While I was washing the pot in which my spaghetti sauce simmered to take on all its goodness, similarities to our Powerful Learning Practice Connected Coaching pilot struck me. That experience was downright extraordinary too. And the ingredients were topnotch.
I’ve always done inquiry science, but it’s been more teacher-directed than I wanted. Over the summer I took an e-course in “Unleashing Student Passion,” hoping to find a better approach. It was challenging for me because it exposed so many places where I want to be better. I needed to stop holding students back from becoming the learners they will need to be as they grow up. I have always helped students learn the science and be curious. But I knew it was time to take another step, to help the kids in my classroom kindle their own passion for learning.
The more I move into 21st century tools and teaching practices, the harder time I have with our current grading system. The more opportunity I give students to work collaboratively, experiment, and pursue their passions, the harder it is to assign grades to this kind of learning and growth. Our standard “letter grade†system does not encourage learning. It does not encourage students to challenge themselves. It does not encourage creativity or innovation. It encourages memorization, competition, and discovering the easiest path to an A. Does this seem right?
One of our many jobs as teachers is to keep a professional separation between who we are and what we do. When we are doing our best, we are presenting ourselves in ways that help to manage that professional distance in thoughtful and productive ways. In social networks, this looks like being present, being thoughtful, and being intentional in the ways that we use those spaces to promote what we think is essential — ways that do not confuse our teacherness and our friendness and help our students understand the difference between the two.
In our primary classroom, my students blog and comment on the writing of other students a world away. We skype with kids from Down Under, talk with experts about the subjects we’re studying, and used wikis to “crowd-source” all kinds of interesting information. We are fearless. We never say, “Oh, we can’t possibly do that — we’re just first grade.”
A small pK-12 Catholic school, founded in 1859, is discovering the power of eCollaboration among its faculty, and most of all, its students. “Students publish stories they write online,” writes Sister Geralyn Schmidt, “they produce animations; create book trailers; use SMART response systems to share knowledge about specific topics within the curriculum; construct new planets within far off solar systems and describe their features; view on online surgery videos; and edit and upload their multimedia and still images for parents and other students to see.”
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