Curating resources & sharing stories to empower teacher & student ownership, wonder, and daring.
So you’ve decided to implement student-led conferences. Congratulations! You are well on your way to empowering students to own their 21st century learning. If you’re still new to the process (or want fresh ideas), be sure to begin with our student-led conference practical starter guide and resources.
Continue reading “23 Guiding Questions to Make Student-Led Conferences More Informative”
We don’t know about you, but we’re pretty visual folks over here. So here are some of the most important aspects we’ve learned about 21st century teaching over the past year of blogging, condensed into infographic form! Enjoy!
For more like this, check out our article on becoming a 21st Century teacher!
“But there isn’t though enough sharing by those who are embedded in the work [of 21st century learning]. There isn’t enough shared deep reflection, video, or examples of what the how looks like in action. But we can fix that, right?” ~Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach.
After boring both my students and myself with largely direct instruction math for a couple of years, I decided to try guided math. The results? Increases in interest, one-on-one time, student initiative, and just plain joy in math learning.
Most math programs are still set up in very traditional, teacher-centered constructs. In the name of “offering support,” some even provide scripts! This is typically followed by a barrage of worksheets. Then quiz tomorrow. Spiral review. Repeat.
Perhaps the monotony would be worthwhile if we all become mathematically literate adults, but this does not seem to be the case. As the National Center for Education Statistics keeps confirming in surveys conducted since the 1980’s, most Americans’ math skills remain lacking:
It’s time to look outside the box of traditional math education in order to foster life-long mathematical illiteracy!
One day, while complaining to another teacher about how I’d started hating the sound of my own voice, she introduced me to guided math. What I found most intriguing:
I started literally the next day.
And while it took longer than that to refine my approach, the beauty of guided math is you can easily adapt your school’s math program to its structure.
Any other questions, tips, or experiences? We’d love to hear about them in the comments below!
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“You’ll use this all the time when you grow up.” “You’re developing skills you’ll need all the way through college.” “Someday, you’ll be so glad you learned another language.”
[insert eye-rolling here].
Even if true, relying primarily on these kinds of future-tense phrases to justify learning may have harmful effects. Nothing is worth draining our children’s inborn sense of discovery and enthusiasm.
The counterintuitive reality: instilling learning passion for the future only happens when we show students how to love learning today!
Think back to your classes that most sparked your passion. Chances are, those instructors made relevance a daily priority–a skill that takes purpose and deliberate planning. In our experience, that purpose and planning must consist of the following:
Students must be enabled to tailor their learning in order to find relevance. Technological options for making this happen are almost endless–but possibilities outside the high-tech box abound, too, including project based learning, genius hour, and other innovative new strategies.
Start the video below at 16 minutes for a wonderful anecdote by Sir Ken Robinson:
Anwar Masood highlights the importance & depth of the teacher-student relationship #teaching http://t.co/A2rjcd1G99 pic.twitter.com/A91opWEPQl
— Annet Kil (@AnnetKil) December 7, 2014
My first year teaching overflowed with the kinds of typical pursuits designed to prepare students for the future demands: book reports, math homework worksheets, and daily “independent study,” during which students would work for an hour on grammar, comprehension, vocabulary, and spelling. And guess where the most frequent strain on behavior occurred?
Over the years, we gradually replaced such activities with approaches that foster now learning–and I witnessed transformations in my students’ motivation, vibrance, and willingness to take risks.
How much of your student’s day involves learning for the present? Look below at tips for each part of my fifth grader’s schedule:
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It’s easy to get caught up in the frenzy of efficiency as teachers. Standards and tests and data and reports bear down on us with pressure to make every. minute. count.
There also seems to be an endless supply of initiatives to maximize our efficiency–many of which seem to simply offer more fodder for burnout, like some ideas found in the video below (at the proposition for increased class sizes for quality teachers, I could only visualize the exhausted expression of one of my mentor teachers the year they increased her first grade class size–because she could handle it, right?).
2/3/15 UPDATE: It appears that OpportunityCulture.org has removed their video after we published this post a couple of weeks ago. So, to fill you in if you missed it, the ideas we found most worrisome in the video included: 1) increasing class sizes for “excellent teachers” so more students could feel their influence (while decreasing class sizes for novice teachers); 2) implementing rotating classes for those “excellent teachers” so they could reach even more students each day; 3) an apparent oversight of the teacher-student relationship in general. Instead, their page now says the following:
“Watch this space for an updated motiongraphic, based on the experiences of the first pilot schools to implement their own Opportunity Cultures, showing the importance of models that let teams led by excellent teachers reach many more students, and let all teachers earn more and learn more—through more school-day time for collaboration and planning, and without forcing class-size increases.”
10/29/2015 UPDATE: A new video has been published. The model is explained differently, but the basis still rests on class-size increases for excellent teachers and efficiency, which still leaves us concerned about the lack of discussion on teacher-student relationships.
Kim Collazo’s response on Twitter brings to light what’s most worrisome about these kinds of ideas:
Is it just me, or is a lot of this video disturbing? What about the importance of relationships? http://t.co/QEhIraVqFo #ncadmin
— kcollazo (@kcollazo) January 14, 2015
Efficiency values time-management; empathy values taking all the time that is necessary to build relationships. Both have their place in our classrooms, but we must be careful that the more aggressive pursuits for efficiency don’t swallow up the daily opportunities to foster our relationships. To learn more about why empathy is so important in every relationship, see the poignant RSA video below in which Dr. Brené Brown describes how to discern genuine empathy.
After all, what does it matter if our students ace every test and memorize every chart if they lack the ability to connect and reach out to one another in compassion and understanding?
Whatever your subject matter, empathy should take a prominent place in all your instruction–both indirectly in general interactions with students, and directly as you point students’ attention to learning opportunities.
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The long term effects of learning to study can stretch much further than than the average high school sophomore may think.
When Bart started school with a half-tuition scholarship that would renew yearly pending his GPA performance, his college career future looked bright. Once classes began, however, he says he “blew off” his classes and lost the scholarship after two semesters. This required him to get a part time job on campus, and eventually a full time job–ultimately extending the time until graduation as he had to cut back on classes in order to function. He hadn’t realized the thousands of dollars he could lose–beyond just the scholarship itself–until it was too late.
Bart’s story is becoming an increasingly familiar one for college students. Research shows a significant decline in time students are devoting to their studies. Until the 1960’s, undergraduates spent about 40 hours per week academically. Today, that number is down to 27 hours each week–which includes both class time and studying. The time spent on studying alone is comparable; in 1961, it was 25 hours per week–by 2003, it had whittled down to 13 hours.
Bart urges other students to carefully examine the monetary value of their time spent studying. Below are some figures to consider:
Whatever the tuition rate, the value of time spent studying to keep up grades and scholarships is worth more than the $7.25 minimum wage jobs students would otherwise need to work.
Informing our students of the numbers listed above is just one small step in preparing them for the realities of college and beyond. We believe that it is paramount that students cultivate intrinsic motivation if we hope they will dedicate every effort required to succeed in their desired field as adults. What do the child who has always been denied sugar and the student who always been denied opportunities for self-directed learning have in common? Both are likely to spend their time and resources unwisely the moment they gain autonomy.
That said, we also find value in encouraging “college and career readiness” strategies to help students view the long term effects of developing study skills. An example might be teaching a third grader to develop stamina in reading a book without distraction.
As we empower students to develop such motivation and skills, our expectations of them should remain high–not out of pressure-inducing fear that they could otherwise fail in the “real world,” but out of belief in their ability succeed. This is key in fostering the kind of love of learning now that will truly prepare them prepare them for the future.
What are some ways you prepare students for the future while still encouraging them to live and learn with passion now? Share in comments below!
Sources:
Campo, Carlos. Jan. 29, 2013. “A Challenge to College Students for 2013: Don’t Waste Your 6,570.” Huffington Post.
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Featured Image: Francois de Halleux
University of the Fraser Valley