Let's teach students to be their own best advocates
Categories: US Education News
The pandemic upended “traditional schooling” and, in many aspects, what students saw as their role in their education.Our longstanding education system continues to depend on students “just showing up to school.” But when schools went remote, “showing up” became something different. Students were responsible for their decision to engage, to log on, to be “present.”While there were many negative aspects to the pandemic and immense an impact on society, one positive is the rise among students of agency over their own learning. This is a trend we must build upon.
The good news is that teachers, even before the pandemic, were already doing a tremendous amount of work to give their learners opportunities to “take an active role in shaping their future” as Larry Ferlazzo noted in a 2019 opinion piece in Education Week. Consider how much has improved since we were in school. Teachers are now creating learning systems that are increasingly personalized for each student. They’re leveraging rigorous content standards, adopting research-informed practices and considering their students’ social and emotional learning needs.
Teachers are increasingly having powerful goal-setting conversations with their students and using data to identify next steps together. Teachers are becoming more adept at giving effective feedback to their learners and helping them better understand their own needs. Their role has shifted to one that is more like a coach and the student is their most valuable player, and together, they form plans of action toward a greater outcome.
Students are enabled to recount their story and can utilize heaps of pieces of information — to illustrate what their identity is and what they are prepared to do, of what they are great at, what they are really going after, what they love about school and what they need more help on. Understudies who feel they have possession in their schooling are urged to incline in and embrace their own interest and can be all the more remarkable promoters for themselves.
Of course, all this means that we need to present data to students in a way that they can understand — without all the eduspeak and statistical jargon that often makes data feel inaccessible. And when students understand their data, they are empowered to have meaningful conversations about their goals and their learning with their support systems — parents, tutors, teachers and mentors. This helps us all lean in and support all students to achieve their potential.