Reflecting on Webinar #5: Student Empowerment and Negotiated Curriculum

On Thursday, January 10th, the PLP Pathways crew got together for what turned out to be a discussion on student empowerment and negotiated curriculum.

It was fortuitous timing as on January 12th, the Middle Grades Conference took place with many of the presentations and action research projects focused on supporting student voice, choice and the development of empowered decision making.

A driver of our conversation was the importance of partnering with students, on many different levels, to develop learning opportunities and curriculum.

Why? It is our belief that doing so raises the engagement of students, encourages the formation of democratic classrooms, and prepares students for their next life and learning stage. Although our discussion was wide-ranging (check out the video), some key takeaways included the structures that teachers can and are utilizing to increase student engagement by integrating student voice and choice into the curriculum. Here are a few of those observations.

Questioning

Having students develop questions about themselves and the world can be a great way of building relationships, understanding the hopes and dreams of students, and designing and modifying curriculum to meet the needs of students. For intrepid teachers, this can also be the first step in co-designing curriculum with students.

Transferable Skills

Working with students to develop curriculum or to incorporate their views into the direction of the class learning environment can be a great way to practice and use the transferable skills. Responsible decision-making, collaboration, communication and digital citizenship are but a few of the skills that students can utilize when contributing their thoughts, ideas and direction to the class.

Leadership Opportunities

Asking students to participate in the construction of learning can provide multiple opportunities for student leadership. Students can mentor younger classmates, participate in student leadership groups, and lead smaller groups of students in the activities (brainstorming, developing themes, analyzing data, research) needed to build engaging topics of study. By framing these opportunities in terms of leadership, educators can provide intentional spaces for the development of empowered students.

https://goo.gl/EVkr46

Relationships

At the root of this work is the development of strong positive relationships with students. Bray and McClaskey ¹ have an excellent overview of how  student voice, when encouraged in the classroom, can lead to the leadership opportunities mentioned above.

Increasing student voice in the classroom can lead to increased levels of trust, co-creation of materials, and positive feedback loops that can engage students and teachers alike. As students become more empowered learners, relationships can deepen, engagement can improve, and learning environments can become dynamic, flexible spaces that accommodate students skills, interests and learning goals.

Learn More

Check out these resources (or watch the video above) for more information and ideas related to empowering students.

• Youth-Adult Partnership Roadmap to Agency - UP for Learning
• Rethinking Learning by Barbara Bray
• Redefining Engagement -- Middle Grades Collaborative
• YAP Defined - UP for Learning

Sources

1. Continuum of Voice: What it Means for the Learner . (2016). Personalizelearning.com. Retrieved 21 January 2019, from http://www.personalizelearning.com/2016/01/continuum-of-voice-what-it-means-for.html

Middle Grades Conference: Efficacy and Equity

On Saturday, January 12, educators from across Vermont reconnected at the Middle Grades Collaborative’s 12th annual conference held at the University of Vermont’s Davis Center.

This year’s conference, titled Personal Efficacy in the Middle, featured presentations covering a range of action research projects being implemented in classrooms throughout the state. The majority of presentations were the continuation or culmination of work started at the Middle Grades Institute in June of 2018. The conference provides a venue for Institute participants to demonstrate, reflect, and share the learning gained from their professional development.

Engagement, student voice and choice, the release of responsibility to students and the redesign of personal learning plans were but a few of the topics under discussion. Readers interested in the range of topics can peruse abstracts of the different presentations here. Listening to educators relate and reflect on their professional growth is incredibly powerful and inspiring. For many of us, the conference provides the opportunity to refresh, consider new ideas and to renew professional relationships that support positive outcomes for educators and students.

After two rounds of presentation and lunch, conference participants were invited to engage in a microlab protocol. Adapted from Julian Weissglass’s work for the National Coalition for Equity in Education based at the University of California, Santa Barbara, microlabs are structured, small-group discussions with guiding questions. At the conference, the microlab questions were based on a definition of educational equity from the National Equity Project. After the initial rounds of small group discussions, larger groups discussed themes and important ideas that were discussed. These issues, around equity in Vermont schools, will be a focus of the 2019 Middle Grades Institute.

The Middle Grades Conference is a wonderful mid-winter reminder of the great work that is happening around the state. By connecting summer professional development with new learning and through re-engagement with Institute participants, teachers have the opportunity to reflect on their mid-year growth and to implement new ideas for the remainder of the school year. It is a powerful, fun, and transformative event. If you would like to be a part of this learning community, please register for the 2019 Middle Grades Institute here.

Personalized Learning: An International Perspective

This post is from PLP Pathways contributor Alison Gauthier who is 

currently teaching at an international school in China.

My husband and I grew up in Vermont, and taught in central Vermont for several years at a public high school. While discussing purchasing a house one evening during dinner two years ago, we realized that we wanted a different near-future for ourselves. We decided to pursue careers as international teachers. Our mutual love of traveling and adventure was a large contributor to the decision. However, we also wanted to push the edges of our professional comfort zones. Extensive applications, Skype interviews, a job fair, and two contracts later, we signed on to teach Business and Biology in Qingdao, China for two years.

Prior to leaving, we posed every possible question. How different would life and work in Qingdao, China be? Would we be able to handle the transition and continue to be successful teachers in a foreign place? What cultural barriers would come between us and our students? Would we experience “tiger moms” that we had heard about from friends that had visited China? Would the students be able to understand us? Would we fit in?

Since arriving in China to work an all-Chinese private high school this past August, I have found more similarities than differences in the “cultures of education” present in central Vermont and Qingdao, China. While the food eaten and the words spoken look and sound very different between these two cultures, there are several common educational paradigms.

Know Your Students

I have found that circle share-outs to start and end class have been the most useful tool to really get to know my students. By posing a “softball” question to the group (Share one thing you found interesting in today’s lesson, What is your favorite food?, Where is your hometown?, Share one thing you still don’t understand about respiration), I have learned who my students ARE.

Halloween 2018 in Biology class

Individual conversations before or after class, or at lunch time, have also helped me to better understand my students. While the minutes seem limited during the day, being *present* for my students, and taking time to ask them how they are doing and how they families are, has gone a long way in knowing how to help them both academically and socially.

Parents as Partners

In China, the majority of our students are not local, and they board at the school dormitory. This would appear to create  a disconnect between home and school life.

In Vermont, it was commonplace to call parents, email updates, or invite parents in for a discussion. Due to the language barriers and boarding-nature of the school, this connections cannot happen directly between teachers and parents. However, each student has a Chinese-speaking tutor. The tutor is the student’s point person at school, and knows the student best.

The tutor stays with them all four years at the high school, and sees their small group of tutees each morning for 25 minutes. The tutor plays a crucial role as the link between the parents and the school. Through the tutor maintaining trust and a positive relationship/dialogue with the parents (who often live a plane flight away from the school), parents are still partners in the decisions made related to the students.

Listen to your Students

“Feedback is a gift.” When I worked in Central Vermont, my students completed Google forms to give me valuable feedback related to my teaching.

Students in Biology Lab

Within the first two months of teaching Biology here in Qingdao, I devised a similar feedback form for my students. I asked help from a Chinese-speaking Biology teacher with the translation. I was nervous that my students, out of respect and/or fear, wouldn’t give me feedback that I could employ.

However, I was thrilled by the various ideas students had to help me become a better teacher. My students were constructive yet kind in their feedback. Some ideas included using more visuals, having students in the class translate Biological concepts that are confusing, more labs (which I have integrated to once a week at minimum), and more homework problem sets. Accepting feedback and being able to change to accommodate the learner is challenging but essential in the world of education.

Analysis of the Feedback - This was showed to students following the survey.

Conclusions

While the move to living and working in China has been, as is expected, a transition, the core aspects of my teaching have not changed.

The same principles that enabled me to find success in a public high school in Central Vermont are still present here. Best practices don’t change just because the language and food does. Parents still want to be involved in their child’s academics. Students still want to be heard by their teachers, and know that they have a voice. Relationships are still at the heart of the educational culture here in Qingdao, China.