Learning They'll Love: Engage Students, Meet Standards, and Spark Creativity with Personal Interest Projects

Bridge the gap between the classroom and life outside it … and build students’ sense of the purpose and possibility of learning.

Education is at a crossroads. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence is changing the academic landscape, and many traditional assignments can now be completed by AI tools with minimal student effort. Teachers and parents fear that students aren't being taught critical thinking and aren't being asked to apply it in the classroom. Meanwhile, teachers' efforts to engage and motivate are leading to burnout, and too many students find themselves increasingly bored and apathetic. This is the perfect time for personal interest projects (PIPs).

PIPs are a cousin of project-based learning, but there's a crucial difference: Students choose their topics themselves through a scaffolded process of exploration and reflection, and they pursue goals they set and care about. Given the freedom to learn, make, solve, or do something that truly excites them, their motivation is internal and unstoppable, their engagement is authentic, and their learning is real.

In Learning They'll Love, PIP pioneer and award-winning educator Elizabeth Agro Radday explains the three structured phases of the PIP process—Design, Create, and Share—and provides comprehensive guidance and more than 30 practical, classroom-tested tools to support seamless implementation in grades 5—12, across the content areas, and with various school schedules.

Ready to help your students master content standards and build the problem-solving, time management, collaboration, and communication skills that will serve them in any future they choose? Ready to transform their school experience and help them fall in love with learning? PIPs are the answer, and this book is your guide.

Elizabeth Agro Radday, EdD, is the director of research and innovation at EdAdvance, a nonprofit Regional Education Service Center in Connecticut. She started her career as a middle school teacher and spent 16 years in the classroom. She was a Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching recipient in 2015—16. Radday has presented nationally and internationally on personal interest projects and artificial intelligence in K–12 education, and she is the co-host of ChatEDU, a podcast about AI application in schools. She holds a doctorate in teaching, learning, and curriculum from The University of Pennsylvania. Radday is the author of Learning They'll Love: Engage Students, Meet Standards, and Spark Creativity with Personal Interest Projects.