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 me consider the value of this focus especially given the thinking I have been doing around trust.  When I dug into the word engage, I discovered that it had a connotation that insinuates there is some manipulation needed in order to get someone’s attention.  This is definitely not what I was thinking during my research this year.  My intention isn’t to manipulate students into learning what I want them to learn.  Then I looked into the word empower and found synonyms like entrust, allow, permit; words that require teachers and schools to give over the power.  Does changing the question from “how can we engage students?” to “how can we empower students?” shift the learning we have to do as teachers considerably?

This year, I explored proficiency-based learning, grading practices (or no grading practices) project-based learning, complex instruction and looking at math through a lens of social justice.  As I visited schools and talked with educators and students, I was looking through the lens of engagement. Each of these topics does work to engage students but a common thread that came up through my research into these topics was the issue of self-direction.  This came up as an obstacle and also a crucial skill.  All of these learning strategies require students to be independent thinkers and learners.  Since this is not a skill that has been previously required of students in a traditional system, it poses a significant obstacle. Self-direction is also something teachers have not taught before.  So, all of these ideas promote more engagement for students because they all require more autonomy to begin with.  This is where empowerment comes in. In order to implement any of these ideas, we will have to empower students.  Empowerment requires not only self-direction but trust as well making it the perfect word to describe next steps in moving toward the type of system that will prepare students to function in a global economy.

I agree with Couros and the quote helped me get much more specific about what we are working toward, but I do think that engagement can play a role.  It might be the first step in empowering students.  Or maybe they work in tandem? When I imagined a traditional setting with more student empowerment, that didn’t really work either.  So, we have to change what and how we are teaching and we need to be empowering kids to take more ownership over their learning through these changes.  And how does trust factor into this scenario of change and transformation?