Shake Up Learning: Ch. 13: Empower Your Students

I empower my students by giving them ownership. I do not refer to the classroom as “mine.” It is our classroom, and we build our classroom culture together. My students have ownership over the rules of the classroom, which we refer to as our “culture” instead of calling them “rules.” I encourage my students to speak up if they are uncomfortable with something, or if they don’t see the merit in an activity that we are learning. I am open with my students and I want them to know that they are free to question. If I can’t explain the importance of an activity or concept, why would we waste our time on it anyway?

When starting something new, I always offer just a bit less guidance than I am comfortable with. I make sure that my students know what we are trying to accomplish, but I let them work through how to get to that end goal. If they struggle individually, I am there to help them. If the whole class struggles, I can help redirect them. My goal is to help my students become fully independent learners, especially because I am teaching high schoolers who will either move onto the work force or to college. They won’t always have someone to help them with everything, so I help them find the strategies that they can use to be fully independent.

My students have a lot of choice in everyday activities and summative projects. They are given choices on topics to study whenever possible. I even offer different exam questions for students to choose from. For example, if I ask my students to prove to me that they understand how protest can lead to change, they can answer by explaining any topic that we have covered (or who knows, haven’t covered) in class. They can discuss the Boston Tea Party and how that catalyzed the Revolutionary War, or the Montgomery Bus Boycott and how that helped push toward bus integration. Both topics, when analyzed fully, answer the prompt, but they are so incredibly different. Social Studies is about understanding the repercussions of our actions, not about memorizing names and dates. My students have to include specific historical evidence such as names, places, and dates, but they do not have to memorize and answer rote multiple-choice questions to do well on a test.

It is not always easy to get a high school student to be curious about history, but framing the class by using larger themes (conflict, change, causation, movement, etc.) has helped a bit. Connecting past events to current events can pique curiosity as well. Luckily though, practicing Social Studies requires a lot of research. When a student is able to research a topic that really interests him or her, curiosity can be their propellor.