Every week, I am fortunate to enter dozens of classrooms and witness our teachers’ creativity and working genius. Teachers tap into their passions and strengths, designing engaging and curiosity-provoking lessons for our students. You can feel the buzz in the room when kids are genuinely engaged in the learning. There is an urgency to their sense of wonder, their need to find the answers.
These powerful moments do not happen by accident. Creating ‘wonderment’ takes effort. It is a desire to harness a child’s passion by discovering what matters to them, what they care about, and building the experience around their interests. Curating the learning around a students strengths and passion will encourage students to ask questions. Their own questions. Questions that matter to them, and that they will be hungry to find the answers to.
“The “occasionally remarkable” moments shouldn’t be left to chance! They should be planned for, invested in.”
Chip and Dan Heath: The Power of Moments
Such passion and curiosity are not ignited by teaching to the test. They are a product of “lifeworthy” learning experiences designed by the teacher. David Perkins, the author of Futurewise, challenges us to ask “What did you learn during your first twelve years of education that matters in your life today?” A question that we would do well to ask ourselves before planning a series of lessons and assessments for our students. We rarely use the information taught in school, we do, however, utilize the skills and thinking.
Sustainability, climate change and inclusion are all important topics relevant to the future lives of our students. But do they care about them? They should. Why should they? Framing such topics around questions and activities that spark curiosity is essential for student engagement. As a teacher, a solid starting point for creating wonder is getting to know your students personally. Understanding what matters to them and the things they think about on a daily basis will help you connect to the children and create value-added relationships. Students always enjoy talking about their passions.
Chip Heath calls these moments of elevation, insight, pride and connection PEAK experiences. Peak experiences are easily identifiable. These are the lessons that have your students working in a state of flow and then entering the next lesson still debating the issues raised in the previous class. The “A-ha” and “Wow” moments. Shouldn’t we aim to make all lessons memorable and meaningful like this so that it is not only the extracurriculars and field trips that the children look back on with love?
The recipe for creating lifeworthy peak experiences is fairly straightforward:
- Care about your students personally and ensure that they know that you do
- Tap into their passions and curiosities
- Choose your topics and questions wisely. Why should they care?
- Consider the life worthiness of the questions and tasks that you are asking them to engage with. If it is not relevant to them, why would they bother?
- Consider the medium and product. Are the students using 21st-century skills? Are they using technology that will support them in their futures?
- Create a safe environment for mistakes and innovation. Allow the students to share their ideas and questions. There are no stupid questions.
- Base all learning around real-world experiences and problems.
It is my belief that when these elements are in place, the environment is ripe for learning. Curiosity is respected and encouraged, even when it causes a deviation from the lesson plan. Allow curiosity and relevance to lead the way.
Occasionally, I will witness a lesson that did not engage the students. The lesson most likely was not planned with lifeworthy PEAK experiences in mind and focused on teaching to the test. Asking students to read rubrics and fulfil IB criteria is equivalent to an adult reading a life insurance document. It is essential, but it is not fun. It will not be surprising then to notice a lack of engagement at these times. If the entire unit is centred on formal assessment rather than learning then we risk boring our students to death. Bored students can equal poor behaviour.
It is during these ‘teach to the test’ lessons that I have heard teachers use sentences that start with two dreaded words. “These kids..” “These kids just don’t want to work.” “These kids just aren’t interested.” “These kids..”
Such inhibiting beliefs are damaging to learning and to a child’s self-esteem. When we come to believe that a student is not capable of learning we act differently towards them, label them and adjust our methods of teaching and expectations accordingly. The result is under-achievement.
Research on self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotype threat supporting this claim is not hard to find. We would do well to be reminded that as teachers that when things do not go as planned that we should first look inward before blaming the student for not hitting the target. What could we do differently or deviate from? How has my behaviour impacted learning in this lesson? Our biases influence how and what we teach our students and ultimately their engagement and performance.
As teachers when we feel frustrated and start to utter the words, “These kids..”, we should take a deep breath and remember that:
These kids are looking to be inspired
These kids want to learn
These kids will make, and learn from mistakes
These kids have untapped potential
These kids will be our future.
Journeying
Videos
The Pygmalion Effect and the Power of Positive Expectations
How Stereotypes Affect Your Test Scores
Books
Futurewise by David Perkins
Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele
Blindspots: Hidden Blindspots of Good People by Anthony Greenwald
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