Every once in a while I get fired up. Like, you borrowed my Sharpies and broke the tips… THAT fired up. On the drive home today it was one of those moments. Why? Because this week has been AWESOME. I mean, like, learning on fire awesome. It’s left me thinking, why doesn’t this happen at all schools? How can we get everyone back to authentic learning?
Science and social studies are far too often tossed aside to squeeze in time spent reading boring stories from basal texts. Why? Science and social studies ARE great reading content. Why can’t that reading be “reading class” if you must label your subjects? Writing could tie into the Science topic or the Social Studies through writing diaries, journals, lab reports. Writing letters? Write to Congressman about causes you care about, write to family to ask about where they live. Blog. Share writing with the world… what more authentic way to check your grammar is their than hitting “Publish.”
While the world debates things like “Is it STEM or STEAM?” or “Where do I post the list of standards I’m teaching?” we’re missing precious moments. Moments kids will never get back. Moments where they could be dreaming, growing, being curious, creating, and most of all? Learning.
School should be a place where kids are running to get in and not wanting to leave when it’s over.
Kids should leave school with more ideas than they bring with them in the morning.
Kids need to experience that feeling of making something… whether it’s a book, a poem, a cardboard castle. That exhilaration of DOING and BUILDING something you worked on? It inspires more learning.
I don’t even think this probably makes sense. But today, at the end of a long day, when a kid was thrilled with his amazing historical artifact he was building, his eyes were all lit up and he said, “I’m so beyond excited about how this is turning out,” I thought, “Me, too.”
And then I drove home. Thinking about all the kids in schools across America that need the opportunity for their eyes to light up, and instead get handed a test booklet or a laptop to take more tests. And that’s really even more wrong than broken-tipped Sharpies.
