Third Coast Learning Collaborative: Building Student Agency in Michigan Middle Schools

Open Way Learning has collaborated with the Human Restoration Project since 2024 to support their federal Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant, known as the Third Coast Learning Collaborative (TCLC), serving middle school students and educators in Muskegon, Michigan through interdisciplinary PBL and portfolio-based assessment. More information on the grant and its outcomes can be found on its website here.

As of this summer, TCLC now includes teaching teams representing grades six through eight across participating schools, creating a growing Community of Practice (CoP) focused on sustaining the work through teacher leadership, collaboration, and shared resources.

Two half-day CoP sessions brought teaching teams and school leaders together in April and June around the driving question, “How can middle school become a model for student agency?” The sessions used an Open Space format that reflected TCLC’s learner-centered approach. Participants submitted their own priority goals, questions, and challenges, grouped them into common themes, and then chose which 30-minute conversations were most useful to them. HRP and OWL gathered and published notes from the sessions so ideas and resources could continue to circulate across teams.

The resulting conversations produced practical ideas and resources around managing community partnerships, using AI, developing TCLC champions who can support future professional learning, and identifying ways school leaders can reinforce the work through instructional systems and supports.

This growing professional community builds on TCLC’s earlier advisory board work, which has helped bring students, families, educators, and community partners into the conversation. At one meeting, we heard about a student who had struggled with attendance in fifth grade but now “can’t wait to attend” and is fully engaged in learning. Their mother shared how meaningful that change had been for their family.

Stories like this are especially important because TCLC is being developed in public school settings serving communities with significant needs. The work depends on sustained collaboration between educators, school leaders, students, HRP, and OWL.

The partnership brings together complementary strengths. HRP’s experience in human-centered education, systems design, and progressive school transformation combines with OWL’s experience in learner-centered school culture, facilitation, instructional coaching, co-design, and continuous improvement. Together, the organizations support educators from classroom implementation through larger questions of school systems, leadership, and sustainability.

Teachers are reporting greater autonomy, competence, purpose, and relatedness in their work. Meanwhile, early independent evaluation findings show statistically significant reductions in students’ emotional problems, alongside promising positive estimates in engagement, belonging, and attitudes toward school.

With two years remaining in the grant, the next phase is increasingly about sustaining and spreading what teams are learning. CoP sessions resume in November and will continue quarterly. OWL will also return for three-day, in-person coaching and co-design visits in early September and late October, while HRP continues its ongoing leadership and implementation support.

Most importantly, new and returning teaching teams are beginning another school year designing powerful student experiences, sharing what works, refining what does not, and building the relationships and resources needed to sustain the Third Coast Learning Collaborative.

Reach out if you’d like to learn more.

See more of the principles and activities guiding the work in these resources:

• Reimagining Classrooms Through SEL and Project-Based Learning, published in CASEL’s Constellations blog and written by TCLC’s Cassie Nastase

• Getting Smart podcast, The Power of Empathy Interviews, featuring HRP Executive Director Chris McNutt

• School-Within-A-School Uses PBL to Help Students Make a Big Move, published by District Administration