style="font-size:15px;"> But you are still the one who can transform the learning space. You are the one to innovate. You are the one who spends hours with your students.
As former Teacher of the Year (still currently teaching) and author Bill Ferriter describes5 so clearly,
When we empower students, the fourteen thousand hours have a new purpose. It’s not all about what we want students to learn, it is about what they learn through their choices in what they do (create, build, design, make, evaluate).
This book is about that shift.
Most teachers would agree wholeheartedly that our students need to be more engaged. They’d raise their hands in unanimous affirmation if asked, “Would you like your students to be more engaged in class?”
As teachers, we say the same thing.
Engagement is more powerful than compliance.
Phil Schlechty, who founded the Center for Engagement, describes engagement as the merging of two key factors: high attention and high commitment.6
When students have high attention, they are focused on the learning and what they are doing.
When students have high commitment, it means they’ll push through the ups and downs of learning something new and challenging.
Still, engagement is only half the battle.
When students are engaged, they are attentive to our chosen content and objectives. They are giving their full focus to the resources, texts, and problems we are asking them to solve. They are being committed to completing our curriculum and assessments in ways in which we have asked them to demonstrate mastery.
What about the problems they want to solve? The topics they find interesting? The areas they want to dive deeper into and learn more about?
What about their future? The one where they will have to make their own paths, decide what challenges to tackle, and what opportunities to take. The future where they will struggle, make mistakes, and not be sure what direction is best.
Our goals have to change.
This book lays the groundwork for making this shift. When we shift from preparing students for what’s next, to helping them prepare for anything, a world of possibilities open up in their learning.
You may be reading this and nodding your head, thinking, “YES!” At the same time you may also have lots of questions. Don’t worry, this is completely natural. We’ve asked these same questions ourselves plenty of times:
Here’s the thing: We aren’t going to argue about all the things we’d like to change about school but don’t have control over.
Instead, we are going to focus on the areas we have control and influence over as teachers, instructional coaches, or school leaders.
Will your students still have to take some tests? Most likely.
Will your students still have a curriculum pre-designed for them? Most likely.
Will your students’ learning look messy? Most definitely.
Will school still have bells and follow a similar structure? All signs point to yes.
But that doesn’t mean we stop. It means we take the large majority of those fourteen thousand hours that we have some influence over and use them to inspire creativity and innovation in our learners.
If classroom management is an issue, give students choice in what they learn, and watch their focus increase on learning what interests them, even if it is a challenging topic.
Teach above the test. Have students learn beyond the test. When students are making, designing, creating, and evaluating, they are going way past what tests cover. Would you rather have a disengaged, compliance-driven student take a test, or an empowered maker and designer take the test?
Curriculum and standards will always play a role. But standards should not hold you back from creating an empowering learning environment.
Standards are the architect’s blueprint, and you, the teacher, are still the builder and designer. When you include students in the learning design process, the possibilities are endless of what the architect’s blueprint will actually look like in real life.
Instead of worrying about how the school year and school day is structured, absorb the concepts of this book. It will help you develop ways to build an empowered environment in the structures you set up as a teacher.
Throughout this book, we’ll tackle each of these issues head-on and find actionable ways you can overcome the tests, curriculum, and classroom management issues to create an empowered experience for every student.
This book is for the curious ones asking hard questions, wondering what it might mean to move from engagement to empowerment.
This book is for the teachers with bold ideas that seem impractical and impossible to pull off. This is for the teachers waiting for permission to take the plunge into student choice. If that’s you, please read this book as a challenge to take action and to chase that moonshot idea of student choice. Because nobody’s going to give you permission.
Empower is for curious teachers who want something they can use right now. Empower is for leaders who want to help move into a learner-centered environment. Empower is for teachers who are willing to make the jump, even if it means stepping out of their comfort zone and trying something
