Letting Go

As I began to read the blog written by Grant Wiggins, I began to laugh at the illustration that he referred to by learning his greatest lesson on the soccer field. The reason for this being humorous to me was the fact that my daughter’s softball team is facing this same exact situation and I have never thought of it relating to education. I agree with the fact that he expresses about more learning comes from applying knowledge. I believe that we need to prepare our students for the future by helping them see the relevance of the learning now. We as educators needs to make learning meaningful and enjoyable by allowing the students to take control. Wiggins states in his blog that “Every coach must provide helpful scaffold, just as I did in my practices. But every coach also knows what many teachers seem not to know: unless you back off completely, on a daily basis, in scrimmages as well as games, to see whether or not students draw appropriately from the repertoire in a timely and effective fashion in challenges that demand it, you really have no idea what they can do on their own”. Every teacher needs to know what their students are capable of and they will never know unless they have the students take control and lead. Teachers are driven by the fact that we are to help student learn the content or standards provided to us. We do this by providing strategies and assistance. Wiggins stated in his blog that “Our instincts as teachers cause us to over-help rather than under-help”. We need to allow the students to become independent in their learning and be facilitators in the classroom. Recently, I have read of flipped classrooms where students are provided materials and/or lecture via google classroom or other online tools, this provides the students to be prepared for the instructional day without the teacher taking time to present the lesson. I can see this being very beneficial to the students to build inquiry skills needed to learn from their experiences and to become independent learners where the teacher is facilitator. One of the problems teachers face with this concept is wanting to be in control and not letting go. The Webinar that was led by Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Lehmann mentioned in one of his statements that we need to be more focused at being “student centered and not teacher centered”. To build this environment students need to be pushed to “ask questions that [they] do not know the answer to”. Teacher can begin to create this inquiry skill by allowing students to do project-based learning. It was mentioned early in the Webinar that “Data being used to measure students and schools are not sufficient”. To know if students really understand the content, projects can be presented through web-based tools which will allow students to use inquiry skills to find resources and integrate the use of technology all at the same time. Great teachers inspire their students to go beyond the walls of the classroom and explore new learning through hands-on approaches to produce life-long learners.