It’s a brand new year! You’re fresh and full of excitement after a summer of relaxation, ready to make this your best year yet. Students are about to enter your classroom, full of potential, new supplies in hand. The possibilities for a great year are all there in front of you. That’s the great thing about teaching, every year is unique. Students change, your assignments change, curriculums change. With this fresh start, it’s a wonderful opportunity for you to reflect on what we value in society and how you reflect and nurture that in your classrooms. I’ve listed what I believe to be some societal values below along with some observations about how these traits may be developed in your students. Give them some thought.
1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving – Are we regularly asking our students to think deeply about what it is they are learning or are we encouraging them to simply accept what we say? Do we encourage “thinking outside the box” or are we asking students to accept the conventions that are present in our classroom? Do the questions we ask in class always have a right answer or is their ambiguity for students to wrangle with?
2. Collaboration – Are you giving students the opportunity to meet regularly with others? Are students forming networks of contacts both inside and outside of class? Are they comfortable working with a variety of different people, not simply their friends?
3. Curiosity and Imagination – Are there opportunities in your classroom for students to be creative? If we were to look at one of your assignments would we see concessions for individuality within each or do all great assignments look alike?
4. Initiative and an Entrepreneurial Spirit – Is your classroom a repository for risk? Can students take chances and branch out on their own learning track or are they constantly confined to the dictates of the curriculum? How is being innovative encouraged in your room?
5. Assessing an Analyzing Information – What information is NOT available to students with the push of a button? Not much. Are your students being challenged on the information they find and bring to class? Are you asking them how they know what they know? There is a lot of information out there and students need to see you challenge it.
6. Written and Oral Communication – Are students asked to communicate what they know regularly and in different ways? Is oral communication as highly recognized as written in your classroom? Students know that if it is important, it is assessed – are you assessing their oral communication as thoroughly as what they “hand in”?
7. Agility and Adaptability – With knowledge changing and almost becoming fluid, do we encourage students to be open to changing their mind? Do we model changing our minds to them or do we feel it makes us look weak? Students need to recognize that errors in thinking are simply opportunities for us to grow deeper and know more.
These are simply 7 traits that society appears to be valuing in it’s citizens and traits that need to be encouraged in schools. Got more? Of course you do. Drop me a note and let me hear them.
Have a great year. Keep on learning.
Dave
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