#420 – From Classroom to Career: How AVID Future Lab Prepares Students for What’s Next, with Dr. Michelle Magallanez

In this episode, Dr. Michelle Magallanez, Head of Interaction Design at AVID Center, returns to Unpacking Education to share how AVID Future Lab is equipping students with the durable skills they need to thrive beyond the classroom. The conversation explores how project-based learning (PBL), student voice and choice, and real-world issues—like the impact of social media on mental health—prepare learners for the future of work and life.

Learn how the free resources within AVID Future Lab, supported by Adobe Express, give students authentic opportunities to research, create, and present solutions to real problems—all while building confidence, collaboration, and creativity. Regardless of your familiarity and experience with PBL, this episode offers accessible strategies and free classroom-ready resources to help every student see themselves as a designer and change-maker.

. . . For teachers to feel confident using PBL in their classroom, they need to understand what PBL is, learn ways to boost their learners’ EQ, know the students they serve, and adapt practical strategies for planning and facilitating PBL using strategies with high influences on student engagement and achievement.

Dr. Jorge Valenzuela, from the introduction to his book, Project-Based Learning+

Resources

The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:

• Building Strong Foundations: How Instructional Innovation and PBL Transform Teaching, with Dr. Jorge Valenzuela (podcast episode)
• Strategies for Youth to Align Passion to Purpose and Education, with Jorge Valenzuela (podcast episode)
• Project-Based Learning, with A.J. Juliani (podcast episode)
• Engage Students Through Project-Based Learning (article)
• Empower Students Through Creativity and Choice (article)
• The Impact of Authentic Learning (podcast episode)

Developing Durable Skills

Developing durable skills—like critical thinking, collaboration, and communication—is essential in preparing students for an unpredictable future. Dr. Michelle Magallanez explains how AVID Future Lab bridges classroom learning with real-world relevance through a project-based learning framework that emphasizes student agency. With a focus on high-interest topics, such as the impact of social media on mental health, students are invited to explore meaningful challenges and present their solutions to authentic audiences.

By grounding lessons in design thinking and aligning them to the ETS Skills for the Future, AVID Future Lab makes it easy for teachers to help students name and own their skill development. As Michelle notes, “Students saw themselves as designers and change-makers for the first time.” With flexible tools, scaffolded resources, and a commitment to accessibility, AVID Future Lab empowers educators at all experience levels to foster future-ready learners. The following are a few highlights from this episode.

• About Our Guest: Dr. Michelle Magallanez is the Head of Interaction Design at AVID Center. Michelle led and coordinated the grant that resulted in AVID Future Lab, a collection of project-based learning lessons and resources.
• The Origins of AVID Future Lab: Born from a deep desire to connect classroom learning with real-world purpose, Michelle and her team at AVID worked to create a space where students could explore relevant, complex issues like the impact of social media on mental health through a hands-on project that reflects their lived experiences. Michelle points out, “At its core, AVID Future Lab embodies AVID’s long-standing belief that students thrive when they’re seen, heard, and challenged in meaningful ways.” The project puts students in the driver’s seat, empowering them to think critically, collaborate, and create change—all while building future-ready skills.
• Grant: AVID Future Lab was made possible through a grant from Adobe Express. This led to a strong focus on creative future skills. Michelle says, “We are looking to ensure that students have a platform to build podcasts, websites, animations—to explore what the impact of social media means on them and the community that they’re solving for.”
• Project-Based Learning: Michelle says, “One of the reasons why we leaned into project-based learning is because it immerses students in authentic problem-solving. So rather than learning in isolation, students engage with content through real challenges that require teamwork, innovation, and adaptability—exactly the kind of skills the workforce is demanding.”
• Durable Skills: Michelle shares, “AVID Future Lab was intentionally designed to nourish the kind of durable skills that outlast any single job or technology. Every lesson asks students to tackle open-ended problems that require critical thinking and creative ideation. They work in teams and give and receive feedback. They iterate on ideas and present their solutions to real audiences. These experiences build resilience, communication savvy, and the ability to collaborate across different sets of skills that are important in life as they are in career.”
• Standards Aligned: Every lesson is aligned to the ETS Skills for the Future. ETS is an organization that is working with the Carnegie Foundation to revise what learning looks like in the future.
• Flexibility: Because the lessons offer student voice and choice and are built around a design thinking framework, they provide considerable flexibility for both the teacher and students.
• Teacher Resources and Support: To prevent the lessons from feeling overwhelming, AVID Future Lab offers lessons that include all of the necessary student handouts, rubrics for teachers to be able to provide formative assessment for students along the way, reflection prompts, and examples of what student work could look like. Scripts are also included for teachers who would like more specific guidance. Michelle says, “We wanted to give as much structure as possible for teachers who were new to PBL, who were just overwhelmed.”
• A Relevant Topic: The topic for these lessons is social media. With Pew Research Center sharing data that a growing number of kids feel like social media is not good for their mental health, it’s a topic that is clearly on the radar of youth.
• Voice and Choice: Michelle says, “For students, we wanted to make sure that they could lean in and really determine what are those skills that they want to practice as they define the solution for their target audience.”
• Creation Tools: Adobe Express is featured because it’s both the grant-funding source as well as a free tool for all educators and students. However, Michelle points out, “If your district does not have that available, AVID is tool-agnostic. So we have hooks for Canva for educators, for Google, for Microsoft so that you can use the tool that is readily available at your school and district.”
• Product Flexibility: Part of voice and choice includes allowing students to determine what the final product will be. They can choose from a range of options, including a video, social media campaign, or website.
• Feedback: Michelle explains, “The lessons provide a deep framework around research prototype iteration and provide them [students] with industry standards for feedback, like the Google [Ventures (GV)] Five Act interview process, so that students know that they’re not building it for themselves; they’re building it for their audience.”
• Audience: The lessons have been created for high schools students and are aligned to national standards, such as Common Core, NGSS, and ISTE, as well as the AVID Essential Skills across grades 9–12.
• Pilot: Teachers from two different public high schools in Missouri piloted and provided feedback on the lessons. Michelle says, “Each lesson we developed, they tested it out. They told us what worked and what didn’t, and really what resonated with their students.”
• Positive Feedback: Michelle describes the feedback that they received from the pilot schools, saying “The feedback was incredibly affirming. The teachers tell us that the students who usually sit quietly in the back of the room suddenly come alive when they’re leveraging these lessons, asking deeper questions, collaborating more confidently, and pushing their ideas further. And one teacher shared that his students saw themselves as designers and change-makers for the first time. So students said that the experience felt real and that it gave them a chance to talk about things that they care about in a creative way. And that was the magic that we hope to unlock.”
• The Price: AVID Future Lab and all the related resources are free.
• Where to Access AVID Future Lab: These free resources are available on AVID Open Access, which is also the home of Unpacking Education. It is located under the Grab-and-Go Lessons in a subsection called Project-Based Learning.
• Looking Ahead: Michelle says, “The future of the workforce is just rapidly evolving and so is the definition of what career readiness is going to look like. And so, we envision Future Lab expanding into other ideally high-interest topics, like AI and sustainability, and always with a focus on student agency and real-world impact.”
• Toolkit: For her toolkit item, Michelle offers the new edition of Project-Based Learning+ from Dr. Jorge Valenzuela. She says that Jorge “has been essential in the development of our work and such a supporter. . . . Jorge’s work is really helpful in the sense of our teachers really understanding who the students are in their classroom and best meeting their needs, and I think he does a beautiful job at helping mentor teachers to build that relationship with their students.”
• One Thing: For her one thing, Michelle says, “To engage students in meaningful learning, we need to put topics in front of them that they can unpack and learn about and provide them with creative ways to design solutions. It really gives students an opportunity to shine and grow, but it also provides teachers with insights into, ‘Wow, I did not realize I could bring something so complex into my classroom and my students would be able to rise to it and really thrive.’”