Why Do Your Students Think They're At School?
Today
I gave each of my students one of these graphics.
And then I asked them to put one dot on it that represented their view of school. Because I teach math and science, I also asked them to give me the (x,y) coordinates of their dot, just so I could refresh the memories of the ones who had forgotten that concept since the last time they saw it.
The x-axis is about what school should primarily reward: effort, or accomplishment.
The y-axis is about what school should primarily do: develop wisdom, or prepare students for college and the workforce.
It was fascinating to watch them talk it out at their tables and figure out what they valued the most. For some, it was the first time a teacher had ever solicited their opinion about the educational machine our culture forces students into for about fifteen percent of their total lifespan.
I used the data we collected to teach them to create a table in a spreadsheet, and then I taught them how to turn those tables into graphs and charts. But mostly, we talked about the purpose of school, and the fact that it's useless to spend twelve years doing anything if you don't know why you're doing it.
I sent the graphic to a couple of other teachers I know, and they did some of the same things with their classes. The numbers are fascinating: the average coordinates across six separate classrooms were (-0.2, -1.0). In general, students thought school should be essentially balanced between rewarding effort and accomplishment, and they though school should tilt slightly more toward college preparation and slightly away from an emphasis on developing wisdom. (That concerns me.)
It was also fascinating to compare classrooms. The older students were much more heavily skewed toward rewarding accomplishment over effort - presumably because things like the ACT and collegiate admissions weigh heavily on their mind in the junior and senior years. On the other hand, students from religious schools were (understandably) much more likely to say school should develop wisdom in students.
Feel free to print and use that graphic to drive discussion in your class. All I ask is that you enter results into a spreadsheet (x-column and y-column) and email the results so I can update my spreadsheet with as many pieces of student data as possible. If I've got more data by then, I'll send it back to you as well.
I think you'll be surprised at how much students respond when they realize their teachers actually value their input about how school feels from their side of the desk.
It turns out they're much more likely to listen to your ideas when they know deep down that you value theirs as well.
(If you click this "Connect" link, you'll get Ten Days to Change Your Classroom, one chapter a day for the next ten days.)
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