What our students see

Today I was walking the around our school thinking about the fact that in less than 2 weeks the halls will be full of almost a thousand 5^th and 6^th grade students. Many of the classrooms that I walk past are still in various stages of preparation for all of those students. Thinking about those students got me excited! But as I walked through the halls today, I tried to look around with a different perspective. Instead of walking around with the eyes of an adult, an educator, or an administrator, I tried to look around and see what our students might notice. What do the things that are posted on the walls say to the 10, 11, and 12 year old students who will be walking these halls?

Many times as educators, we put things up in the hallway or our classroom because we like them. We might intend to share something of ourselves with a student, we might intend to be funny, or we might intend to set up expectations that we have for our class and our students. Unfortunately, our students can’t read our mind and know our intentions. Sometimes your students may see that sign that you think is setting expectations, and instead see it as harsh, judgmental, or possibly even confrontational. Think about what you have hanging up both outside and inside your classroom. How will it make your students feel when they walk into the room? Are they going to feel welcome, or are they going to feel intimidated? Does your room encourage them to be a part of the learning process, or does your room discourage their participation?

From The Thinker Builder: http://www.thethinkerbuilder.com/

I saw a recent post on the blog The Thinker Builder that had a pretty cool idea (at least I thought so). Instead of covering his bulletin boards with amazing decorations to set up a classroom, the author begins his year with a blank bulletin board and puts a reserved sign on it (I have a screenshot of the sign to the right). If you’d like to see his post, or be able to download the sign, check out this post – “Reserved” Signs: A Bulletin Board Stress Reliever. What does a sign like this say to the students and parents that walk into your room? To me, it shows that you value the thoughts and opinions of the students who will be in your classroom.

Remember, your students will notice what you have posted on the walls both inside and outside of your classroom before you have said one word to them. Based on what they notice, they are going to form opinions about you. They will create expectations about what this school year is going to be like. They will also decide whether they feel that the classroom is a place that they are safe to express themselves and become part of the learning community.

One of my takeaways from the book Mindset by Carol Dweck was that a person’s environment can play a role in what mindset they take. Posters that use terms that make us think in a fixed way, or make us think that we don’t have any choice or control will generally lead us to behave in a manner that shows a fixed mindset. On the other hand, things we display that show phrases that encourage a growth mindset will lead us to behave in a manner that shows a growth mindset.

Kids Deserve It This year, as you are preparing your classroom, take a few moments to take stock of what kids will see in the hallway outside of your room, as well as when they walk into your room. Do the words on those posters have a positive connotation, or are they negative? Are they giving your students an idea of what they will be doing, or of what they will not be allowed to do? We only get one chance to make a first impression! Make sure that the impression that you make sets the students up for their best possible year!

Continue the conversation in the comments below. What are some things you are planning to do to help your students feel welcome in your classroom? How will they know that they are a valued member of the learning community? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

What our classrooms need

Summertime is one of my favorite times of the year. I’m able to spend more time with my family, play with my kids more, and have the freedom to do some of the things that there just isn’t time for during the school year. With all of that fun, I also make it a point to spend some time learning too. During the school year I don’t always have the time to read the books that have been piling up on my desk, or delve deeply into new ideas and ways of thinking. Luckily, the summertime allows just that.

This summer, in addition to the learning that I did on my own, I was able to participate in a couple of different conferences, and the learning opportunities that were provided to me there continued to reaffirm that we are on the right path. Throughout the posts that I have made to this blog in the past year, I have constantly referenced the Best Practice Model. When we look at the HSE²¹ homepage, we see the following statement to describe learning in HSE:

We must ensure that our students develop a strong academic edge through experiences with rigorous academic content and effective information, communication, and technology skills. Our students’ future education and career choices require critical thinking, creative problem solving, and the ability to work together with others to successfully compete in today’s world. In HSE classrooms, students think deeply and critically about content knowledge and complex issues. Students regularly collaborate and actively investigate real-world problems. Hamilton Southeastern Schools is dedicated to implementing curriculum and learning opportunities that build the skills and abilities necessary for our connected society. When students graduate from HSE Schools, they will be ready for their future and equipped for excellence. (from http://www.hse.k12.in.us/ADM/academics/hse21/)

So… What does that mean for our classrooms? Here are some things that I think we all should expect to see in a classroom:

Voice – In the summer before my senior year at IU, I took a class, and the mantra of my professor was “Learning is social!” This is just as true today as it ever was. Our students need the time to co-construct their knowledge. They need time to share their learning, and to learn from one another. Empower your students to speak up in your classroom so that they are able to use their voice when they move beyond the classroom.
Choice – Students need as much choice as possible. Allow your students times to choose what they learn, how they learn, what they produce as a result of their learning, etc. How many of you struggled early in your undergrad years, only to do much better as you moved along in college? Why does this happen to so many? It’s because as a freshman or sophomore in college, so many of your courses are prerequisite, not something you chose, rather something you are required to take. What happened as you got into classes that were more directly related to your degree? If you’re anything like me, you did much better. These are the things you were interested in and the learning was more relevant for you. The choices we give students helps make their learning more relevant!
Time for Reflection – John Dewey is quoted as having said “We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience.” That time for reflection is so important! We need to be intentional in building that time in for students, and we also need to build it into our own practice! I know classrooms are busy places, and we are busy people, but a few minutes of reflection allows us to really think about and understand what we have learned.
Opportunities for Innovation – When our students are passionate about something, the learning never stops. If our students are playing a video game and get stuck, they aren’t going to give up – they’ll find a way to beat it (maybe a YouTube video, help from a friend, a cheat code, etc.). How can we create that attitude for learning? Help students to find the curiosities in your subject matter, or give the students the time to explore their curiosity, and then let them innovate in that space!
Critical Thinkers – One of the hallmarks of the educations system has been the idea of compliance – this came about as part of the factory model of education. This factory model and expectation of compliance does not allow our students to be critical thinkers. Our students need to be taught how to respectfully ask questions and challenge ideas of others for the sake of helping us all move forward. Hemingway once said that “Every man should have a built in automatic crap detector operating inside him.” Our students need this skill in these days of social media and internet hoaxes.
Problem Solvers/Finders – While at a Pure Genius workshop this summer I heard a story of a high school student who saw that families who were part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) who were often unable to use their benefits to purchase healthy food for their family. The student began working with the Noblesville Farmers Market to find a way to allow families to use their SNAP benefits at the farmers market. As part of her project, the student created wooden coins that she designed and printed using technology available to her at Noblesville High School. Now families can take their SNAP card to the farmers market, swipe the card for the amount of benefits that they wish to use, and receive market currency in that amount to be spent on items at the farmers market. One thing I know about most kids – they recognize things that they feel are not just. Allow them to identify those problems, and create learning opportunities in the classroom that allow students to find solutions to the problems they see in our world! Then, help them take that learning outside of the classroom.
Self-Assessment – Earlier I talked about the importance of reflection – on the day to day level, that reflection allows us to better understand new information, but on a long term level, that reflection allows us to see our own growth. A portfolio is just one way that students can look back and see their own growth. Students can see where they were and how far they have come. It is a valuable skill for all of us to be able to identify our own strengths and weaknesses. We need to provide students with opportunities to assess themselves. What might a digital learning portfolio look like for your class? If you’re struggling to visualize it, let me know and we can try to come up with a plan that would work for your classroom!
Connected Learning – When we encourage students to be problem finders, we might run into some issues. What if the problem that students want to solve is something you know nothing about? You might feel there is no way you can guide them to a solution. That may be true, but in today’s connected world we can use technology to connect to experts who are able to support your student’s learning. Though Twitter, Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, and others, our students can create connections that allow them to learn. Imagine if your students were connected with students at other levels with more background knowledge, or maybe even with people who have gone much further. Who would you rather learn about space from? A teacher or an astronaut? With social media like Twitter, that astronaut is only 140 characters away! With technology we can teach students how to facilitate their own learning.

In addition to all these factors, there is at least one other factor to success for our students in the future. Our students need to be good people. I don’t care how smart you may be, if you are unkind and disrespectful you will never find the same level of success. In most schools we talk to students about their actions as a choice. Remind them that it is always important to choose kind (if you follow me on Twitter, you will see the hashtag #choosekind a lot this year!).

What have I missed? What can you expand upon? Keep the discussion going in the comments below! Enjoy your remaining weeks of summer, and be thinking about what you can do to make your classroom the best environment possible for your students!

An Open Letter to Educators

Earlier this summer I finished reading the book The Innovators Mindset by George Couros (@gcouros). One of the things that I loved about the book was his use of his website and blog as a way of linking to important information that tied to the chapter you had just completed. On his website you find a page dedicated to each chapter of the book. It has a brief overview as well as links to additional reading (typically blog posts or new articles), as well as video resources. One of the links led me to the video below titled “An Open Letter to Educators.” Take a moment to watch the video:

A few thoughts after watching:

If a strong education is the key to success, what does that education look like in this day and age?
Does the current institution of education get our students prepared for a successful future?
How has “free” information changed your life? How might it continue to change the lives of your students?

If, as Dan Brown says “education isn’t about teaching facts, it’s about stoking creativity and new ideas” and one of your primary goals should be to “empower students to change the world for the better” then I wonder what our classrooms need to look like? What are we getting right? What aren’t we getting quite right yet?

For me, I see collaboration, student choice and student voice, authentic and meaningful learning, inquiry based activities, and opportunities for our students to apply their learning beyond the classroom as keys to help meet these needs for our students.

What do you see as the keys to success for your students? How is your classroom currently meeting the needs of your students? In what ways is your classroom still falling short on meeting those needs of your students? Share your thoughts in the comments below! If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration, I highly recommend The Innovators Mindset as a way to help you find opportunities for innovation!

I don’t have time for that!

It’s a refrain that seems to come up quite often in education. You might have just left a professional development talking with a colleague and you feel excited to try something that you learned only to hear “I don’t have time for that” in response. Or maybe you shared an article with a friend that you have used to help in your classroom, and the only response you get is “I don’t have time for that.”

Or even worse, maybe you’re the one saying “I don’t have time for that” to your colleague, administrator, or friend. My immediate response, knowing that we work primarily in a learning environment, is “You don’t have time to learn?” Would you allow your students to say that? Would that be an acceptable response in your classroom?

I would challenge you to shift your mindset. Reading a recent post from the blog Principal of Change, George Couros makes a suggestion of what we can say instead of saying “I don’t have time for that.”

How will my students benefit from this practice?

I am not seeing the relevance of this for teaching and learning…could you give me specifics of how this would impact my practice?

How would you suggest incorporating what you are suggesting into my position?

What has been the biggest benefit for your own practice?

If I was to do this, what would it replace that I am doing now?

How many times have we all tried things, thinking that they wouldn’t be valuable, or we wouldn’t like them, only to realize a few days (or weeks, or months) into the new thing that we couldn’t imagine not doing things this way?

So what can we learn from those moments? My hope is that we would come to the realization that it is important to be open to learning and trying new things. Just because you feel as though you “don’t have the time” you can’t just dismiss something out of hand. Take the moment to ask the questions above. If the answers are satisfactory, then that should show that you need to make the time to learn a little more, to try it out, and hopefully create a better learning environment for our students.

Remember that we are the ultimate models of learning for our students. If we never try something new, if we never exit our comfort zone, if we never do things differently than the way we’ve done something in the past, then we are saying to our students that it’s ok for them to be the same way.

What are some things you tried, not knowing quite how they would work out, only to be pleasantly surprised by how great it really was? Let us know in the comments below!

Reflection & Growth

At the end of every school year, one of my favorite things to do is to take some time to reflect on the year – what worked well? What didn’t work so well? What are the things I want to improve upon? And conversely, what are the things I want to just forget ever happened?

As you are wrapping up your year, keep in mind that moments of reflection can be one of the most powerful pieces of the learning puzzle. After you have finished cleaning your classroom, preparing for summer break, finishing student grades, and the multitude of other things that the end of the year will bring, take a little quiet time by yourself to just reflect.

You might choose to look back at your lesson plans from the year, you might look at samples of student work that you hung onto, or you might have another method that works for you to remind yourself of all that happened in your room during the last 180 student days. Whatever method you choose, ask yourself some questions:

What are the things that happened this year that were awesome, and you can’t imagine not doing again? How will you make sure not to forget by next year?
What are the things that you were excited about that maybe your students didn’t enjoy as much as you thought they would? What could you add to get the students more excited about that topic? (If you’re looking for some ideas to hook your students into a lesson, check out Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess – tons of great hooks that can build interest, excitement, and engagement)
What did you feel was the single most effective thing you did in your classroom this year? What ideas can you take from that activity to make other activities more effective?

As you reflect, also take some time to think about things you wish to learn more about. Make a list of those things that you wish to learn more about. Write it down so you don’t forget. If you’re anything like me, the first few days of summer break will be just that, a break. At some point, you’ll get the itch to think a little more about the things that will help you grow as an educator. At that time, go back to your list and use some of your free time to grow as an educator!

Many of us also love to have an accountability partner so that we don’t get to the end of the summer and feel like we didn’t accomplish any of the things we wanted to do. Share the things that you are interested in with your colleagues at the beginning of summer – your teammate, your PLC, others with similar interests – and then reach out to them from time to time. Share what you are learning, a great book you’re reading, a blog post you loved, or something else that fits with your topic. For those of us on Twitter – use the hashtag #RSISummerLearning (clicking the link will take you directly to a search of that hashtag on Twitter) to share what you’re up to. Even if you don’t post to Twitter, you can go to that search anytime to see what others may have shared. The more we all share, the more we all can learn from one another! Next August we’ll all be able to bring that learning back to school to support our students and do even more amazing things!

Most of all, enjoy your summer time! I know that I’m looking forward to my summer for some relaxation, a Cubs game or two, time with family and friends, and time to do some of the things that I never seem to have time for during the school year. Have a great summer!

Engaging & empowering our students

Last week I shared with you some data on student mental health issues, anxiety, and student engagement. I closed the post with these three points:

Mental health concerns in our students are rising.
Levels of engagement decline as our students grow older.
Even with increased focus on standards, performance on standardized testing has remained stagnant.

https://www.theatlas.com/charts/Vko2VfNpe

http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2015-Gallup-Student-Poll-1.jpg

http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2015-Gallup-Student-Poll-2.jpg

So what can we do? I’m sure that all of you have noticed these patterns in our own classroom, but knowing the pattern is only part of the task of finding a solution. In last week’s post I shared the work of two college professors. Going back to their work, I hope to share a couple ways we might be able to help fight anxiety and lack of engagement.

Peter Gray, the psychology professor from Boston college, feels that the key to learning and growth for our students is free play:

Children today are less free than they have ever been. And that lack of freedom has exacted a dramatic toll. My hypothesis is that the generational increases in externality, extrinsic goals, anxiety, and depression are all caused largely by decline, over that same period, in opportunities for free play and the increased time given to schooling.

So as a school, what does play look like? For one it means we have to be sure to value recess/physical activities during the school day. There is clear research that one of the benefits of physical activity is increased student engagement. Think about your classroom on an afternoon where we did not have outdoor recess due to weather. What are the engagement levels like?

Several recent research studies have looked into increased free play time in the school day, and the results suggest that students with regular recess behave better, are physically healthier and exhibit stronger social and emotional development.

Knowing these facts, does that lead you to think about changing what you do when you return to the classroom on a day when we are unable to go outdoors for recess? Hopefully you can think about finding a way to squeeze in some free play on those days. If not free play, then a few short brain break activities to get the kids out of their seat and moving.

And what about the days that students already get their recess? Does that mean we don’t need to look for other opportunities for play? Many of our teachers have been doing outdoor activities here at school this week. I’m sure that they would share that the students are loving the activities they’ve been doing – they are active, engaged, and empowered in this learning environment. My question though: Do we only save activities like this for the end of the school year? Or do we try to integrate play into our lessons throughout the year? How can we make use of our outdoor space, our small and large group instruction rooms, or even just the hallway to get the kids up and playing as they are learning?

Next we have the issue of engagement. For the purpose of this piece, I am defining engagement in school based on the Schlechty’s Center for Engagement definition:

The student sees the activity as personally meaningful.
The student’s level of interest is sufficiently high that he/she persists in the face of difficulty.
The student finds the task sufficiently challenging that she believes she will accomplish something of worth by doing it.
The student’s emphasis is on optimum performance and on “getting it right.”

Is it engagement when we work hard to get students into content that we have selected for them? You may be able to get their attention, but if it’s based on extrinsic goals (like a grade) the motivation may not last. So here are some ways you might be able to increase motivation in your classroom:

Students are more motivated academically when they have a positive relationship with their teacher.
Choice is a powerful motivator in most educational contexts.
For complex tasks that require creativity and persistence, extrinsic rewards and consequences actually hamper motivation.
To stay motivated to persist at any task, students must believe they can improve in that task.
Students are motivated to learn things that have relevance to their lives.

As you spend time thinking about bringing more inquiry into your classroom, as you work to better incorporated the HSE21 Best Practice Model, you will begin to notice increases in your student engagement. When we provide our students with challenges, with activities that are relevant to their lives, when learning is rigorous and based on inquiry-driven study, when students are able to apply their learning in collaborative ways, when we work to incorporate more of the HSE21 Best Practice Model we will see increases in student engagement. In fact, if we work towards truly relevant and rigorous study students will not only be engaged, but actually will be empowered to take their learning to levels that we can’t possibly imagine!

As we approach the end of the year, take some time to reflect on things you have tried that have been new. What activities have led to increased levels of engagement? What ways have you been able to get a kid truly excited about what they are learning? Now, think ahead – how can you take the things that have been successful and expand on them for next school year? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Moonshot Thinking

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. ~John F. Kennedy

Anxiety & Engagement

This year at RSI we all read the book The Price of Privilege. I know from follow up conversations with many of you that we see some of the issues that were described by Dr. Levine. I don’t want to go through everything that she shared once again, but one of the things that jumps out at me from that book has to do with the level of anxiety in our kids.

Recently I also read a paper written by Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University. In the study she looks at the mental health of kids just like those you would find in just about any school in the country.

In her paper, Twenge looks at four studies covering 7 million people ranging from teens to young adults in the US. Among her finding: high school students in the 2010s were twice as likely to see a professional for mental health issues than those in the 1980s; more teens struggled to remember things in 2010-2012 compared to the earlier period; and 73% more reported trouble sleeping compared to their peers in the 1980s. These so-called “somatic” or “of-the-body” symptoms strongly predict depression (for more on this study, click here)

In fact, the growth in mental health support in the form of services or medication in the 6-18 age group is somewhat shocking:

I think the writing of Peter Gray, a psychologist and professor at Boston College, sums it up this way:

We would like to think of history as progress, but if progress is measured in the mental health and happiness of our young people, then we have been going backward at least since the early 1950s. (to see the whole article, click here)

I know that mental health is something that we have been talking a lot about in our community and our school. In further reading of the research from both articles, there are differing opinions of the why, but you may notice some similarities.

Twenge has seen a noticeable shift away from internal, or intrinsic goals, which one can control, toward extrinsic ones, which are set by the world and are increasingly unforgiving. On the other hand, Gray believes kids aren’t learning critical life-coping skills because they never get to play anymore.

We have all had the students who had to have the right clothes, the right phone, the right video game in order to feel as though they could fit in. We have also seen students who cannot, without adult mediation, play a game at recess that doesn’t end in a fight.

The increase in anxiety and mental health support for our students is one concerning piece, but let’s add to that another issue. As students grow older, the general trend for all students is towards a lower level of engagement. In a recent post on the blog Dangerously Irrelevant by Scott Mcleod, the following data from the annual Gallup poll of middle and high school students was shared:

I’m going to let those charts sink in for a bit, and leave you here with 3 thoughts. Next week we’ll come back to this topic:

Mental health concerns in our students are rising.
Levels of engagement decline as our students grow older.
Even with increased focus on standards, performance on standardized testing has remained stagnant.

What have you noticed in your classroom? Is there a connection between anxiety and engagement? What strategies have you tried to help students feel less anxious or more engaged in your classroom? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Crossroads of Creation and Consumption

What’s the last thing that you “consumed”? Maybe it’s a new series on Netflix, or a great book, or maybe you listened to a playlist of songs you love. All of those could be examples of consumption. Our students are experts at consumption! Playing a game while listening to music, and with something on the TV. I know that often in our classrooms we are seeking to help our students to create something for the world. In your ELA class you might expect them to create a presentation to go with their persuasive research paper. In science it could be creating an experiment that shows some of the scientific properties that you have been studying. In math you might ask them to create a model of some of the geometric shapes you have been learning about. This list could go on.

Oftentimes we think of consumption as fairly low level thinking, while creating is higher level thinking. But I want to challenge that a bit today with certain types of consumption. Recently my family decided that we wanted to have a vegetable garden in our back yard, but didn’t know exactly what that might entail. I consumed information from websites and blog posts to think about where we should put it, and how we would create it. After looking at a variety of options, we decided that we were going to do a raised bed in the back yard.

Next we had to come up with a design. Again, I consumed resources. I jumped on Pinterest and looked at pictures of examples of raised bed gardens. Did we want to use stone or lumber? Once we decided on wood, then it was a question of what kind. My searches on Pinterest took me to various websites that talked about the advantage of cedar compared to redwood compared to treated lumber. The options (and the opinions) seemed endless. Eventually we decided to go with treated lumber. Check out the pictures below documenting some of our process!

We placed it in the backyard where there would be plenty of sunshine.

Creating a garden plan (we went a little overboard here! )

We’ve got plants and seeds! Let’s plant a garden!

It’s all growing! 2 weeks after planting day and we can already see changes.

I guess what I’m getting at is that all of us have to consume from time to time, and so do our students. Part of 21^st Century Learning requires consumption, but I think we would all agree that there is a difference in consumption of a series on Netflix or a book that we are reading for enjoyment as compared to the type of consumption that we do when we want to learn about a new teaching strategy or a project that we want to do at home. That’s where we come in – through guiding our students in how to consume information, we can help make sure that consumption is for the purpose of learning and creation.

What strategies have been successful to guide your students to meaningful consumption? What things have you consumed that have led to additional learning? As lifelong learners, it’s important to verbalize what we are still learning about! That’s part of what I am documenting in these weekly posts, my own learning! Share with us in the comments below things that you have taken in that have led you to create something – for your students, your classroom, your family, or just for you. Or share with us some of the things you students have created!

If you find the idea of creation and consumption interesting and would like to dig a little bit deeper, check out the Ted Talk by Larry Lessig titled Laws that choke creativity. It might lead you to think about consumption a little bit differently!

Selling your content to your students

“Nobody else can make anybody else learn anything. You don’t make the flowers grow. You don’t sit there and stick the petals on and put the leaves on and paint it. You don’t do that. The flower grows itself. Your job, if you are any good at it, is to provide the optimum conditions for it to do that, to allow it to grow.”

I love the quote above from Sir Ken Robinson. It goes with the old saying of “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force him to drink.” Recently I was sitting in a meeting with a wise member of our district curriculum team who pointed out that it’s true you can’t make the horse drink, but you can make sure they are thirsty. Sometime getting our students to learn is a bit like selling them something, and that something is the content you are trying to get your students to learn.

A few weeks ago I shared a TED Talk from Daniel Pink, and now I’m going to use some of the ideas from Daniel Pink’s book To Sell Is Human. Think about how you might take his messages on his career in sales and translate it into selling content to your students.

Let them tell you why they agree with you. If your students are able to find a connection between your message and their own life, they will take whatever you have to offer. Set up your lesson so that students have no choice but to agree with you.
Decide whether to pitch with facts or questions. How do you persuade someone to agree with your opinions? Most of us have figured out that basic persuasion typically requires a combination of facts and opinions.
Remember that your digital audience is wider than ever. Think about the last great lesson you did – if your students were excited about it, you probably had a teammate or colleague asking about it. Word of mouth spreads it from your students to other students, to colleagues, parents, and administrators. And in a digital age those activities can easily go viral. If you have an audience excited to see what’s happening next, they’ll be thirsty for whatever you have to offer.
Be a servant leader. Relationships! You know it works. Did you have a good experience the last time you bought a car? Some of that experience is because the salesman was able to build report with you, and then followed up on your needs. Students will feel the same way – if they feel there is a relationship with you, they will listen to more of what you have to offer.
Help people find their needs. One of your jobs as a teacher in this new age is to identify problems for your students to solve that cannot be solved by going to Google. If your students trust you to help them find the problems that need to be solved, they’ll listen to you when you help them learn how to evaluate solutions.

I know that most of us didn’t go into education to be able to “sell” our students information. We want our students to have a desire to learn. But just as we can’t force the horse to take a drink, we have no way to force our students to learn. In addition to the sales techniques listed below, the HSE²¹ best practice model is a good guide for creating the conditions in our classrooms and the learning environments that will cause our students to be thirsty for the knowledge we have to offer. Work to include the core pieces of the best practice model in your classroom everyday – don’t reinvent your lessons, just find ways to remodel them to bring the aspects that will sell our students on our content.

How have you sold knowledge to your students? What strategies have you used that made your students excited to learn whatever you had to share with them? Share some of your successes in the comments below!

The View from 518

Category: Education