This quote from Adora's Svitak's brilliant Ted Talk (read about her vision and values here) highlights the tension that we face as educators. We want to create a culture in which it is okay for students to challenge our assumptions, to aspire to do better than we have done. We want students to be doing stuff like this...
Mimi Nguyen
Darius Konstant
Sarah Almeda
...because they are inspired by their education, not in spite of it. To do that, we must learn to unlearn; to step out of our socio-temporal context and view our practise through the lens of our learners.
Mimi Nguyen
Darius Konstant
Sarah Almeda
...because they are inspired by their education, not in spite of it. To do that, we must learn to unlearn; to step out of our socio-temporal context and view our practise through the lens of our learners.
Inspired by Project Zero, visible thinking routines are being used successfully by teachers across the world, encouraging students to apply higher order thinking skills. If we truly want to reshape our pedagogy to meet the emerging needs of millenials, however, we need to go further than simply making sure student thinking is visible: we need to make sure that student voice is visible, vital and valued.
A colleague said he knew he was on the right path with his classroom culture when his Grade 5 students sat him down and, with great care to spare his feelings, requested that he stop eating Som Tam (a completely delicious, garlic-laden Thai salad) for lunch every day.
One of the most crushing things I’ve witnessed was a teacher who started with a routine to promote student voice in her classroom, getting the students to complete the sentence ‘I wish my teacher knew…’. One of her students wrote ‘I wish my teacher knew that the work she gives me is too easy for me.’ The teacher’s response to the student? ‘No, it isn’t.’
We need to confront our practise through the lens of our students. Are we comfortable with students having a voice only if that voice echoes our own opinions and vision of ourselves as practitioners? How can we avoid conditioning students to say ‘the sorts of things they think teachers are looking for’ (What Ed Said: What does student ownership look like?), and develop a critical culture in our classrooms?
Primary teachers in particular are often lavished with affection and praise by our students. It’s easy to interpret this as a sign that we are doing a good job by them. We need to move towards a culture of respect through mutual and open acknowledgement of successes and areas for further improvement. My ambition is to create an environment in which students can think, learn and be engaged by new ideas, and be inspired to take action and to create positive change. To do that, I need them to feel comfortable saying ‘Miss Goyder, this activity is not really engaging or challenging me, could we try this instead?’ or ‘Miss Goyder, could we take a 2-minute break to discuss as a group how we could make this task more interactive?’.
We need to ask, we need to listen, we need to acknowledge, and we need to act.
A colleague said he knew he was on the right path with his classroom culture when his Grade 5 students sat him down and, with great care to spare his feelings, requested that he stop eating Som Tam (a completely delicious, garlic-laden Thai salad) for lunch every day.
One of the most crushing things I’ve witnessed was a teacher who started with a routine to promote student voice in her classroom, getting the students to complete the sentence ‘I wish my teacher knew…’. One of her students wrote ‘I wish my teacher knew that the work she gives me is too easy for me.’ The teacher’s response to the student? ‘No, it isn’t.’
We need to confront our practise through the lens of our students. Are we comfortable with students having a voice only if that voice echoes our own opinions and vision of ourselves as practitioners? How can we avoid conditioning students to say ‘the sorts of things they think teachers are looking for’ (What Ed Said: What does student ownership look like?), and develop a critical culture in our classrooms?
Primary teachers in particular are often lavished with affection and praise by our students. It’s easy to interpret this as a sign that we are doing a good job by them. We need to move towards a culture of respect through mutual and open acknowledgement of successes and areas for further improvement. My ambition is to create an environment in which students can think, learn and be engaged by new ideas, and be inspired to take action and to create positive change. To do that, I need them to feel comfortable saying ‘Miss Goyder, this activity is not really engaging or challenging me, could we try this instead?’ or ‘Miss Goyder, could we take a 2-minute break to discuss as a group how we could make this task more interactive?’.
We need to ask, we need to listen, we need to acknowledge, and we need to act.