Transformative Learning Experience Units (TLEs) are rigorous, project-based curricula designed by Springpoint to create truly meaningful learning experiences for high school students. TLE units engage students’ interests and passions by having them explore real-world, open-ended questions and create products for an authentic audience beyond their teachers. Each TLE unit is built around a driving question without an obvious solution, requiring students to think critically and construct their own meaning. Throughout the unit, students work to create an artifact that allows them to apply their learning in a purposeful way connected to their identities and goals.
A key aspect of TLE units is that they provide robust supports for both students and teachers to engage in this type of deeper learning. For students, the units incorporate elements like written commentaries explaining their thinking, metacognitive reflections to develop self-awareness, and authentic public exhibitions. The goal is for TLE units to bring more rigor, purpose, and passion into the classroom, helping students truly learn how to learn while mastering important standards and competencies. Rigor and Purpose
The creation of TLE units began with a small group of high schools in New England. Starting in 2023, Springpoint expanded its partners and has served approximately 4,000 students, of whom over 75% are from historically marginalized groups. To support implementation of TLE units, Springpoint offers robust instructional materials and training for school staff. Transformative Learning Experiences Overview
What Makes This Model Innovative?
Relevance
Rigorous Learning
Affirmation of Self & Others
Related Models
Environmental Action Civics
Environmental Action Civics positions youth to work in partnership with adults to identify a local environmental issue and engage with community members to take action by advocating for systemic changes to policies and practices.
Environmental Action Civics
Environmental Action Civics was developed by Earth Force to engage young people as active citizens who address environmental issues in their communities, both now and in the future. It is a research-based approach that focuses on project-based learning and civic action to empower students to identify environmental problems, investigate their root causes, and design and implement solutions through civics. Through this process, students develop important civic skills that will help them make a real impact in their communities, particularly those that have been historically marginalized.
Environmental Action Civics embodies the belief that participation in local environmental decision-making is critical to equitable processes, innovative solutions, and enduring democratic and civic skills. It gives more people a voice in local environmental decision-making, particularly youth who are likely to bring fresh perspectives to problems. It also helps young people build a civic toolkit to solve problems as they develop a sense of social responsibility that fosters environmental stewardship and community engagement.
Each year, Earth Force works with approximately 67 schools and organizations in 28 states to engage students in Environmental Action Civics. Earth Force offers resources, professional development, consulting, and a community of practice for schools and organizations interested in implementing the model. What is Environmental Action Civics? Young People Reflect on Community Resilience to Natural Hazards Environmental Action Civics Overview
Liberatory Project-Based Learning
The liberatory project-based learning model at High Tech High consists of authentic, collaborative, hands-on experiences that help students develop the deeper learning competencies needed in life.
Liberatory Project-Based Learning
The liberatory project-based learning (LPBL) model at High Tech High (HTH) evolved from the belief that students should be actively engaged with ideas and creating new knowledge versus being passive consumers of information. By positioning students as the central agents in their education, LPBL serves as a vehicle for deeper learning that hones relevant academic, civic, and life skills and dispositions. The deeper learning experiences are intentionally created for and with students, so they can develop an expanding sense of identity and an expanded ability to pursue questions of importance with others.
As an equity-driven organization, HTH believes that students should have access to meaningful learning and engage in projects that matter to them in a context of a loving community. Equal Opportunity for Deeper LearningThe engagement in projects driven by questions that students generate is liberatory PBL—a liberation from constructs about school where learning only happens with books and the primary source of information is the teacher. Instead, it challenges the roles of teacher and student and thinks of disciplines as lenses to see the world. This work is driven by Paulo Freire’s philosophy that one needs to understand the full truth of one’s own reality, resist dominant narratives, and reclaim one’s true identity.
As an organization that is constantly reflecting and learning, the transformation of HTH has grown to include a network of charter schools, a teacher certification program, and a graduate school of education. This allows HTH insights into emerging questions about its unique approach to Liberatory PBL and the impact on the lives of its students.
Goals
Transformative Learning Experience Units are designed to deeply engage students in high-quality, project-based learning that supports the development of competencies for college- and career-readiness.
Critical Thinking
Students construct meaning through sustained inquiry into open-ended problems.
Metacognition
Students reflect on what they are learning as they evaluate evidence and scrutinize claims to develop capacity for independent thinking.
Purpose
Students explore questions and issues that matter to them as part of authentic problem-solving, which helps them understand their potential to contribute to the world.
Cultural Identity
Students work on projects that help them cultivate an understanding of other cultures as well as their own, which deepens their understanding of themselves and their communities.
Experience
Transformative Learning Experiences engage students using highly relevant, driving questions that do not have an obvious solution. Students then spend weeks working through a process to build their response, which they present in a public exhibition of learning.
TLEs are available for a variety of subjects including math, humanities, science, English language arts, and financial literacy. Because they are designed as replacement units, TLEs can be adopted into a core class. Units can also be combined into stand-alone elective courses. Sample Project – The Hustle Economy
Students begin TLEs by grappling with a driving question that is designed to frame subject area topics in the context of real-world, project-based learning. Driving questions are relevant and engaging as they are of particular interest to the lives and experiences of teenagers, connected to the school or local community, and lend themselves to real-world exploration and problem solving. Throughout the unit, students work individually and in collaborative teams to better understand the complexity inherent in their driving question, bringing an authentic “need to know” as well as a larger purpose and coherence to their day-to-day classwork.
Driving questions pose an open-ended challenge for which no easy or obvious solution exists. TLE units are broken into several phases, which give students a unique angle and more layered understanding of the driving question. As students grapple with the variety of perspectives that impact the TLE, their learning each day is unified by the overarching driving question, which helps them produce rich insights into the topic at hand.
Examples of driving questions:
- How has the Supreme Court defined my Constitutional rights as a student? How should it define my rights?
- How can data be used to generate public will and inform local action for community improvements?
- To what extent can art influence social change?
- What is the impact of gentrification on my community, and how can I use photographic choices to make an argument about that impact?
As students work through the inquiry process that grows out of their research into a driving question, they begin to build components of the creative artifact they will eventually complete. In producing a creative artifact, students synthesize all they have learned while exploring the driving question. This is an opportunity for students to bring their perspectives, experiences, and interests into the classroom as a product that has an actual function in the real world. A creative artifact is used to convey ideas, persuade others, or advocate for change. The artifact’s authenticity reflects the meaning and purpose of the work students have done; it is not something that exists only in the context of school. Students might produce a performance, presentation, video, persuasive or creative writing, campaign poster, software program or app, podcast, or even a cooked meal. Whatever form the project takes, students have multiple opportunities to iterate and revise their work. Sample Creative Artifact Rubric
Students make their thinking transparent in a written commentary that explains and defends the learning represented in their creative artifacts. TLEs emphasize this writing component for several reasons: writing is essential for postsecondary success; the writing process supports critical thinking and improves recall; and because writing promotes the synthesis of complex ideas in all disciplines. To produce a written commentary, students use a rich variety of text and other sources to corroborate their claims with relevant and compelling evidence. Answering questions—What is the argument you are trying to make? What intentional choices did you make in your project and why?—students make their thinking visible. This could take the form of a letter to the editor, a persuasive essay, a judicial opinion, or a podcast script.
At the end of a TLE, students present their projects in an authentic exhibition. As part of making the boundary between school and the world beyond it more porous and learning more authentic, students present their projects to stakeholders in contexts that are relevant to their topics. Whether students are presenting a debate, speech, documentary video, submission for publication, gallery walk, or science fair booth, students have a great deal of choice built into the project.
Using a process laid out in the TLE unit, students reinforce the real-world application of their learning by presenting it in an authentic public arena, where they can receive feedback and respond. Whether this space is a town hall, a law office, or art gallery, exhibitions raise the stakes for students and give them an opportunity to showcase their work and experience a deeper sense of accomplishment. Springpoint TLE Student Presentation
Metacognition—the ability to reflect on your learning and yourself as a learner—is often ignored in the learning process, but is a critical competency to support learners because it supports transfer of learning from one context to another. That is why metacognitive reflection is a component of every TLE unit. While the written commentary focuses on questions about creating an artifact and responding to the driving question, the metacognitive reflection focuses on recognizing what students have learned and how they are growing. Responding to specific prompts provided by Springpoint, students consider when they were challenged during their project and what they did to move forward. Students also consider how their thinking has shifted during their projects and how their self-awareness has grown as learners. The goal of the reflection is for students to learn how to learn, so that they can become independent thinkers.
As in other elements of a TLE, students are given a choice in how they complete their metacognitive reflection. Students might choose to produce their reflection in the form of writing, slides, a podcast, or a video. Students reflect both as a class and as individuals using feedback from their exhibition in a process where they consider the skills they practiced throughout the unit and how they might transfer their learning. Sample Metacognition Rubric
Examples of metacognitive reflection prompts for students:
- In what ways did you meet the goal that you set at the beginning of this TLE? What habits and/or mindsets contributed to this?
- In what ways, if at all, did you not meet your goal? What habits and/or mindsets contributed to this?
- How will the process of engaging in a long-term project like this help you in the future?
- How has your thinking about the benefits and drawbacks of starting a “side hustle” business changed since you started this unit?
- How would the mathematical modeling we did benefit a person who is interested in starting a “side hustle”?
Supporting Structures
Transformative Learning Experiences can be intentionally adapted in schools that prioritize project-based learning in their efforts to support independent learners.
Implementing TLEs entails using its rigorous and purposeful project-based learning curriculum.
All TLE units are built with the most widely accepted national standards (CCSS, NGSS, etc.) at their core and have been crosswalked with rigorous assessments (SATs, APs, MCAS) to ensure they are attending to those important gate-keepers. That said, TLE units are not built primarily for standards coverage or as test-prep units. Instead, they are rigorous PBL units designed for schools who believe that students’ best path to post-secondary readiness is not through “mile-wide, inch-deep” standards coverage, but rather, through intentional and repeated engagement with the competencies most aligned with success in college, career, and life in the 21st century.
TLE units provide a great deal of support including daily lesson plans, text and video selections, student handouts, and modified materials to support all learners. They are designed to support teachers in spending less time finding materials, or constructing lesson plans from scratch, and instead build relationships with students and families, provide feedback and support to students, develop relationships with potential partners, and make modifications to lessons.
With this emphasis on students and their unique contexts, teaching a TLE is based on facilitation rather than direct instruction. Teachers guide students through a process of inquiry that incorporates a variety of resources including personal experience. Students are assessed using rubrics that help define the competencies students are expected to develop as they complete a project.
Some schools offer TLEs as electives while others incorporate units into existing courses or combine units to build courses. Springpoint offers guidance about how to adapt materials for a school’s particular needs. This includes the opportunity to build interdisciplinary courses. TLE Catalog of Available Units
Schools adopting TLEs must be committed to fostering a culture of inquiry, creativity, and purposeful learning to build student agency.
TLEs are designed to make schools more equitable places, where every student has access to deep, meaningful learning and multiple pathways to success. Successfully adopting TLEs requires a collective effort from all of the adult stakeholders at a school, so that fundamentally changing what is actually happening in classrooms is a reality for deep and broad change.
TLEs foster a culture of inquiry, creativity, and purposeful learning by requiring students, not teachers, to construct and create meaning from their projects. Schools adopting the model must offer students multiple opportunities to practice skills and revise their work rather than simply having them receive and recite information. This process helps to build a school culture and community where students can exercise agency and leadership in their education as decision-makers working on projects that are not one-size-fits-all.
Training is required, so that teachers understand how to facilitate successful TLEs.
Teachers who lead TLEs are required to have subject area expertise and must go through specific training, so that the model is adopted with fidelity. This training includes a one-day introduction to TLEs with a first-hand experience of exhibitions and an unpacking of the elements that comprise a successful unit. Teachers also gather in two additional 90-minute sessions to look at student work, preview and practice critical material in the unit, and assess overall student progress. In general, teachers who have more than 3 years of experience are more successful with TLEs because of their baseline classroom management skills.
Springpoint also recommends that schools employ a coordinator for the partnerships that are central to TLEs. The coordinator can be a teacher, counselor, or assistant principal. They also recommend that coordinators along with instructional leaders receive TLE training, so that they have a sense of what teachers experience during a project.
TLEs are designed to flexibly fit various schedules and use cases.
TLE units are 50-minute lessons with an average of 24–30 lessons in a full unit. Schools with block scheduling combine lessons to meet their needs. To meet curricular needs, schools can use TLEs to replace units in core classes or they can combine multiple units to form elective courses.
Schools must build partnerships to connect students with experts, community members, and authentic audiences.
To break down the school-to-real-world barrier, TLEs depend on partnerships with a variety of community members. Because TLEs often focus on current issues that impact people in the communities where students live and learn, authenticity in learning requires interaction with those people and the decision-makers working on solutions.
Schools that adopt TLEs must be able to establish partnerships that support students as they explore issues, develop insights, and present what they have learned. These partnerships help students move their learning beyond the classroom to encounter multiple perspectives and engage with real stakeholders in the larger community. Each TLE provides guidance for establishing and leveraging these partnerships to help schools realize the magic of a transformative learning experience.
For example, in a physics class, students might redesign a space in their school to improve the energy efficiency of the building, which would require the expertise of engineers and architects and the opportunity to pitch their proposals to school and city officials. Or in a social studies class, students might interview people who favor and oppose new development in their city to determine the effects of gentrification and then present a photo essay at a City Council meeting.
Implementing TLEs entails using its rigorous and purposeful project-based learning curriculum.
All TLE units are built with the most widely accepted national standards (CCSS, NGSS, etc.) at their core and have been crosswalked with rigorous assessments (SATs, APs, MCAS) to ensure they are attending to those important gate-keepers. That said, TLE units are not built primarily for standards coverage or as test-prep units. Instead, they are rigorous PBL units designed for schools who believe that students’ best path to post-secondary readiness is not through “mile-wide, inch-deep” standards coverage, but rather, through intentional and repeated engagement with the competencies most aligned with success in college, career, and life in the 21st century.
TLE units provide a great deal of support including daily lesson plans, text and video selections, student handouts, and modified materials to support all learners. They are designed to support teachers in spending less time finding materials, or constructing lesson plans from scratch, and instead build relationships with students and families, provide feedback and support to students, develop relationships with potential partners, and make modifications to lessons.
With this emphasis on students and their unique contexts, teaching a TLE is based on facilitation rather than direct instruction. Teachers guide students through a process of inquiry that incorporates a variety of resources including personal experience. Students are assessed using rubrics that help define the competencies students are expected to develop as they complete a project.
Some schools offer TLEs as electives while others incorporate units into existing courses or combine units to build courses. Springpoint offers guidance about how to adapt materials for a school’s particular needs. This includes the opportunity to build interdisciplinary courses. TLE Catalog of Available Units
Schools adopting TLEs must be committed to fostering a culture of inquiry, creativity, and purposeful learning to build student agency.
TLEs are designed to make schools more equitable places, where every student has access to deep, meaningful learning and multiple pathways to success. Successfully adopting TLEs requires a collective effort from all of the adult stakeholders at a school, so that fundamentally changing what is actually happening in classrooms is a reality for deep and broad change.
TLEs foster a culture of inquiry, creativity, and purposeful learning by requiring students, not teachers, to construct and create meaning from their projects. Schools adopting the model must offer students multiple opportunities to practice skills and revise their work rather than simply having them receive and recite information. This process helps to build a school culture and community where students can exercise agency and leadership in their education as decision-makers working on projects that are not one-size-fits-all.
Training is required, so that teachers understand how to facilitate successful TLEs.
Teachers who lead TLEs are required to have subject area expertise and must go through specific training, so that the model is adopted with fidelity. This training includes a one-day introduction to TLEs with a first-hand experience of exhibitions and an unpacking of the elements that comprise a successful unit. Teachers also gather in two additional 90-minute sessions to look at student work, preview and practice critical material in the unit, and assess overall student progress. In general, teachers who have more than 3 years of experience are more successful with TLEs because of their baseline classroom management skills.
Springpoint also recommends that schools employ a coordinator for the partnerships that are central to TLEs. The coordinator can be a teacher, counselor, or assistant principal. They also recommend that coordinators along with instructional leaders receive TLE training, so that they have a sense of what teachers experience during a project.
TLEs are designed to flexibly fit various schedules and use cases.
TLE units are 50-minute lessons with an average of 24–30 lessons in a full unit. Schools with block scheduling combine lessons to meet their needs. To meet curricular needs, schools can use TLEs to replace units in core classes or they can combine multiple units to form elective courses.
Schools must build partnerships to connect students with experts, community members, and authentic audiences.
To break down the school-to-real-world barrier, TLEs depend on partnerships with a variety of community members. Because TLEs often focus on current issues that impact people in the communities where students live and learn, authenticity in learning requires interaction with those people and the decision-makers working on solutions.
Schools that adopt TLEs must be able to establish partnerships that support students as they explore issues, develop insights, and present what they have learned. These partnerships help students move their learning beyond the classroom to encounter multiple perspectives and engage with real stakeholders in the larger community. Each TLE provides guidance for establishing and leveraging these partnerships to help schools realize the magic of a transformative learning experience.
For example, in a physics class, students might redesign a space in their school to improve the energy efficiency of the building, which would require the expertise of engineers and architects and the opportunity to pitch their proposals to school and city officials. Or in a social studies class, students might interview people who favor and oppose new development in their city to determine the effects of gentrification and then present a photo essay at a City Council meeting.
Supports Offered
Springpoint offers the following supports to help implement Transformative Learning Experiences. TLE Implementation Options
Curriculum
Cost Associated
Springpoint provides high-quality, detailed curriculum to teachers who want to implement TLEs. Schools that purchase a unit receive a license to use it, and all updated materials, in perpetuity. Each TLE unit includes:
- Detailed unit-level materials and lesson plans, including handouts, rubrics, exemplar projects, and planning supports.
- Differentiated materials for multilingual learners, and differentiation suggestions for learners with diverse needs.
Professional Development
Cost Associated
Springpoint offers an online course to introduce the TLE model to new users as well as a full-day, in-person “unit unpacking,” which orients teachers to each TLE unit and prepares them to teach it. Springpoint also offers customized professional development to support:
- Expanded Intellectual Preparation and Student Work Analysis
- Train the Trainer Capacity Building
- Structural Planning and Instructional Coaching
- Coached Walkthroughs
Cohort-based Opportunities
Cost Associated
Every semester Springpoint offers schools and teachers the opportunity to gather together in national cohorts organized around specific TLE units for professional development. This support includes collaboration on unit preparation and assessment of student work, general office hours, and cultivation of bright spots to catalyze school change.
Reach
Impact
Transformative learning experiences foster enthusiasm and engagement in both students and teachers by promoting rigorous inquiry and real-world relevance in lessons. This empowers students to take ownership of their education and apply their learning meaningfully.
Data from a survey of over 700 students and teachers indicates that students in classrooms that use TLE units develop in dimensions that are integrally linked to academic success.
Students make connections between the work of this TLE and the world outside of school.
- 92% of students agreed “I understand how the skills and content I learned in this TLE could be useful in the world (outside school).”
- 100% of teachers agreed “Students made connections between the work of this TLE and the world outside of school.”
“Students learning in TLE courses are required to engage deeply with content and competencies that are not simply relevant in the notion of ‘things students are interested in’ but in the way that meaningful learning is transferable and connects clearly to skills and content that students know they will be able to apply in many realms of life. The lessons and projects in these units are informed by field experts, involve the creation of meaningful artifacts and authentic feedback.” –Teacher, Holyoke Opportunity Academy
TLEs challenge students to do rigorous work.
- 92% of students agreed “This TLE challenged me to do difficult work.”
- 100% of teachers agreed “TLE challenged students to do rigorous work.”
“In our CMO region, we’ve found that TLEs uniquely promote engaging questions paired with truly rigorous curriculum. Students and teachers have reported feeling more drawn into these units, and that’s been a catalyst for deeper learning.” –Managing Director Secondary Academics, KIPP Massachusetts
Students are proud of the work they complete for TLEs.
- 93% of students agreed “I am proud of the project I completed for this TLE.”
- 92% of teachers agreed “I saw my students take pride in their work.”
“I was kind of blown away by the essays that they ended up with. … I felt like they used the tools that we’ve given them. …I felt impressed with their ability to present them… And I think they felt really proud of them, of the work that they had done.” –Teacher
Students make connections between what they learn in TLEs and their life.
- 92% of students agreed “I can see how what I learned in this TLE connects to issues in my own life or local community.”
- 100% of teachers agreed “Students completed work that was meaningful to them.”
“Yes, I learned about math and algebra… but I feel that I really learned a lot about myself in this class and what I wanted to do with my future… It put a new way of thinking into my mind, a new frame to put into perspective how I view the world as opposed to just being a math class.” –Student, Evolve Academy
Students grow in their confidence to learn, face challenges, and effectively perform tasks.
- After TLEs, 80% of students agreed “I feel confident that I can find a new way to learn something when it is challenging for me,” compared to 56% before TLEs.
- After TLEs, 78% of students agreed “I am confident that I can perform effectively on many different tasks in this class,” compared to 46% before TLEs.
“In this class we are learning more about ourselves and how to express ourselves. Learning about yourself is interesting. Nothing about how we learn here is conventional. It’s very different from how other schools teach. TLEs break down the teacher-student barrier and let me have more control over my learning. It makes me enjoy learning, and because I enjoy it, I become more and more interested. I push myself deeper.” –Student