No offense to professional development facilitators, but most of my best PD is sitting around a table talking with other teachers. I had that conversation recently at the end of a workshop, and the conversation turned to giving students more choice in the classroom.
Truth: I have a personality that is more inclined than is really optimal to operate on the basis of ‘if you want something done right, do it yourself’.
And, truth: my students don’t get much say in the curriculum – either the content or the method to learn it. I used to try surveys and reflections to get input, but it takes more foundation-laying time than I gave it/wanted to put in. I now take a lot of feedback (exit tickets, lots of metacognitive comments, wish my teacher knew’s) but, truth, it’s mostly after the fact/indirect.
So, there are no genius hours, PBL, makerspaces or many other cool student-driven things. Maybe someday, but not yet.
But — pleasant surprise of my PD conversation — I realized we do have multiple points of student choice in to our classroom culture.
- Each class when they finish their spiral review they have 0-25 minutes (depending on their speed) to work on anything they want.
- Unless an activity specifically needs group or solo work, I typically give the option of working independently or with classmates of their choice.
- I mostly differentiate by starting everyone with the same activity, letting them work at their own pace, and giving different follow up as students finish the first task. Unless a student really needs challenge or review, I mostly let them pick from 2 or 3 related tasks.
- I’m on my soapbox about homework but they get to choose what work they do.
Since ‘naturally flexible teacher’ is clearly not the foundation, I’ve been thinking about what it takes to make these choices work.
It’s not really the logistics. Mostly these choices means making copies of a few different worksheets. It’s different to implement a homework system where they pick, but I don’t think it’s harder (honestly, now that I’m in it, I’m exhausted by the thought of keeping track of who did page 74, instead of my “did they do something” routine)
Mostly, it’s a mindset thing
Partly, that’s reminding myself that I neither want nor need to control this particular thing.
Because decision fatigue is real.
Because I really do believe in a democratic classroom.
Because they’re adults and they are perfectly capable of, say, figuring out who to work with.
It helps when I remember that one of my core goals is that they learn how to be strong learners – and they can’t do that if they’re never in control of their learning.
AND THEN once I’ve wrapped my mind around this idea, I have to help them wrap theirs around it.
Students who end up in my classes do not have a lot of experience with teachers asking them to make choices about their learning.
Every time I get new students, I go through the same conversation
“Great, you’re done with the review early, what do you want to work on?”
“I don’t know” OR “Anything” (or some variant, usually with a confused look that says the real answer is “Why are you asking me?” and “How would I know?”)
And then my job is to teach them how to figure out what they want/need to work on. Was there something on the review that was hard? Something from a previous class they missed or want to practice? …
Odds are good, we’ll repeat the conversation the next week.
And maybe the next.
But eventually they figure out how to choose something to work on, and that’s a great moment.