Portfolio School & JW Couch Partner to Build An Online Platform to Further Project Based Learning for All Educators

NEW YORK, July 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- With the support of the JW Couch Foundation, Portfolio School, a project-based learning school in New York City, will create an online platform (dubbed "Project ScaleUp") that will help teachers design and implement high-quality projects.

Project-Based Learning (or PBL), where children learn academic concepts through hands-on projects, has gained a lot of interest recently. And there's a mounting body of research showing that PBL helps students learn not only academic skills in a much deeper way, but also enduring (or "soft skills") like perseverance, empathy, creativity and other critical social-emotional skills.

Knowing that PBL works is one thing. Putting it into practice is quite another. And often when creating a PBL curriculum the biggest hurdle that teachers and homeschool educators face is, not surprisingly, the design of high-quality projects.

Designing rich, interdisciplinary, and measurable projects is a daunting task. And many teachers will either not have the relevant expertise or enough planning time to design and implement high-quality projects.

Through Project ScaleUp teachers will be able to search for project "maps" according to different topics and grade levels, and even modify them for their students. The library of quality project maps will thus grow as each new customized project (which has been successfully implemented) is uploaded to the platform.

"With ScaleUp, teachers around the world will have access to Portfolio's research-based project design process as well as a growing body of project ideas," says Babur Habib, Portfolio School's Co-founder and CEO. "It will remove the barrier to entry for lots of teachers and homeschool educators, and help Portfolio School increase our impact beyond our classrooms."

JW Couch's investment in the platform is its first program-related investment which allows them to help budding startups or other for-profit organizations which are aligned with JW Couch's charitable programs. The new private foundation aims to operate on the cutting-edge and find other future investment opportunities outside of the non-profit industry.

"The kind of innovation we see at Portfolio School would not be possible without the remarkable projects that have been crafted by the team there," says Sean Couch, President of the JW Couch Foundation. "We're proud to support Portfolio School and help kickstart Project ScaleUp so that more educators and students can reap the benefits. Millions could potentially get access to the ScaleUp platform, and communities will better understand how this is the future of education."

About Portfolio School:

Portfolio School is a Project-Based Learning school in Tribeca NYC that gives children the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to thrive and shape their world. Portfolio will serve K-6 students in the 2019-20 school year and will grow to a K-12 school in subsequent years.

More information at:
www.portfolioschool.org

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]. 

Contact: Doug Schachtel, Co-Founder
Phone: 917-912-3149
Email: [email protected] 

SOURCE Portfolio School

Related Links

http://www.portfolio-school.com