Alex Kameen is an 8th grade English teacher at J.T. Moore in Edgehill, a racially and economically diverse neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee. His MA from University of Texas focused on Urban Teaching, which he describes as a focus on engaging students from diverse educational, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds as “fully agentive members of the world.”

The program was steeped in ideas of teaching for social change, and it imbued in Kameen a deep desire to teach English in a way that inspires his students to take local action. I caught Kameen finishing up his second year at J.T. Moore, where he has been using PBL to do just that. His school district, Metro Nashville, has been partnered with BIE for several years for PBL professional development.Kameen divides his English class into small groups of students who spend the majority of their term working on independent projects of their own choosing and design. He shared with me one project that he felt got to the heart of his desire to bring social change into his PBL instruction.