“Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world.”
Lois Lowry
Today I heard about high school students who are quiet and compliant but not thinking or engaged. We needed to something of something quick—something visible to change perceptions and expectations on everyone’s part. Right now, the connection between school and benefit for life is tenuous for many kids in this community so basically…why bother?
We talked about an experiment for one week — to bring project based learning to a couple classrooms with a clear opportunity at the end for students to apply learning to something real.
Our question: With one small step, could we start change in the culture of a classroom, the expectations of students for purpose in school and the belief that teachers hold about student ability to think, work and learn?
I saw all that happen on longer term projects, especially when kids went beyond their own interests, their own world to realize the impact of their actions, that they could make a dent in the way the world goes.
We need a quick turnaround and quick visible results right now. We want to make inroads into old beliefs and habits. Hopefully, we will get a chance next term to test out our hypothesis that learning for something real will reach many students. Hopefully, we will have some good stories to tell about waking kids up to see more of their possibilities.