One idea that has come up continually this summer and especially in my Covid style day two learning for this course is the idea of quality collaboration between our students. I was given a couple articles to read that I feel describe what it looks like to facilitate and allow for effective collaboration.
The first article, Deeper Learning: A Collaborative Classroom is Key, talks about the skills that a teacher should build up to foster a quality collaborative classroom. Some of these are; how to negotiate, how to be a good listener, how to ask good questions. As I went through these I realized, these are the qualities that I consider well developed adults to have. When I experience someone who listens intently to me as I talk and asks questions that prove they have been listening and want to know more, I feel honored and I want to interact with that person more. To me, the skills described in this article are incredibly valuable to be teaching our students.
The second article, Student-Centered Learning: It Starts With the Teacher, is a bit more challenging to me thinking about being an educator. This article talks about the value in giving more say to students about their learning. It also talks about teachers learning to give up some of their sense of control and learn to believe in their students' ability to learn and lead learning. This article is not claiming teachers shouldn't teach. Instead, it is claiming teachers should look to give up some of their control and allow students to drive their education to an extent. This idea appears to be correct to me but it is also a scary notion. Giving up control means not being sure of the outcome and there is a fear that students might not take things the direction that they should. For now I am looking at this from a middle ground, hoping I can give my students quality freedom of choice within a set of parameters that will still get the core ideas across.
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