I gave an analogy this morning about schools. I said that schools are like a grocery store. We don't walk into a grocery store and think to ourselves, "look at all this wonderful stuff" and then in turn buy it all. No, we pick and choose what we need and a little of what we want and walk out of the store attaining something. Our students have the same approach to there education. They will walk in the school and we will offer all these great pieces of information, but not one student will grasp a hold of every single thing we throw their way. They will, in turn, grasp a hold of what they see as relevant and purposeful and leave when they graduate with whatever they attained. The nice thing with a grocery store, I get to choose what I look at, and what I purchase. Most schools are not the same way. The students are forced to be introduced to a wide range of topics, concepts, principles, ideas, subjects, etc. I think students need this type of education to an extent, but I don't think it should be the basis of their education for 13 years (k-12).
I can't be so conceded to believe that all of the students that walk through my doorway will grasp a hold of everything I teach them, or everything I have them learn. That's not how education works, and it has never worked that way, but we expect it to, for some reason. We need to focus on how we can make our classes more engaging by guiding students to a purpose. What this takes is freedom based learning, problem-based learning, collaboration, and choice based education. It also takes some drifting away from content to focus more on skills. I teach a big unit dealing with heroism and Greek Mythology in my English I class, but I know that not every student is interested in that. I open up my classroom for options during this unit. Prompting students to research different topics and relate it back to the main idea and using different resources (of their choice) to get the message across to me. They may leave my classroom not any more interested in Greek Mythology but they have gained independence, maybe some collaboration, research skills, problem solving, making connections, technology use, and real-world application. To me, that is much more important than being able to rattle off the 12 Olympians and what they do. The best part though, the students are still learning the content, their just doing it on their own and it's gauged to their interest and their research. That's a pretty rough outline of one unit I do, but hopefully you get the point.
We need to start adapting and changing the way we teach to meet the needs of all learners and we can't do that by expecting every student to do the same thing every day, and complete the same thing as every other student. The main point here, is, we can't teach students the same way we bake cookies. Every cookie is mixed up the same way, cut the same way, baked the same way, and eaten the same way. Students aren't like that, they need variation, differentiation, diversity, etc. Our students are begging for it. We can no longer spoon-feed our students. We can still set expectations high, and in a sense this is a much more challenging approach because it holds students accountable. They are accountable to themselves. I can expect student x to attain the same thing in my class as student y so I teach them differently, but I step back and take the teaching out of the equation and become facilitator or guide, and let them do the learning. It;s hard to step back, until you finally see that the students are getting so much more out of your classroom. I love teaching, but the one thing I love more than teaching is when my students are learning, especially when they find enjoyment and purpose in what they are learning.
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