CaL Benefits for Students
- Students develop key 21st century life skills of collaboration, critical thinking and information fluency, problem solving, communication and managing complexity.
- Students cultivate a research and inquiry temperament.
- Students build a greater awareness of their own communities and cities, and develop a stronger sense of place.
- Students improve their writing skills by learning how to write for a specific audience and for a specific purpose.
- Students learn specific content related to the topic of their project.
- Students become more confident and develop leadership skills which allow them to be agents of change in their own communities.
- If selected, students get an opportunity to represent their school at an inter-city conference, out of hundreds of other students.
- Selected projects get highlighted on our website, social media, published materials, etc.
- All students who complete and submit a final project get a certificate.
- Students develop empathy and become more engaged citizens of their own communities
CaL A to Z
CaL Benefits for Teachers
- Teachers become knowledgeable about Project-Based Learning.
- Teachers have an opportunity to try innovative and experiential lesson plans in a supportive, low-stakes yet authentic context thus building their confidence and pedagogical toolkit i.e., on-the-job professional learning in using progressive teaching methods.
- At the conference and other CaL events, teachers meet committed and passionate educators from different schools, enabling them to expand their own networks.
- Teachers can access and use the entire City as Lab curriculum, which includes many resources for building capacity, e.g., how to organize group work, how to scaffold learning using graphic organizers, how to encourage reflective thinking, etc.
- Teachers mentoring CaL projects teach 21st century skills to their students by default as our lessons are designed to develop communication, collaboration, problem-solving and other skills among children.
- All participating teachers who guide their students to complete and submit theri CaL projects get a certificate.
CaL Benefits for Schools
- Schools can include their students’ projects in their own brochures, social media pages and other communication material.
- Schools can invite parents of qualifying students to the final CaL conference to promote the kind of learning their own teachers have facilitated.
- Schools can showcase all participating students’ projects at their own internal events.
- Finalists with school names may be published in magazines, newspapers, CaL website and other social media pages, creating publicity for the school.