Prepare students for a rubric-free world with project-based learning
The Pathways Difference
What if high school worked more like real life?
Housed in a former church in one of America’s most segregated cities, Pathways High School is a public charter school in Milwaukee where students don’t just take classes. They build boats, launch businesses, and interview local business leaders.
Here, learning doesn’t fit in a syllabus. It starts with a question or challenge. Like: How do you build a boat that floats, and explain the math behind it? What would the perfect world look like? Now how would you destroy it? Can you present your work to a room full of strangers and defend your ideas?
Students work in cross-grade seminars and projects that mix science, literature, civics, and design. They host public exhibitions. They take college classes. They pitch startups. They defend their learning in front of community panels—and they do it all before most teens have taken the SAT.
We’re not just preparing students for tests. We’re preparing them to walk into a room, explain what they’re building, and get feedback from someone they’ve never met before.
- Julia Mach - Senior CORE Advisor, Dual Enrollment Coordinator & IMPACT Coordinator
It’s a school that’s just as concerned with social capital as it is with content. Because readiness here doesn’t mean acing a test. It means being able to walk into a room, speak with confidence, and back up your thinking in front of people who don’t already know you.
The model works. But it requires a delicate balance between flexibility and accountability, independence and oversight. And that’s where a lot of innovative schools stumble.
How do you keep students, staff, families, and even community partners in sync—without the whole thing unraveling?
The school that runs like a studio
Most teachers at Pathways High are also advisors. They don’t just own a subject matter, they help students navigate their entire learning journey.
But that learning doesn’t follow a script. Students take ownership of their time, their projects, and their pace. One kid might be working on a research paper. Another is prototyping a product.
It was working. But it was messy.
Tracking credit required stitching together spreadsheets, transcripts, and systems that were never built to talk to each other.
Teachers didn’t know what was happening outside of their own class. Families were left out of the loop, wondering what their kids were up to. And students couldn’t track their progress.
Julia had seen this play out in other schools:
“Parents wouldn’t know what their kids were doing. Or why they were failing. And teachers didn’t always have the right info to step in.”
We’re not just preparing students for tests. We’re preparing them to walk into a room, explain what they’re building, and get feedback from someone they’ve never met before.
- Julia Mach
Pathways High didn’t need more tech. It needed infrastructure to match the way they teach.
The playbook for learner-centered schools
Other schools trying to do what Pathways High does often get stuck when they try to scale.
They end up duct-taping tools together, or watering down the vision.
So what’s different here? And how does Headrush make it sustainable? Let’s take a look.
Start with interests, not rigid standards
Design your seminars around curiosity, not compliance.
At Pathways High, one class explored the design of ethical societies, whereas another dove into physics by going to an amusement park and riding roller coasters. A local partner called All Hands Boat Works literally had students building boats.
We’re a project-based learning school. Headrush lets us teach hands-on, interest-based classes—and organize it all without losing our minds.
- Julia Mach
It’s not content-first. It’s meaning-first.
How Headrush supports this:
- Create project-based modules rooted in student interest
- Share or remix modules across classrooms or years
- Map credit in flexible ways–not just per subject, but per skill
Learn inside and outside the classroom
Have students present their work instead of just turning it in.
Students at Pathways High host exhibitions, pitch ideas, and defend their portfolios. Community guests can leave feedback directly in the system, giving students more than just a grade. They build connections and social capital.
It’s not just showing what you know for a teacher. It’s about preparing for the real world by stepping into it early—and learning how to show up with confidence.
Because evidence shows that students learn better when they’re not only motivated by teacher evaluation.
How Headrush supports this:
- External reviewers can leave structured feedback using shared rubrics
- Panelists can access portfolios ahead of time
- Feedback stays connected to the student’s project history
Make feedback a constant, not a one-time drop
For Pathways High, that means teachers don’t just grade, they guide. Students resubmit work, move assignments between statuses, and keep the feedback loop going until the work’s actually done.
A student can say, ‘I submitted this. You gave me revisions. I made the changes. Can you take another look?’ That kind of back-and-forth doesn’t happen in most schools.
- Julia Mach
How Headrush supports this:
- Status stages (in progress, needs revision, ready for review, complete)
- Notifications and comments
- A full history of submissions to keep growth visible
Keep students accountable
Make sure everyone is in the loop about a student’s progress.
The Pathways High team knows that teachers go on leave, switch roles, or move mid-year.
The same goes for students. They miss classes, get sick, or have other priorities to handle at home. But when they do, they know to check Headrush. Their parents can check it too.
Learning doesn’t pause. Someone else steps in. And with Headrush, they know exactly where things left off.
Headrush acts as the single source of truth for students, families, and advisors. Everyone can see what’s been submitted, what’s in revision, and what still needs work.
If a teacher’s out for five weeks, I can step in, look at their module, and know exactly what’s been done and what’s next.
- Julia Mach
No more chasing emails. No more mystery Fs. Just complete visibility.
How Headrush supports this:
- Archived and duplicatable modules
- Shared visibility across all staff
- Portable systems that don’t live inside one person’s brain
Develop competency-based transcripts
Don’t leave colleges to decipher a project-based learning transcript on their own.
Pathways High uses Mastery Transcript for college reporting, but it’s Headrush that builds the evidence behind it.
Every course is hyperlinkable. Every credit is documented. Every project has reflections and assessments attached.
It lets us tell the full story. Not just what students learned—but how they got there.
- Julia Mach
Colleges get what the student actually did. Not just a GPA. Parents see the journey, not just the destination. And students get a transcript that makes them feel proud of what they’ve done over the years.
No more chasing emails. No more mystery Fs. Just complete visibility.
Feel the Rush
Pathways High is redefining what it means to be ready.
- Ready to speak with confidence.
- Ready to learn by doing. *Ready to step into the real world and already have something to show for it.
That’s not easy. As we learned, it requires these steps:
- Designing seminars around curiosity, not compliance.
- Getting students accustomed to presenting their work, not just turning it in.
- Creating a continuous feedback loop, not a one-time grade.
- Keeping everyone–not just teachers–in the loop about each student’s progress.
- Telling the story behind the transcript instead of relying on colleges to figure it out.
But it works when the systems behind the scenes are built to amplify the model, not fight it.
Headrush doesn’t tell Pathways High how to teach. It gives them the ability to do it their way—confidently, consistently, and with clarity.
Because when students lead their learning, everyone else needs to see where they’re going.
If your school is rethinking how education works, it’s time to check out Headrush.