Letting Go

I think I am not the only teacher who struggles with letting go and leading students see the value in failure. If I "let go" as Grant Wiggins susgests in his blog post Great Teaching Means Letting Go, then I have to relinquish a little control and let my classroom "get messy".  It is so easy to have a one size fits all step by step process in lessons. We have so many learners who are on so many different levels and have so many different needs that we have to keep some type of commonality or order. But kids do this all the time in sports. They scrimmage. They practice for the big event or the big test where the coach or teacher can only stand on the sidelines and maybe offer some advise, but can't change or control the game.  I see Dr. Wiggins point. If scrimmaging is the formative assessment for sports, then scrimmaging for the big test is a must in all classrooms. Students would then have the opportunity to discuss and analyze strategies and yes, failures as well. Meta-cognition: isn't that what we really want our students to do? Don't we want them to be able to do it on their own and transfer skills and knowledge to the real world? Can we let the messiness begin in our classrooms?

Chris Lehman of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia says yes to the questions above. In fact he says we must. Students should learn through inquiry and failure. Students should learn in a school where it matters in the real world. I like his point that school is so regimented and that while students typically go to seven different teachers a day in high school, we as adults would not accept a condition where we would have to report to seven bosses. It seems to me that this type of school where teachers are mentors and facilitators is an ideal place for students to learn and to learn from their failures, but the whole school must be structure in that way for it to work. We would have to change the data we collect and use to measure growth because standardization in testing does not even fit this paradigm. Technology, inquiry learning, and great teaching are all interrelated.  Technology is the vehicle through which students can demonstrate what they know and how they solve the same problem in different ways. To me, it seems that a whole shift in structure would be necessary.