By Ryan Steuer | CEO of Magnify Learning
Project Based Learning can generate incredible energy during professional development. Teachers collaborate. Ideas start flying. Projects take shape. Everyone leaves ready to transform learning for students.
Then school starts.
Schedules fill up. Assessments arrive. Teachers get overwhelmed. And that great PBL project developed over the summer never launches.
For school leaders, that gap between PBL training and PBL implementation can be frustrating. But the answer may not be another training—or simply telling teachers they need to “do more PBL.”
Babcock Ranch Neighborhood School in Florida faced this exact challenge. Although PBL had been part of the school’s instructional model from its founding, at one point only 10% of trained teachers were actually implementing authentic PBL.
Instead of blaming teachers or abandoning the model, school leaders started asking a better question:
What is preventing teachers from implementing the PBL they already want to do?
That question led to intentional research, new support structures, and a dramatic change. During the 2024–25 school year, implementation reached 59%. By 2025–26, 95% of trained teachers had implemented at least one PBL.
Here are three leadership lessons administrators can take from their journey.
1. Stop Assuming You Know Why Teachers Aren’t Implementing PBL
When PBL implementation drops, leaders can jump quickly to solutions.
“We need another training.”
“Teachers need more planning time.”
“We need to hold people more accountable.”
Maybe.
But before prescribing a solution, diagnose the problem.
Rachel Crawford, Director of Student Development at Babcock Ranch Neighborhood School, began by investigating the actual barriers teachers were experiencing. She looked at teacher efficacy, burnout, resistance to change, confidence, coaching, and the support teachers received after training.
As Rachel explains, the real challenge was bridging the gap between the training and implementation.
That distinction matters.
A teacher can believe in PBL and still be afraid to launch a project.
They may worry about losing instructional time. They may not know how to connect standards to the project. They may be nervous about managing student teams. Or they may simply fear that their first project will flop.
And yes—it might flop.
Rachel openly shares that her early projects sometimes crashed and burned. That experience actually shaped how she later supported teachers.
Administrators should approach teachers much like great teachers approach students: figure out where they are, identify the barrier, and provide the scaffold that helps them take the next step.
Start asking questions.
Use teacher surveys. Conduct focus groups. Talk with department chairs and team leaders. Meet individually with teachers.
And keep asking why.
A teacher may initially say, “I don’t have enough time for PBL.”
Dig deeper and you may discover the problem isn’t actually time. It might be confidence, project design, collaboration, or uncertainty about expectations.
As Rachel recommends, administrators should identify the root cause, not simply react to the first hurdle teachers mention.
2. Build a System of Support, Not Just an Offer of Support
There is a major difference between saying,
“Help is available if you need it.”
and building a system where support is naturally embedded into implementation.
Babcock Ranch developed several structures to make PBL implementation easier and more predictable.
Teachers add projects to a PBL launch schedule. They work through clearly defined success criteria. They participate in Critical Friends Groups before launching projects. They receive coaching and feedback. Communities of practice give teachers opportunities to collaborate and learn from one another.
None of these strategies alone is revolutionary.
The power comes from turning them into a system.
Consider the launch schedule.
Rather than asking teachers occasionally, “Are you doing a project this semester?” Babcock has a central place where teachers record upcoming projects. Administrators can see projects, grade levels, participating teachers, numbers of students involved, and culmination dates.
The schedule creates accountability—but it also provides useful leadership data.
Then comes feedback.
Before launching, teachers participate in a Critical Friends Group. But Rachel emphasizes an important leadership distinction:
It isn’t a “gotcha.”
The purpose is collaboration, brainstorming, feedback, and improvement.
That matters because accountability without support quickly becomes compliance.
You might get teachers to check the PBL box, but you won’t necessarily create great learning experiences.
The goal is to combine high expectations with high support.
One teacher at Babcock illustrates what that can look like. She avoided implementing PBL for two years—not because she opposed it, but because she was afraid of failing. Rachel went into the classroom and helped facilitate part of the project. Support was gradually released as the teacher gained confidence.
Eventually, that teacher became one of the school’s instructional coaches.
That is what capacity building looks like.
3. If PBL Is a Priority, Leadership Has to Treat It Like One
Schools have no shortage of priorities.
- Curriculum.
- Assessments.
- Staffing.
- Behavior.
- Parent communication.
- Professional development.
- Budget.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, PBL can quietly become something leaders still say is important without actually giving it attention.
Teachers notice.
As Rachel explains, leaders need a shared language around PBL: If you’re not speaking it continuously, this is who we are, this is what we do, your teachers are not going to follow.
Vision cannot be launched once at the beginning of the year.
Leaders have to keep launching it.
That includes where you spend time, where you allocate resources, what you celebrate, what you measure, and what you ask about during classroom walkthroughs.
Babcock Ranch now has four instructional coaches. Rachel readily acknowledges that most schools will not have that level of staffing. But she also makes an important point: you can make progress with one coach—or none.
Maybe you cannot create another coaching position.
You can still ask a teacher one meaningful question during a classroom walkthrough.
You can create a Critical Friends process.
You can protect collaboration time.
You can build a project launch schedule.
You can celebrate great student work.
You can make PBL visible in leadership conversations.
When asked what administrators should do if they simply “don’t have time” for individual teacher support, Rachel’s response gets to the heart of the issue:
You have to decide whether PBL is actually a priority.
And if it is, leaders have to make room for the work.
Sustainable PBL Is Built, Not Announced
Moving from 10% implementation to 95% did not happen because Babcock Ranch discovered one magical strategy.
- They listened.
- They gathered data.
- They identified barriers.
- They created structures.
- They coached teachers.
- They clarified expectations.
- They adjusted when something wasn’t working.
- And they kept going.
That may be the biggest lesson for administrators.
PBL implementation is not a switch you flip after professional development. It is a leadership process that requires intentional support over time.
So if your school trained 30 teachers in PBL and only three are still implementing, don’t immediately schedule another training.
Start with curiosity.
Ask your teachers what is getting in the way.
Then identify one or two root causes and build structures that directly address them.
Maybe your first step is a launch schedule. Maybe it’s a Critical Friends Group. Maybe it’s communities of practice. Maybe it’s simply sitting down individually with five teachers and asking, “What would help you launch your next project?”
You don’t need to solve everything tomorrow.
But you do need to start building the system today.
Because when teachers have clear expectations, meaningful support, and leaders who consistently reinforce the vision, PBL stops being another initiative.
It becomes how your school does learning.
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