Friday, February 16, 2018

Reflections on my “Shadow a Student Challenge”

Two years ago, I participated in the “Shadow a Student Challenge” to gain insight into our high school students’ learning experience.  This experience had a lasting impact and I looked forward to another chance to shadow a student.  Therefore, I recently participated in the “Shadow a Student Challenge” by attending the classes of a high school student for one day.  Empathy was my purpose for this day as I looked beyond my assumptions and put myself in the shoes of our most important clients, our students.  I reminded myself to be curious, suspend judgment, and just observe.  At the end of the day, my goal was to have gained a better perspective of our students’ learning experience.

I am always cautious about making overgeneralizations.  One class on one particular day is not always representative of an entire semester or year long experience. Also, one day does not always represent the overall learning experience of students in our high schools or district.  That said, I can only share what I learned from my experience for one day.  One final note, I intentionally left out specific details including the teacher and class.

I appreciated my time at the school.  The students were polite and respectful in a very safe environment.  It was obvious most students were interested in doing well academically.  Also, teachers have established good connections and share a mutual respect with their students.

My district recently formed an Innovations Committee.  The starting point for the committee’s work focused on the question; “What do you believe and know about how students learn best in the modern world?”  From the responses, 3 themes emerged: active, relevant, and hands-on which I would infer to mean more learner-centered experiences.  Therefore, I thought about my observation experience in context of the 3 themes of a learner-centered experience.

Active
I think of “active” as any opportunity to move, collaborate with other students, and actively engaged in a curricular related assignments and projects.  Throughout the day, there were only a couple of opportunities for students to move from their desk.  Moving to work with a group or partner was noted in 3 of the 6 classes.  The best example of active learning was in the class in which students were randomly assigned a partner through a drawing and critical thinking exercise.  Students then worked with their partner on the problem and visual project.  I made a note in most classes; “sat for the entire class period.”  From my perspective as a “student” for the day, it was a long day of sitting and remaining focused on the information presented.  I wondered in most classes how teachers could incorporate some movement into their lesson and curricular content.  Click on Active Learning Strategies for some ideas.

Relevant
I think of “relevant” as ways to connect students to the real world; their world.  Throughout the day, there were a few occasions when the curriculum was relevant for students.  The best example I observed was when the curricular content was directly connected to current events.  Students embraced the opportunity to share their opinions in a lively discussion and ask questions.  A missed opportunity was noted when a teacher stated to the students during a lecture; “I could put you on the Chromebooks now and you could Google [curricular topic] and you would get a list to better understand what I am referring to.”  But, time was not allocated for this opportunity so the teacher proceeded with the lecture and notes.  With lecture being at the top of the learning pyramid at 5%, I referred to this as a missed opportunity because I believe students could have been provided a few minutes to conduct a quick research on the topic followed by a discussion on what was learned.  Relevancy is enhanced when student agency and autonomy are embedded into learning.  

Hands-On
I think of “hands-on” as project-based and student-centered.  From what I observed, many of the learning activities were teacher led other than a few exceptions.  The best example I observed was when students worked on a problem with a partner and demonstrated their learning through creating a visual answer to the problem.  This activity was both project and problem-based in nature.  The students were highly engaged throughout this activity.  A missed opportunity was noted when a teacher conducted a "show and tell" with a series of objects to identify.  Each object was shown to the class while the students took notes.  The semi-engaging part of the lesson was the discussion and questions asked by the teacher.  But, I could only wonder if students were given some guidelines of attributes to look for, would the students be able to work with a partner to conduct their own research to determine the name of each object?  Instead of telling first, learning might be enhanced by allowing students to explore the attributes of each object, list their academic conjecture and provide evidence to defend their conclusion. The names of the objects could then be revealed followed by a rich discussion.

My goal in participating in the "Shadow a Student Challenge” was to  gain a better perspective of our high school students’ learning experience.  I thought back to my days as a high school student and wondered how much has really changed since the 1980’s.

As an overarching theme from the day, I wondered how high school can become more learner-centered.  Even small changes and efforts could move classrooms from being “school” to places of “learning.”  What if we asked our students how they learn best and made adjustments accordingly?  What if we asked ourselves if our practices work better for teachers or for our students?  What if we took some time to ask ourselves what we truly believe about how students learn?  What if we reflected on the “10 Characteristics of Learner-Centered Experiences” list below by Katie Martin (@katiemartinedu) and started by ensuring at least 2 characteristics are present in each class period?  Our students are asking for more active, relevant, and hand-on learning, so I believe we owe it to our students to take the next step.