Clark 30:30 So powerful. So again, that's going to be available for all of you listeners for free on AVID Open Access. And I just want to thank Adobe Express. Thank you so much, Dr. Magallanez, and so you're looking for AVID Future Lab when you go on there. And as always, Michelle, we love hearing from you. And I, whenever you're on you, I feel like you're always dropping good news little yay. And so we love the good news, and we look forward to having you back with some more good news.

Michelle Magallanez 31:00 Thanks, you guys. It's so good to see everyone. Thank you for having me as a guest.

Rena Clark 31:05 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 31:08 We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org where you can discover resources to support student agency and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 31:20 We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 31:25 And remember, Go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 31:30 Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 31:32 You make a difference.