Allowing Students To Fly
Posted by Jamin Lietze on October 1, 2008
Yesterday I read an older post of Bruce Hammonds entitled “Powerful Processes or In depth Learning – or both?” There were a few words in one of his sentences that grabbed me.
It grabbed me because as a Teacher one of my desires is to see my students finding their passions and taking opportunities to develop them. In my mind, our passions are linked to our talents/gifts. I believe everyone has one but sometimes it takes a long time to identify it.
So my question to you is “What are we doing to help our students identify and develop their passion/s?”
Here are two successful ways I feel I have done this, this year:
Example A “Multiple Intelligences“: Teaching these has given my students and myself a window into their talents, strengths and possible passions. The survey I discussed in an earlier post identified some common M.I’s my class demonstrate and has given me ideas for possible learning contexts. I discovered that I have a strong contingent of nature and visual “smart” learners. I have therefore planned with these in mind so that the students with these talents/smarts/passions can have an opportunity to flourish.
Example B “Contracts”: I run a management system where by if the students have finished an activity early there are two sections on the board they look to. The first is called “Must Do’s” and the second is “Can Do’s”. The first is obviously things they need to finish but the “Can Do’s” section gives them opportunity to explore and be extended in activities.
One such activity is where they negotiate a contract with me. Past examples of contracts are student initiated inquiries/projects and student responsibilities. It is has given space for students with a particular passion or bent to develop these further. I have loved observing my students “take off” on projects they have negotiated with me. One example recently has been a small group of boys in my class who love sport and wanted to take it further. We have negotiated a contract where by they are responsible for organising the “Teachers vs Students” sport matches. They are buzzing with this negotiated contract.
So back to my question: “What are we doing to help our students identify and develop their passion/s?” Are we squashing our students passions or allowing them to fly?
Picture Authors:
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Jamin, I love the idea of the contracts – I can see that this would really give students the opportunity to fly with some of their own ideas. I also open up the class at lunchtimes for students to come in to create different things. One of the best has been a group of boys that created a band and recorded on garageband 3 tracks for a CD – all in their own lunchtime. I have seen several of my students advance academically this year because of having the ability to access and develop some of their strengths and passions that we don’t include as part of the everyday curriculum. Thanks for this post! Amanda (heymilly)
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October 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I have just written a blog about the language used by teachers and i think this has a big part to do with whether we are letting students fly or not. See it on my webpage.
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November 18th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
[...] in October Jamin wrote a post about whether we let our kids fly in our classrooms by allowing their passions and interests to be [...]
February 17th, 2009 at 2:24 am
I thoroughly commend the book by Evangeline Stefanakis, ‘Multiple Intelligences and Portfolios’. It really expanded my thinking on the use of e-Portfolios!
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