PIER Problem-Based Integrated Education Resolutions     Our Goals To be an antidote to the alienation, paralysis, disinterest and depression so often experienced by students. Our active, student-centered, problem-based approach contextualizes learning as a natural activity of living and education as a way of learning to learn. To help students navigate their worlds, find the ways in which they are relevant to it, and use that sense of empowerment and belonging to make living better for themselves and for others. To support teachers in their efforts to integrate multi-subject curriculums and to make learning a process of discovery through which students’ natural desires to learn can be harnessed and used to fuel their educational experience. To provide a dynamic process that not only integrates the curriculum, but also integrates students’ individual interests and strengths into the curriculum. To offer experts, academics and professionals the opportunity to work directly with young minds in a way that galvanizes their true and multifaceted forms of intelligence, creativity, and insight. PIER Mission PIER Consultants and Coaches* are guided by the beliefs that:   Learning is a fundamental part of the nature of human beings.   Students are driven emotionally, intellectually, and socially by the need to find their places in the world: to matter.   Deep awareness of oneself and others is essential to critical inquiry and serious learning of any kind.   Guided, problem-based, experiential education teaches students to see learning as part of life and growth, not as an alienating experience or as a test they can fail.   Real problems are multi-dimensional, requiring diverse tools, approaches and solutions.   Students who are treated as responsible, creative, and unique individuals will perform as responsible, creative and unique individuals. "Maggie is both exceptionally kinetic and sensitive in the classroom. She stirs the mind, gently pushing my students and my colleagues beyond comfortable intellectual limits. Issues such as sexism in school, gender identity conflicts, and acceptance or rejection by peers all become broader challenges through her teaching to issues of power and intimacy, truth and integrity... she brings out the natural passion children have intellectually and excites them with useful skills for learning more about the world and themselves. As a consultant, Maggie also worked with the faculty... bringing us fresh perspectives and elevating the concepts through which we might continue to create contexts for our particular curricula, no matter how varied across classrooms." Bonnie Sparling, Lead Teacher, Paideia Junior High     * PIER Consultants and Coaches are scholars, experts and professionals from various disciplines and fields who are versed in PIER’s learning profile analysis and in the exploitation different learning strengths.