These are my kids. I teach students English at the science leadership academy in Philadelphia. As an advisor, we’ve been together since summer institute and we’ll be together on graduation day and beyond.
The question I ask myself: how am I preparing my students to use their passions to take on the complex challenges they will inherit and to keep in mind that we don’t teach English, but we teach students English
The task before us is large, complex, and should humble us. We’re preparing our students for a future we cannot even imagine, yet. But, our task of helping our students become readers, writers, and thinkers remains constant. The ultimate task for us is to leave our students more Curious and Courageous
This is map of my current linked in connections. Raise your hand if you’re on linkedin. These aren’t just people represented as dots but rather each is a possible source of inspiration, ideas, resources and further connections. But this is just one example of a network, your most important connection might be across the hall from you or across the country.
You might be thinking why does this matter, so why is it important for me or my teachers to be a connected educator? I want to share few examples from the classrooms about how they are connecting to make learning relevant for their students.
So, why connect? Tell Marlyn’s story. Because we have to model, make learning relevant, find an audience for the work our students create, and to empower students to keep learning even when they are not in our classrooms. So I want to share some examples of ways students can learn in and out of classroom.
teen magazine
authentic writing
students chose to write articles ranging from graffiti as are to how teen brains function on little sleep
an intentional piece of writing that pushes against the materialist, hypersexual nature of most teen magazines
it took collaboration of the copy editors, layout editors, artists, photographers to make this work possible.
Students need questions/task that are worthy of their time, creativity, and brilliance.
They need a real audience. They need to “make” something.
And they need to learn to collaborate.
Bubble tests will not prepare our students questions and challenges that our students face whether it is poverty, war, access to clean water and air. In your class currently, there is a potential scientist or a senator, a poet or a police officer. How are you preparing them for the challenges they will face?
We have plenty of standards to unpack and implement but perhaps we need to think about ways to make joy, passion, and curiosity the standards of our classroom.
I welcome you to connect to one community I’ve found on the web. But that isn’t the only way, I hope you’ll tweet me, write to me and tell me how you’re helping your students become connected to their learning so that they can become makers of their own futures.
