Routines As teachers begin to implement Vermont’s graduation proficiencies, I am getting a lot of questions about teaching transferable skills. I don’t actually think this is new for teachers but since we have never been explicit about addressing skills like self-direction, collaboration, communication or problem solving as a content, so to speak, we haven’t yet […]
During a recent reading of Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros, I came across a quote that really got me thinking. He wrote, “Students need to be empowered, not engaged”. All year I have been focusing on the many ways that we could “engage” students so that learning could be more personal. This quote really made […]
One of the obstacles I hear from teachers is that students aren’t self-directed enough to manage their own learning. This makes sense to me because for years we have been training them to be passive and compliant. So, this is a real obstacle. It can seem overwhelming. But what if we addressed this issue using […]
How Self-Directed Can Students Really Be? If I said that students should be in charge of their own learning, I wonder how many would tell me that, while that was a nice thought, students wouldn’t be able to handle it? I know I certainly considered that myself. As we planned our first self-directed learning unit […]
