On 03/09 I had the great privilege and honor to be part of the amazing EduPassions web conference, an online event bringing together passionate educators from all over the world. It was a day full of inspiration, learning and creativity – there were so many ideas shared that I’m still going through my notes and trying to put everything in order. My session focused on student voice and offered practical ideas/activities on how we can help strengthen it in the classroom.
I’ve organized my points in a series of 5 steps/ways which I feel can help towards promoting student led education in the classroom.
- Engage (learners) & Personalize (our teaching): In order for our students to feel free to share their skills and talents we need to find ways to engage them and this can only happen when teaching takes into consideration their individual needs and desires.
- Welcome their passions: Each one of our kids is a talented individual who has already mastered (or is close to mastering) an activity or sport. By honoring their mastery, we make their talents part of the learning experience therefore making our learning journey multifaceted and multidimensional.
- Offer options: As I stressed options shouldn’t be restricted to differentiating tasks and offering different homework alternatives. It should also include involving students in the syllabus design/modification process.
- Connect them to the world: We’re all part of something bigger than our local classroom and it’s great to make students aware of the amazing opportunities for connection learning can offer them.
- Build empathy: Kindness and empathy are the cornerstone of teaching (and living). Unless we’ve built a classroom community where our students feel respected and trusted, we can’t expect our students to share, learn and create.
If you want to find more about the session and have a look at the activities I’ve suggested CLICK HERE
And here’s the complete EduPassions playlist including the video of my session:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bEk31tyC_A&list=PLt9dvoJefwOdfbIvfCpebC0eJ3tTLUP-t&index=2
Thank you so much once again, Shelly Sanchez Terrell and Sarah Thomas for giving me the chance to be part of this amazing event!
There’s some lovely stuff up here and it’s well worth repeating that we need young learners especially to feel safe enough to take risks with language and expressing themselves imperfectly. The more they feel they want to communicate, the more they’ll make the effort to do it well. Thanks for sharing this as I couldn’t make any of the sessions.
I agree 100%, the more we focus on how our students’ skills and interests can contribute to teaching, the easier it becomes to make learning meaningful for them. Thank you for your comment and thank you for your kind words!