What do we want our students to get out of their education? This is a question that I don’t think gets asked enough by educators around the world. We focus on content, what the state says they should get out of it, and what is written into our curriculum. But in the end, what is it that we want our students to be able to take away from their experiences with us?
Before you can fully answer that question, I think you have to take a look at what you were able to take away from your personal educational experience. I know what I learned (and did not learn) while I was in school, and I’ve spent my time as an educator trying to fill in the gaps that were missed with me.
College is like having a baby; you’re never really ready for it, you just adjust when it comes. There will always be a learning curve for every college freshman no matter how hard we work to prepare them. This is good, it is just part of the maturation into adulthood. What separates the successful college freshmen from the unsuccessful ones (myself being the latter) is the ability to adjust to your surroundings, try new things, and handle failure. I did not possess any of these skills when I was 18, thus finishing my freshman year with nine credits and a 1.2 GPA.
So how do we prepare our students for this experience and help them avoid making the mistakes I made? This is where innovation comes into play. We focus too much on the content in our classes rather than focusing on teaching students skills that they can use in the future. In the end what is more important, the content of The Great Gatsby or a student’s ability to read, understand, and learn from a text? Why does it have to be the book you assign them? Giving students options allows them to personalize their own learning, and engages them to what you are trying to actually teach them.
Personal note: The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books of all time. So this is not supposed to be disparaging to it, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or even that pompous Tom Buchanan, it is simply just a good example. I loved the book, but I never actually read it until I was about 25 years old. I purchased a copy for my English class in high school, but just like many of my classmates, I got what I needed from short discussions with my peers who had read it (or at least talked to someone who had read it) in the hallway before class. Our assignment was to read a few chapters a night, then take a quiz when we returned to class. I learned nothing about American upper class culture in the ‘20s, the dangers of materialism, or any of the lessons that I’m sure my English teacher wanted me to grasp. I learned that I could not read the book and still get a B, and THAT is the reason I failed when I got to college.
So, back to the original question, what is it we want our students to get out of their education? I want students to be able to understand how to learn, and how to adapt to the situations they are put in. This means tapping into their passions so that they can learn to apply the lessons you want to teach them. This means allowing them to fail, and teaching them how to adapt once that happens. This means not defining them by a letter grade, and not holding that grade over their head to make them do something they don’t want to do. This also means developing a relationship with them involving mutual trust. When you gain this mutual trust and respect, then when you as the teacher tell them, “listen, this is important”, they will understand and focus.
How do we do that? We get to know our students, and look past the number that they have been defined by throughout their educational career. Class rank, GPA, and all that mess is necessary for college admission boards, but not really for us. Focus on helping your students learn how to learn, not learn what is said in a book. Ask yourself before each lesson, “why is this important to my students?” Whatever the answer is, focus on that in class rather than a print-out that came from the textbook company. Finally, make what you are teaching engaging. Dave Burgess famously discusses the idea that if students weren’t required to go to your class, would you be teaching to an empty classroom? Find ways to teach your students not only to have fun learning, but to understand the importance of it as well.
In the end I just want students who can be prepared for whatever road they choose to take once they leave our schools. We can’t teach them everything, but we can teach them how to gather knowledge and find ways to be successful in any situation. With that, they can do anything.
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