Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs. In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year. Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home. I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
The first day of school is a prime day for hearing the voice of learners. In some way, many teachers use a variety of tools to learn about the students they are welcoming into the classroom. The first day of my class is spent having students make passion pages. But like many of us out there, this information doesn’t necessarily transform the learning in my classroom in the ways that it could.
In their new book Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator's Mindset, George Couros and Katie Novak make a point to stress the importance of discovering students passions
One of the best ways to work with people is finding out what they love and tapping into it. The teachers who spent time finding out my passions made me feel like they had a genuine interest in who I was and what I loved.
Couros, George & Novak, Katie. Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator's Mindset . IMPress. Kindle Edition.
A quality formal assessment needs to be informed by the standards. Too often, though, the learner is not considered when designing the assessment. So we have a cycle like the one below in which the student communicates understanding to the teacher via a standardized assessment and the teacher communicates back with feedback on performance.
George and Katie push us to use the information we get from our learners to guide the formation of assessments. The book has wonderful practical examples of this like the one below:
So let’s say you have a student who wants to be a “YouTuber,” but you have to teach the science curriculum. Consider having the student create a YouTube video that explains the objective. Not only will you tap into this student’s passion while teaching the curriculum, you will provide the child an opportunity to share her learning with the world—and in creating an opportunity for the student to share her learning, you level up the learning experience another few notches.
Couros, George & Novak, Katie. Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator's Mindset . IMPress. Kindle Edition.
This means that while the standards are informing the assessment, the student also has a say in the assessment. The assessment is informed by learner interests, strengths, and obstacles. Addressing student's interests help increase engagement. Addressing student's strengths and challenges help address the learner’s ability to express mastery. It will vary by standards, but clearly identifying standards as skills or knowledge will help incorporate learners passions, strengths, and obstacles into assessment design.
Assessments should not simply be a tool to inform on student performance. They are a great tool for educators to measure the effectiveness of instruction. In addition, allowing learners the opportunity to communicate directly about the assessment helps continue the cycle of incorporating students voice to refine instruction to increase student engagement, leverage learner strengths, and eliminate the obstacles that are hindering mastery of standards. Authentic student voice can be much more powerful than scores when designing instruction and assessments. Never forget to ask for their input!
By listening to student voice, we can begin moving away from standardized assessments while still creating standards aligned assessments. While the teacher informs the standards that are required for all students on the assessment, students inform how engagement, representation, and expression can be addressed. This input makes their assessment more personalized. This doesn’t mean every learner has a completely unique assessment. Giving students that voice may help drive the creation of a handful of different assessment formats that will address the needs of the population.
At the end of the day, the textbook is not the benchmark we are hoping to meet. And the standards represent the foundations of our course.
The curriculum is a “minimum” requirement; it is okay to go above and beyond. But teaching the curriculum while tapping into the strengths and passions of the student is using their abilities to “do your job” while bringing out the best in those you serve. How you teach the curriculum is the innovation.
Couros, George & Novak, Katie. Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator's Mindset . IMPress. Kindle Edition.
When you ask those questions on the first day, are those questions helping you to learn your students’ passions, strengths, and obstacles? Once you have those answers, what are you doing with them? How are you giving learners the opportunity to use them to inform the work done in the classroom? Are you continuing to ask more questions to hear learner voice after day 1? This is something I need to grapple with more as I start this new year. Not simply the intentionality of the questions I ask, but what I (and my students) do with those answers once we have them.
Knowing what a student is passionate about not only helps you bridge connections to their learning, but it also helps you bridge connections to them as human beings.
Couros, George & Novak, Katie. Innovate Inside the Box: Empowering Learners Through UDL and the Innovator's Mindset . IMPress. Kindle Edition.
Innovate Inside the Box does an excellent job of explaining the Why, What and How of moving towards a more learner-centered classroom. Follow this link to learn more and get your copy today.
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