Student Centered Learning

Today ended our District’s week long K-12 “Edcamp” which I had the privilege of participating in by facilitating several workshops on topics such as Google Apps on the iPad, Genius Hour, Project Based Learning, Webquests, and others. Some of my 55 minute workshops had over 20 attendees, while others had one or two. I prepared some notes, resources, and examples ahead of time, but did not have a set agenda for the training. When the participants arrived in the room in which I was teaching, I did a quick little informal survey (basically asked) to find out what they knew, and what they wanted to learn. I think some were surprised, and possibly felt uneasy that my workshop wasn’t teacher directed, and traditionally structured. One of the teachers even asked me what I wanted her to do first.

After my initial “survey”, I showed the following video to get things going...

I hope you agree that the message was clear and impactful, and begged the question: does this fit your teaching paradigm?

After we watched the video, I shared a bit about my own belief system, and explained how I was going to structure our time together. I proceeded to run the workshop as I do my own classroom. Each teacher was working on something that was meaningful to them, and I modeled being the “facilitator” of the learning environment. I circulated around the room, asking meaningful questions to probe my learners to delve deeper into what they were researching... doing… creating. I paused the session, so to speak, at various moments to ask for comments or inspirations that they wanted to share, and always saved time at the end for reflection.

For two of the sessions, I invited four of last year’s students to come and help facilitate, and fortunately their parents were willing to drive them over to the training site. I wasn’t sure how the attending teachers were going to take being “taught” by 9 year olds, but I was willing to take the risk, and they really are WAY more proficient with these topics than I am! The results were beyond my expectations! The feedback was incredibly positive!

One teacher, that’s known me for many years, took a moment to share with me that she was moved by the way I always involve my students in such valuable learning experiences, and has learned so much from watching me over the years. Honestly... it brought tears to my eyes.

What are your thoughts on student-centered learning? Are you having any issues/obstacles to making the shift in your teaching paradigm?