The Making of a 21st Century Educator: 5 Ways to be a Better Teacher in Today’s Classroom

• December 6, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

The highest calling of today's education system is to equip students with the characteristics and skills needed to navigate the ever-changing 21st century global economy as adults. We talk a lot about how to engage students and make them better learners, but how often do we step back and consider how to make better educators? The success of our students and the effectiveness of the education system as a whole starts and ends with the teacher.

So what might an effective 21st century educator look like? eSchool News recently polled its readers and came up with five characteristics that the most effective educators have in common.  Here’s what you can do to emulate them:

• Be forward thinking. The 21st century educator must have a broader vision, anticipating and adapting to trends, not only in education, but technology and science as well. Our teachers are tasked with preparing students, not for the world as it exists today, but for the one they will someday inherit.
• Be an eager learner. Technology has become a fundamental part of our students' daily experience, both in and out of the classroom. Educators operating in such a rapidly evolving technological climate simply must be willing to learn to effectively teach. The phrase "lead by example" comes to mind. If we want our students to be inquisitive, open-minded and willing to learn from making mistakes, so must be our teachers.
• Be a builder of relationships. Today's students are more likely to gauge their number of friends on Facebook than by who sits with them at the lunch table. In such a world of technological isolation, where it's possible to go through an entire day without real human interaction, we must facilitate interpersonal relationships within the classroom while prioritizing communication, respect and cooperation.
• Be equipped to teach all levels of learners. As effective 21st century educators, we not only need to be armed with the same characteristics and skills we plan to impart on our students, we must also have the ability to teach those characteristics and skills to every student at every level in the classroom. This includes the ability to effectively relate to students and teach to their unique learning styles.
• Be able to implement technology effectively. Enhancing the educational environment with technology can facilitate faster learning and streamline teacher tasks, such as grading, planning and presenting lessons, but simply putting a computer in front of your students isn't enough. Technology can just as easily be distracting or unproductive. An effective 21st century educator will have the discernment and know-how to incorporate technology into the classroom in a way that facilitates, rather than distracts from, teaching and learning.

As educators working under pressure to maximize student performance, we sometimes focus all of our time and energy on developing curriculum, planning and implementing lessons, and accessing our students' skill level at the expense of our own ongoing education. If we take the time to foster the characteristics necessary to be an effective educator in ourselves and our peers, our students will ultimately benefit.

References:

Five characteristics of an effective 21st-century educator

Related Reading:

Using Google in the Classroom: Two Simple Tips to Refine Your Search

Facebook in Schools: Tool or Taboo?

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: how children learn, learning environment, motivating students, school leader effectiveness, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact, technology in education

The Question Formulation Technique: 6 Steps to Help Students Ask Better Questions

• November 29, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

The ability to ask questions is the genesis – the “big bang” – where learning really starts. It is that moment where information that has entered the brain mixes with other ideas and begins to synthesize new ideas. Questions demonstrate curiosity. Questions represent the beginning of discovery and innovation. The first step of the scientific method itself is the careful formulation of a question.

But how often do we focus on teaching our students how to formulate good, well-considered questions? Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana have focused their work on exactly this skill, developing an approach they call the Question Formulation Technique (QFT). The two are co-directors of The Right Question Institute (RQI), a non-profit organization that focuses on helping people learn to better advocate for themselves and participate more in decision-making processes by teaching them how to ask questions. While the RQI applies their techniques across health care, community service, public agencies and community-based organizations, their ideas represent an excellent tool that we can use in our classrooms every day.

Recently published in the Harvard Education Letter, their article “Teaching Students to Ask Their Own Questions,” describes the Question Formulation Technique, a way for educators to present material in ways that encourage students to take a more active ownership role in their learning. There are six steps to the technique, as follows:

1.      Find a focus - The “QFocus,” as it is called by Rothstein and Santana, is a prompt that serves to focus student questions so they can explore more expansive ideas. The authors offer an example presented by a teacher after covering the causes of the 1804 Haitian revolution: “Once we were slaves. Now we are free,” With a clear, direct thought like this to focus their thinking, the students begin formulating and posing questions around this idea.

2.      Brainstorm - Constrained by a few simple rules to help people stay focused, students formulate as many questions as possible. At this point, they are asked not to judge the quality of the questions, nor pursue any answers. This is much like the classic “brainstorming” process, where ideas are generated in a free, uninterrupted flow.

3.      Refine - The students work with the questions they have created, reformulating them as open- and closed-ended questions. They categorize them and make them clearer, more focused and more apt to yield the desired answers.

4.      Prioritize - Using lesson plans and teaching goals, the teacher helps students select their top three questions and use them to zero in on the most important aspects of the material.

5.      Determine next steps - Students and teachers together review the priority questions and make decisions about how best to use them for learning. The questions can be used to drive experimentation, further reading, research and/or discussion.

6.      Reflect - The teacher and students review their questions in the context of the six steps they have worked through to produce them. According to Rothstein and Santana, “Making the QFT completely transparent helps students see what they have done and how it contributed to their thinking and learning. They can internalize the process and then apply it in many other settings.”

Note the key word in that last sentence – internalize. Through this process, students add question formulation to their cognitive toolbox, making it a part of how they address information and problem-solving going forward. The authors note a number of benefits to the QFT, including increased group participation and better classroom management. But more importantly, they found that students were more apt to delve deeply into topics on their own, posing well-considered, critical questions that not only help direct their learning, but allow them to take more effective ownership of that learning as well.

As a “habit of mind,” the Question Formulation Technique demonstrates beautifully how the brain is built for pattern recognition. It also represents research that holds great promise for helping students form thinking patterns early on that will yield lifelong benefits.

Related Reading:

Teaching Creativity in the Classroom

Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn and Grow

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: cognitive skills, creativity, decision making, elementary school learning, how children learn, motivating students, science, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact

Creating Safe Learning Environments: How Classroom Management Influences Student Performance

• November 15, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

Think back to your grade school days. Did you ever experience a class where a bully ruled the roost? Were you ever bullied yourself?  Did you ever have a teacher who frightened you or who made you feel bad for underperforming? Or was there simply a disruptive class clown who constantly broke the classroom rhythm the teacher was trying so hard to create?

To varying degrees, all of the above situations can create what we might consider an unsafe learning environment. The teacher must take unquestionable ownership of the classroom, but do so in a positive, caring, constructive manner. The class succeeds or fails on his or her decisions and management of the entire learning experience.

Why is managing that classroom and creating that safe environment where learning can happen so essential? In her article on the value of safe learning environments, Lora Desautels, Ph.D., reminds us that during adolescence, the part of the brain that controls emotional responses—the amygdala—develops faster than other centers of the brain while the prefrontal cortex, a center for logical thought and rational response, develops later. Thus, our students are more effectively wired for emotion than logic. Their systems are primed to react to situations with feelings and they have not yet fully developed the ability to apply logical thinking to keep those feelings in check.

It follows that the stimuli within and surrounding the learning environment can have great effects on these emotional responses and can serve to either support or impair the learning process. The bully, the clown, and the teacher can all have a profound effect on how well a student learns.

So what can we as educators do to bring down the levels of stress in our classrooms and make sure that our learning environments are safe places where optimal learning can take place? How can we create spaces that keep the emotional responses as positive and free of stress and anxiety as possible so that we can most effectively engage fresh young minds?

Rebecca Alber has written a wonderful list of twenty ways to create a safe learning environment for Edutopia, which I highly recommend. Her advice for educators includes building community, setting clear boundaries, smiling and laughing a lot, and getting to know each individual student, as well as allowing them to get to know something personal about you. She says we should sit with our students. We should keep our expectations for student performance and behavior high. And we should incorporate art and music into the day.

I agree with Alber’s top twenty. I find it wonderful that she strikes a balance between creating a space that is fun and welcoming and full of laughter, but also one where expectations are set and failures become learning opportunities. All of them can do wonders when it comes to creating a space where students can let go of their stresses and anxieties and free their minds to absorb all the wonderful learning we have in store for them.

In the end, the responsibility for implementing these kinds of principles and removing the stressors that can impair learning lie with us, the educators. Creating that safe learning environment is a multifaceted challenge that, when done well, allows students to flourish.

Related Reading:

Tapping the Source: Finding and Using the Innate Student Passion for Learning

Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn and Grow

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Categories: Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, behavior, brain development, emotions in learning, health and well being, how children learn, learning environment, self-esteem, teacher impact

Using Fiction Writing Activities to Develop Creative Thinking in the Classroom

• September 29, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

We are always on the lookout for more effective ways of teaching creativity in the classroom. With much attention on the decreasing status of the United States in the world economy, the need for a stronger creative class, and the realization that the next generation of professionals and leaders will have to be more innovative than ever to solve the world’s problems, educators need more ways to teach children the ability to engage in creative thinking.

In the classroom, so much of what we do focuses on teaching our students to recognize and repeat patterns. Mathematical functions follow patterns. Letters and languages represent graphical and sound patterns that have meaning because of their repetition.

Creativity, on the other hand, is the breaking of patterns. In the creative act, the mind proceeds to a place where there is no existing path to follow, building something new where there was nothing before.

So therein lies our problem: if teaching strengthens the mind’s ability to recognize patterns of meaning, how do we teach creativity – an act that by its very nature breaks with patterns?

The neuroscience research behind brain plasticity has shown us how the brain responds to stimuli by forming neural pathways, and that the brain constantly changes, much like a landscape changes under the influence of the forces of water and wind. The brain adapts in order to more efficiently recognize and make use of the information and patterns that make up the world in which we live.

The answer: we need to teach the patterns that support creative thinking. Writing fiction and storytelling offer immense power and potential for us to help our students learn to break their patterns of thinking and develop these creative habits of mind.

Creative idea generation is not easy; in fact, it can be quite intimidating for a great many youngsters, not to mention adults. Our goal should be to help our students let go of their inhibitions and become comfortable with – or even better, excited about – undertaking creative challenges.

From a practical standpoint, we have access to endless activities to spur our students on to cultivate their creativity through writing fiction. These are just three of them:
 

• Ask students to develop a “what if” question and then answer it with a story. That simple act of creating their “what if” question forces the mind to go to a place it has never been before, and in writing the story, they get to spin out that idea as far as it will go.
  Example: “What if mice could read minds?” or “What if we could send a spaceship to a black hole?”
• Give each student a character from one well-known story, place that character in the context of another well-known story, and ask them to write about what happens. Example: “The giant climbs down the beanstalk and meets three little pigs. What happens next?”
• Ask each student to select one item they would want with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Then, ask them to write a story about how they got to the island and how that item ensured their survival. Example: “I would want a small folding knife. When I fell off the ship during a storm, I had had it in my pocket because I had been carving a stick on the deck. Luckily, it didn’t fall out of my pocket when I hit the water…”

While it offers a higher level of challenge, I’d like to offer one final exercise to consider adapting for your students: the six word short story. Perhaps the most famous example is Ernest Hemingway’s story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” This kind of poetic and conceptual challenge forces students to combine creative thinking with a laser-focus on word choice.

For younger students, this can be adapted by asking students to write their own six-word versions of well-known stories and fables. More advanced students can be given the freedom to come up with their own stories.

While these fiction writing activities are primarily for elementary school students, they can all be adapted for adolescents and, especially in the case of the six-word exercise, adult learners.

But notice that each of these examples puts some limits around the creative process. This is the key to fostering creative thinking: through focusing each student’s effort into a tightly formulated creative problem, they are then freed to develop and follow their ideas to conclusion.

In such fictional writing, students learn that they have the power to break patterns of thinking and develop their own creative ways to think through problems, skills that will serve them well as they grow and mature into tomorrow’s creative thinkers and leaders.

In my own six words? Your instruction focused, their creativity unleashed.

For resources on teaching fiction writing, visit the National Writing Project and their resources for teaching fiction writing and Creative Writing: Teaching Theory and Practice.

Related Reading:

Teaching and Learning with Intent through Guided Reading Activities

The Great Homework Debate: Is Homework Helpful or Harmful to Students?

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: arts, creativity, effort, elementary learning, learning through play, motivating students, play, teacher impact, writing

Still the Write Stuff: Why We Must Continue Teaching Handwriting

• August 23, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

When it comes to lost arts, we could argue that none is getting lost faster than handwriting. Since the personal computer and now the telephone have become the primary methods for recording our ideas, we simply do not write – I mean with an actual writing implement like a pen or pencil – as much as we used to.

So, we must ask ourselves, is this really a problem? Sure, one could argue that receiving a handwritten letter is more meaningful than getting one that is typed, but that’s an emotional opinion; it’s not a scientific argument. And aren’t professionals in all fields using more computers, tablets and handhelds to communicate, record and share ideas? So, what is the real value of learning handwriting skills versus being able to type 100 words per minute on a QWERTY keyboard?

At Indiana University, Dr. Karin Harman James, assistant professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences, focuses her research on how motor stimuli can influence our visual recognition, and how the brain changes as we have different experiences. This research provides a basis for a scientific argument for the continued instruction of handwriting.

In a 2008 study published in the Journal of Cognitive Science, adults were shown new characters as well as a mirror image of these characters after reproducing them through writing and keyboarding. When quizzed afterward, subjects were shown to have a “stronger, longer lasting recognition” of the characters’ correct orientation when they had written them by hand versus produced them by matching them to a keyboard button. This suggests that engaging the motor nerves to create the shapes by hand helped solidify the ability to identify such shapes.

In another study, James’ team took this idea to the next level to see what was actually going on inside the brain during these activities. They used a functional MRI to map brain activity in children as they looked at letters before and after letter-learning instruction. Their results showed that those who practiced writing the letters showed more brain activity than those who only looked at the letters. In addition, according to a 2010 report on the research in the Wall Street Journal Online, James said that after four weeks of training, the children who practiced writing skills showed brain activation similar to an adult’s.

Between these two studies, we see excellent examples of brain plasticity at work. James’ work demonstrates a clear connection between how engaging more of the brain in the activity of writing improves how letters are committed to memory. Given that letter recognition is an essential step for early readers, it’s easy to see why practicing writing letters is an essential component of the groundwork for later success.

Certainly, with limited time, schools try to maximize student achievement, and give them a baseline of skills that will allow them to continue to develop to optimize their success throughout life in an increasingly technology-based society. That said, based on James’ research, it’s quite clear that penmanship has an important place in the classroom, and not just as an important traditional skill.  In actually applying pen to paper, we allow our students to engage their brains in ways that typing on a keyboard cannot. And whether such an activity is done with pen and paper, a stylus and a tablet PC or chalk on a blackboard, it is in every student’s best interest to practice the “write” stuff.

For further reading:

The many health perks of good handwriting. Deardorff, Julie. Chicago Tribune, June 15, 2011. Referenced on August 14, 2011.

How handwriting trains the brain. Bounds, Gwendolyn. The Wall Street Journal Online, October 5, 2010. Referenced on August 14, 2011.

Writing strengthens orthography and alphabetic-coding strengthens phonology in learning to read Chinese. Guan, Connie Qun; Liu, Ying; Chan, Derek Ho Leung; Ye, Feifei; Perfetti, Charles A. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 103(3), Aug 2011, 509-522.

 

Related Reading:

Why Limit Screen Time? Scientific Research Explains

Ok, so you made a mistake. But look what you learned!

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain development, brain plasticity, brain training, cognitive skills, creativity, digital natives, early learning, elementary learning, memory, processing, writing

The Need for Physically Active Learning

• July 7, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

The human mind is most engaged to react and perform at optimal capacity when our hearts are pumping and our blood is flowing. Any athlete will tell you that he or she feels most alive and sharp when they are in the midst of the contest, heart beating hard, mind alert and ready. Given the interconnected nature of how our brains and bodies function, how the brain gets more oxygen and works better when the heart is pumping, it’s easy to see that we are designed not only to learn, but to think best “on our feet.”

In fact, this concept extends far beyond circulation alone; physical activity has been shown to have substantive affects on brain chemistry. In 2003, Sibley and Etnier demonstrated that, for 4-18 year-olds, exercise positively impacts perception skills, IQ, achievement, verbal and math scores, development and academic readiness.^[i] Exercise can affect the release of neurotransmitters key to the learning process, such as norepinephrine (which increases blood flow to skeletal muscles as well as to the brain) and acetylcholine (which can slow the heart rate and contribute to sustained attention).

With these concepts in mind, now imagine the modern classroom. The average student sits for hours a day usually sitting still.  She shouldn’t stand up and stretch, or worse, walk around the classroom. (For goodness sake, that’s distracting to the other students and disrespectful to the teacher.) Physical education programs are getting cut due to shrinking budgets, and recess time is being cut to create more opportunities for test preparation. Obesity and diabetes are dangerously on the rise. Since the early 1970s, the number of overweight students has quadrupled from four percent to seventeen percent. (American Heart Association)

In general, the classroom becomes a place where we expect students to focus the mind and quiet the body. What we’re learning is that this is just not necessarily the best way to go. A new trend in classroom management is bringing this tradition into question. Through what is becoming known as “physically active learning,” educators are not only experimenting with integrating more physical activity into classroom lessons, but they are generating positive results.

According to Jena Mee, a physical education and school health education consultant for the Department of Education, “Research is showing us very persuasively that if students exercise for sustained periods of time before they do challenging work, they perform cognitive tasks better, they remember things better, they can apply their skills better.”^[ii]

In theory, the idea is to break up lessons with short breaks of physical activity that get students up out of their seats and moving around the room. According to eSchool News, “The approach also has been shown to improve attendance and student behavior and reduce discipline referrals.”

As educators under pressure to maximize student academic performance, we often focus on the material and forget that our real goal is to help the whole child. This research is just one more reminder that we need to attend to the body as well as the mind. If we can do both, we will help our students become all that much more successful.

While the research is still developing, you can get the story as reported this past May on eschoolnews.com.

And if you want to explore one idea to bring more physical activity into your classroom, how about using exercise balls instead of chairs?

[i] Sibley B.A. and Etnier J.L. (2003). The relationship between physical activity and cognition in children: a meta- analysis. Pediatric Exercise Science, 15:243-256.

[ii] ‘Physically active learning’ improves test scores, sharpens concentration. eSchool News. May 16, 2011.

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: attention, behavior, cognitive skills, effort, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, exercise, health and well being, how children learn, learning environment, learning through play, memory, motivating students, physical education, play, self-esteem, student growth, teacher impact

Tapping the Source: Finding and Using the Innate Student Passion for Learning

• June 16, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

In a previous post, I began an exploration of methods for increasing student motivation. We delved into Daniel Pink’s model of motivation that he describes in his book, Drive, and how motivation arises most effectively when a project or task addresses three internal emotional variables at the same time: autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Along with Pink, another great contemporary thinker, writer and speaker in the world of education is Mark Prensky, who coined the idea of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” (now well-known across the education technology community) to characterize how technology advances have completely changed the way students learn in a single generation. Like Pink, Prensky is a student of the mind who has dedicated his career to exploring and developing ideas to help educators help their students learn as effectively and purposefully as possible.

In a recent piece, Blame Our Young? Or Use Their Passion!, Prensky briefly references how we try to motivate the next generation to succeed through hitting them hard with the message that the future is in their hands. Prensky cites President Obama, Colin Powell and Newt Gingrich for all using this technique of heaping responsibility upon our youth. An excellent example of this style can be seen in President Obama’s 2009 speech given at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. It was a wonderful talk, to be sure, and it was historic in that it was one of those rare moments when a president has directed an entire speech to our nation’s young people. In that address, Obama talked about how our youth had the opportunity to make choices to help build their own futures, as well as to contribute to helping make our nation become great.

Still, let’s face it: as wonderful as those sentiments might sound to adults, to a young person, that is a daunting amount of responsibility. According to Prensky’s thinking, this kind of discipline-based, “the weight of the future is in your hands” approach to motivation does not come from within, and for this reason, is bound to generally fail. If you think about it, middle schoolers have a hard enough time worrying about next week, much less what might be coming in five or ten years.

“What if,” he ponders, “instead, we asked the kids what their passion is, and invited them to follow and use that passion as a gateway to all kinds of learning—learning that will help our country and the world.” (Prensky, p. 2)

What if we were to really take the time to ask what our students were passionate about and then used that as jumping off points for greater learning? If a student loves music, fantastic! We can use that to talk about history, mathematics and acoustics. If a student is interested in boats, excellent! Now we have a great place to launch into conversations about history, technology, geography and ecology. What? Janie loves dogs? Wonderful, let’s talk about all those wonderful breeds and the genetics (and by extension, mathematics) behind all their beautiful differences.

Considering that due to our different neurological wirings each of us perceives the world differently, the conclusion that a true, long-lasting passion for learning must come from within seems obvious. How can we expect every student—each with his or her own completely unique perspective on the universe—to learn in the same way?

This is why it is so essential for educators to help students find and pursue their passions. We can teach math or science or geography in the classroom until we’re blue in the face. Some students may absorb the lessons, some may not. If, on the other hand, we can help our students find the links between their passions and these same lessons, then we create a direct connection between the essential content and something they truly and deeply care about, helping motivate the student to not only continue learning, but strive for individual excellence.

According to Prensky, “Wherever this (passion-based learning) has been tried—in scattered public, private and charter schools, and even MIT—it has been a resounding success. Kids flock to be part of something that allows them to follow their own interests.” (Prensky, p. 2) In case you hadn’t noticed, we have come full circle back to Pink’s elements of motivation—autonomy, mastery and purpose—and using that innate passion to help encourage students to take ownership of and responsibility for their learning.

In today’s age of technology-based classrooms, with our ability to have self-directed discovery and learning so integrated into the learning experience, we have the opportunity for educators to assume more of the role of coach and less of the role of lecturer. In so doing, we can help our students identify and tap into the very core of the topics that genuinely interest them and give them the learning tools to pursue those topics. At that point, once we uncover those passions, we then have an immediate in-road into the mind of each student and a pathway we can travel with each individual as they explore the world around them and begin to figure out how to make it better.

Further reading:

Prensky, Marc. Blame Our Young! Or Use Their Passion? We can do better than just laying the responsibility for solving our nation’s problems on the backs of our kids. 2010.

Prensky, Marc.  What I Learned Recently In New York City Classrooms: How to keep all kids busily engaged at all times. 2010.

Related Reading:

Individualizing Instruction Through Understanding Different Types of Learners

Teaching Creativity in the Classroom

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: adaptivity, digital natives, emotions in learning, how children learn, Innate abilities, motivating students, school leader effectiveness, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact

AMPing Up Our Teaching to Increase Intrinsic Student Motivation

• May 24, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

Think about this discussion on motivation presented in 2009 by Daniel Pink, career analyst, ex-speech writer for Al Gore, and author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  He described how modern business management styles once motivated employees—the old “carrot and stick” or reward and punishment approach—actually works in direct conflict with what science has shown about human motivation.

When it comes to optimizing performance on creative tasks, Pink, drawing from the conclusions of numbers psychological studies, tells us that it comes down to three elements:

1)     Autonomy: people have the urge to direct their own lives.

2)     Mastery: people have an innate desire to improve in skills that matter.

3)     Purpose: people want to contribute to something larger than themselves.

Environments that cultivated these three conditions led to faster, better, more creative work.

Now, consider this idea applied to the classroom. We have a great opportunity to make our classrooms into places where students can experience learning based on the three principles above, autonomy, mastery and purpose (AMP). I would argue that we need to “AMP up” our teaching.

When I consider instilling self-motivation in students, Pink’s three elements give us a great framework upon which we can begin to construct our teaching strategies.

Now, giving up the carrot and the stick will be a tough one for many of us to stomach, especially because our educational system is so rooted in such thinking. Certainly, rewards can serve to get a student to finish his homework, clean up her desk or complete a project. But, incentivizing does not cultivate self-motivation, and as Pink describes, the research shows that it actually decreases creative capabilities.

So, what might an AMPed classroom look like?

• Autonomy: In such a classroom, students have clear goals to reach, but maybe they have the freedom to schedule their own time (within reason) and create their own strategies for how and when they will reach those goals.
• Mastery: Students need to understand why they are learning what they are learning. They need to understand the context around why these skills are so important. In an AMPed classroom, this information is integrated into instruction and students are encouraged to assimilate the “why” of their lessons just as much as the “what.”
• Purpose: In AMPed classrooms, lessons and projects are not hypothetical. They are based in the real-world and allow students to truly affect positive change in our classrooms, schools and communities.

In the end, if we look at these three ways of looking at motivation, we are simply shifting the motivators from external ones to internal ones. We are connecting our lessons directly to what is important to each individual student at a personal level. Through providing a way for the student to insert themselves into the material through the creative process and their own solution development, the learning becomes directly relevant to their lives and priorities.

Edward Deci, a premier researcher on motivation, wrote: “The proper question is not, 'how can people motivate others?' but rather, "how can people create the conditions within which others will motivate themselves?"^[i] Ultimately, our success as educators must lie in taking the long view of our students’ lives—beyond their lives as students to when they will put their educations to use as professionals. And with that long view, the future adult who is a self-motivated individual will certainly be more successful than the person who stands by waiting for others to move them.

Watch Daniel Pink’s 19-minute TED talk on the surprising science of motivation.

[i] Ferlazzo, Larry. “Helping Students Motivate Themselves.” Education Week Teacher, April 22, 2011. 

For further reading:

Self-Determination Theory: An Approach to Human Motivation and Personality, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan

Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom Problems, Larry Ferlazzo, 2011

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Related Reading:

Teaching Creativity in the Classroom

Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn, and Grow

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: creativity, how adults learn, how children learn, learning environment, motivating students, school leader effectiveness, student growth, teacher effectiveness, teacher impact

Inspiring Students to Dream, Learn and Grow

• May 10, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

We educators talk a lot about student engagement. We understand that engagement is the magic key that drives the student and creates the moment when they become self-motivated. Engagement must be at the core of our goals as educators, for an engaged student finds wonder in their learning, and they not only find meaning in their studies, but they grow personally, for a lifetime, as a result of that learning.

But what do we really mean when we talk about the engaged student? What does it look like in the brain when a student is truly inspired? In the 2008 article, Engaging Students with Brain-Based Learning, the authors cite research from LeDoux, Eden and Schacter whose studies found connections between learning and 1) connections with emotions and memories, 2) relationships to real-life experiences, and 3) “activation of both the auditory and visual areas of the brain to create meaning.”^[i]In short, they are talking about what has become known as “brain-based learning,” which consists of teaching strategies that encourage the brain to make associations and “create synaptic connections and anchor learning through contextual experience.”^[ii]

In many ways, the research has confirmed what humanity’s greatest thinkers discovered long ago. How many years has it been since you slowed down and went back to meditate for a moment on some of the great axioms about learning and education? They hold wonderful hints and secrets that not only still apply, but have been proven by even the most modern research.

• “Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” (Malcolm Forbes, 1919-1990) To engage our students, we need to teach them not only to develop answers, but also learn to ask questions. We need to engage their judgment, creativity and reason, not just their memories.
• “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” (William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939) Clearly for students to be inspired to not just succeed but also to exceed, we educators must engage their passions and, as stated above, their emotions. Our challenge is to seek out those things that are of direct personal interest to our students, and then show them how to find the connections to these passions and what we’re focusing on in the classroom.
• “There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.” (Mark Twain, 1835-1910) These words are beautiful at so many levels, but at the purely practical one, Twain reminds us of something that we need to bring to our students attention every day. We can help them develop an awareness that they are learning so much more than facts and processes; they are learning the skills that will allow them to contribute to solving the problems of humanity. In short, we need to show them how they are developing the power to change the world.

What? Who has time to instill passion, emotion and caring? Many teachers are doing this every day, but we need more! Quite often, educators are pressed more to ensure that students are able to do their multiplication tables, find the capital of North Carolina on a map of the United States and recite the chemical formula for water. 

And yet, our greatest challenge remains inextricably linked to our greatest hope for the future. We must do all we can to light those fires of inspiration and help our students find those deep personal connections to their learning. If we can do that, not only will they learn more successfully, but it will be our students who grab the reins, take charge of their learning, and maybe—just maybe—find their way toward Twain’s angelship.

[i] Kaufman, E. Robinson, S. Bellah, K. Akers, C. Haase-Wittler, P. Martindale, L. Engaging Students with Brain-Based Learning. ACTE Online. September 2008.

[ii]Ibid.

For further reading:

Pychyl , Timothy A. Don't Delay: Understanding procrastination and how to achieve our goals. Psychology Today Blogs. May 10, 2008.

Haenke, Rod. Using Brain Research to Engage Students. Engage Learner. October 3, 2008. 

Related Reading:

Using the Human Element to Make Science Fun and Approachable

Teaching Creativity in the Classroom

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Brain Research, Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain training, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, high school learning, how children learn, learning environment, memory, middle school learning, motivating students, student reading growth, teacher impact

Opening the Classroom Through Online Collaboration: 21st Century Learning Environments

• March 29, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

Fifteen short years ago, our classrooms were relatively closed places. When we spoke of teaching students to collaborate with one another or exposing them to the world beyond our school walls, we were usually talking about a very limited number of options: either going out into the world to experience it first hand on a field trip, or bringing the outside world in via hosting a guest speaker. In rare and wonderful cases, students had the opportunity to go on exchange programs. In this way, “collaboration” meant working in small teams with fellow classmates.

Today, such collaboration is no longer dependent upon proximity or time of day. Online tools have brought down the many barriers to communication, allowing students, teachers and professionals to interact with and learn from one another regardless of location.

The potential for learning is mind-blowing to say the least. With a savvy educator as a coach and guide, the entire world can become the classroom, and peoples who populate it can be our co-educators. Even our students have the opportunity to become the teachers.

What do our students have to gain if we take steps to embrace online collaboration in our classrooms? We need only look to a few real-life examples to see:

• Students in New Jersey are building understanding by learning about others. Through video conferencing, they have interviewed others their age in Iowa to talk about how they perceive one another and how the economic crisis is affecting their lives and families.[i] Read about the efforts that are transforming the Van Meter Community School District in Iowa, written by Superintendent John Carver.
• Teachers in the US are using free video conferencing such as Skype to facilitate international conversations. For example, educator Silvia Tolisano put together conversations in German and English by connecting her class with one in Argentina. See this and lots more examples in this article, 50 Awesome Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom.
• If you haven’t heard of it, the ePals Global Learning Community is facilitating collaborative learning across the planet. Through their network, students and teachers come together to do everything from using digital storytelling to learn about world cultures to discussing and developing solutions to global warming. Visit the Projects section of ePals for ideas and ways to plug into great work already underway.

Of course, these kinds of tools and techniques expose our students to all that the world—literally—has to offer. But just as importantly, in using these strategies we are helping our students establish the neural connections that will make these kinds of experiences second nature to them. We are strengthening their abilities to focus more on the meaningful content and creative ideas that come from these experiences as opposed to focusing on just the superficial “wow” factor. Not only that, but we are helping them develop the habits of mind for using these tools and techniques that will serve them so well as they endeavor to solve problems in the future.

For more ideas and articles about online collaboration, check out eSchool News’ collection of articles on the subject at http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/11/21/engaging-students-through-online-collaboration/

[i] Prabhu, Maya T. Will Skype eclipse fee-based videoconferencing? eSchool News. May 17, 2010. http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/05/17/will-skype-eclipse-fee-based-videoconferencing/?ast=55

Related Reading:

Creating the Optimal "Internal" Learning Environment

Ok, So You Made a Mistake. But Look What You Learned!

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: digital natives, elementary school learning, high school learning, how children learn, innovation, learning environment, middle school learning, motivating students, novelty, social studies, technology in education