09/21/2026
In Ms. Parrott’s eighth-grade science classroom at Briggs Middle School, students are learning more than science content. They’re learning how to think, communicate and work through challenging problems together.
Using vertical whiteboards and professional development based on Building Thinking Classrooms made possible by a 2025 Innovative Educator Grant from the Springfield Education Foundation (SEF), students are becoming comfortable with struggle, mistakes, and failed attempts as normal parts of learning. The vertical boards make everyone’s thinking visible - and make it easy to erase, revise and try again.
Students are placed in random groups of three and given challenging puzzles with limited instructions. With one pen shared among the group, students take turns recording their thinking while their teammates question, explain, listen and help decide what comes next. The classroom buzzes with the noise of active, collaborative learning.
There are wrong turns. There is frustration. There are ideas that don’t work. And that’s the point.
Students are learning that an error is information, struggling is part of the process, and finding an answer is only part of the work. In the same way that professional scientists collaborate, at the end of the exercise each group shares their process, explains their reasoning and gets feedback.
The SEF grant’s impact hasn’t stopped in one classroom – two other Briggs teachers are beginning to experiment with vertical learning in their classrooms.
Briggs Middle School Springfield Education Foundation
