Teach to Create Mission statement: Empowering students to take charge of their education, to know why they are here, to be the leaders they are capable of being.

Strong leaders are creative thinkers. Strong leaders don’t always have the whole path planned out, but are able to stay a step ahead of the pack. Strong leaders encourage people to follow them, don’t get distracted by superficial short cuts, and keep moving forward even when the path is muddied and unclear. Strong leaders listen. Strong leaders give input. Strong leaders step out of the way when a good idea is presented. Strong leaders want those following them to succeed.

Empowering students to take charge of their education means giving them the reins. How do we do this in a standard driven, test compliant system? Trusting that time spent in pursuit of our passions is time well spent. Trusting that letting go doesn’t mean chaos consumes us. Trusting that giving the baton to the real runner will spur them on to complete the race.

The student is the real runner. The student is the one who is learning (or supposed to be). The student needs to care about adding knowledge and then wisdom to their repertoire or the teacher is basically talking to air. The baton is the learning. Pass it on to them. They may drop it, stare at it on the ground, but as they see others grab that shiny post, they will have a moment where they have to pick it up and run or miss the race. IF they pick it up and run, watch out! Momentum will build, muscles will flex, and air will penetrate their lungs. Energy filling faster as they pump down the track. Breathing in, tasting sweat, tears flowing, and yet somehow finishing! IF they stoop and watch as the other racers pass by, they will feel their heat. They will feel the loss. They will feel defeat. And yet, they will have another race, another chance, another day to catch on.

This is what I want for my students. I want to empower them to see the race. I want to encourage them to pick up the baton. I want to cheer for them as they cross the finish line.

Each class I think about how to engage my students in what we will do that day. Some days I am successful, some not so much. Some days they pick up the baton I hold out in the questions I ask. Some days they stare in disbelief, unable to reach out their hands. And yet, I keep coming back, prepared to hand that baton another day.

“Why are you here?” I ask this often. I ask it in the beginning of the semester, the middle and at the end. I want them to decide they are here, sitting in this seat, for a purpose of their choosing. They could stay in bed. Sometimes they do. But if they got up, got dressed, walked across campus, and showed up, I want them to decide to be all in. And if they decide that they are all in, usually they give something. They give an idea, insight, question, something to our discourse that I could not have thought of. This collaboration between teacher and student is the crux of their education. It is not about the teacher expelling information and the student lapping it up like a thirsty desert dweller. Their education and hopefully their growth is a building on their stored knowledge, a drawing from other constructs, and a scaffolding that supports their consciousness. As they build this scaffolding, their thinking expands, reaches higher and creates supports for new constructs. This building through established knowledge and new decisions is where learning gets really interesting. I was going to say fun, but that sounds trite. Fun doesn’t sustain you, interest does. Fun is good. Interest perseveres.

So, herein lies the crux of my teacherly pursuits: get students to find interest in their learning, create an atmosphere of mutual trust and collaboration, and encourage learners to build their scaffolding at their own pace in a way that supports higher level thinking and deep meaning.

I love this! It’s what I dream about. How do I get them to care, to crave learning! This is where my creative mind thrives.

If I’m going to teach a group of students how to integrate technology into a social studies lesson, I need to show them why it’s important and then give them some choices in how they approach the problem. A real-life problem to solve makes learning authentic. Go and find, play with, think through the pros and cons and then decide what is useful. This is the technique I try to employ in my class. Tools are on the table if you need them. I’m here if you have questions. They sit, then they move closer to each other, they start to talk, read the problem aloud, brainstorm first thoughts, one decides to dig a little, another one decides to search the topic, another one writes out a plan. Learning is built, each layering a thought on top of another. I walk around, give input, nudge, question, direct, look over shoulders. Collaboration continues as we gather part way through, share resources, share struggles, share finds. They go back, tweak ideas, hash through best strategies, use their text to remember a term, plot on. Finally, our 80 minutes comes to a close and we wrap up. The plan is not complete, learning is on the verge, it’s in our midst, it has not submerged into our core, but it’s about us. Tomorrow, we will take another crack at it. Make another decision to be there, fully in, engaged.