A question I’ve discussed with scores of teachers over the past few years is “What happens between projects?”  Teachers get the idea that doing projects is an intense process for students and teachers and that there needs to be some sort of pause between. We also recognize that in real life, when I finish a major project I don’t immediately start the next one.  Things happen in transition.  And all kinds of good things can happen in that pause.  We can celebrate our accomplishments, we can reflect on our growth and challenges, we can take some time to review material that we are still working to fully understand, and ideally the project raised more questions than it answered and students might have the chance to consider those questions in their own way as we nurture curious, life-long learners.*
In doing some reading about the power of looking at student work, I ran across a tremendous piece from the Coalition of Essential Schools several years back.  The intro to this piece on rigor rings true for modern progressive schools like ours as well, and I think the ideas to move forward suggested here are a highly relevant.  Among several things that stood out for me was this passage about famed Central Park East:

Read Drew’s complete post on his blog The Learning Habit