Over the weekend I attended the Iowa Student Learning Institute. It was a loosely based edcamp style forum on what education should look like in the 21st century. At least that is what it was intended to be. What I actually experienced was a transformative paradigm shifting kick in the pants. Imagine teachers listening intently to student concerns. I think, at first, it was oddly unsettling for the students. It took them a while to understand this conference wasn’t about the teachers; it was about them.
As the keynote was ending, my students were very tentative about what to do next. “Mr. Barner, where do we go?” That lasted for about three seconds. After one facilitated conversation about the keynote and lunch, Ian Coon announced we were going into the pre-planned sessions. I took what was left of lunch to the trash can and my kids were gone. They had decided which sessions to attend and they no longer needed me. Winning!
It was an astounding event. Questions in the Suburban driving home:
- Mr. Barner, my test scores say that I am reading at a level equal to a freshman in college. Why do I have to take 8th grade reading?
- Mr. Barner, why don’t our teachers give us a pretest and then only test us over what we don’t already know?
- Mr. Barner, why don’t out teachers poll us to see how we learn best, and then give us the opportunity to learn that way?
- Mr. Barner, Angela Maiers told me I was a genius and I believe her, can we go to choose2matter.com and get involved.
Just sitting here thinking about it give me goosebumps.
So my take away from the conference was student voice. I am sick and tired of talking in my classroom. I’m not talking about students talking in class. I’m talking about me! So, challenged myself. How can I give my students the opportunity and the responsibility of taking charge of their learning? I decided instead of keeping my lesson plan to myself, I’m going to throw it all out there.
We are starting a musical theatre lesson. Here is my general plan:
I went through the plan with the kids front to back. I said, “How do you want to learn this?” They said, “Let’s watch the clip.”
I have used a clip from the Disney show Phineas and Ferb from an episode called Rollercoaster: the Musical. It’s worth a watch for a laugh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XspswcmzpAk . In the clip the boys show “scenes” from ten musicals. I had always told the kids which musical was which. Not this time. From watching the clip the kids could figure out three of the ten. Not bad, but we needed all of them. As the guesses waned, I said, “Alright, guys….figure it out.” Within ten minutes we had the list. High gear Googling and a very specific Wikipedia page (which had a complete list with hyperlinks to the musical’s wiki page) made this easy.
My take away was how slowly they took control and then the ferocity of competing the task. There was almost a sense of accomplishment when we completed the list. Now the next step is to unpack the rest of the unit. I plan to post every couple of days to see how things roll out. If today was any indication, we are in for a trip.
#stuvoice: Check this out. And if you want to recall the tweets from an incredible event #isli. We were trending of Twitter all day.
As alway, your comments are welcome,
Dane Barner