Empowering students through relevant learning
At last week’s regular Rotary Club luncheon, I was privileged to visit with the business people, clergy, local employers, etc. who comprise that group. I asked our local Rotarians what abilities and attitudes they wanted to see in our Whitefish graduates.
According to a number of Rotarians, Whitefish graduates will stand a better chance of being successful employees, college students, and citizens if they exemplify skills and dispositions such as good communication, integrity, the ability to problem-solve, responsibility, and a talent for working with others.
Specific discussions of 21st century learning would also add innovation and its close cousin, creativity, to the above list of skills students must have for the future. If we’re serious about preparing our students to become communicators, problem-solvers, and innovators, we have some hard work ahead of us. Our educational focus, as I’ve mentioned in past columns, must be the “New 3 Rs,” rigor, relevance, and relationship.
Getting students ready to tackle tomorrow’s challenges means helping them develop a new set of skills and fresh ways of thinking they can’t acquire if we limit teaching only to textbook-driven instruction. Students need opportunities to practice their skills on challenging (rigorous) and real-world (relevant) problems. Kids need to see the connection between what they are learning and the community in which they live. In addition, we need to teach our students to persist and learn from setbacks, in order to develop the confidence to tackle difficult problems.
William Dagget (Center for International Leadership in Education) explains “relevant” learning well.
Relevant learning is created through authentic problems, simulations and service learning, he says. Dagget encourages developing lessons that extend beyond the textbook and often beyond the confines of the classroom. When teachers focus on relevance, they work to connect concepts to current issues.
Dagget explains that rigor without relevance diminishes learning because it fails to connect school to the real world. Without relevance, students may do extremely well academically, but fail to develop the skills necessary to navigate the world beyond school. Without relevant teaching and learning, students often graduate without the ability to apply their knowledge to real-life situations.
How do we move beyond simply saying we must encourage innovation, to actually teaching students how to generate and execute original ideas?
The answers are emerging from classrooms across the country (and here in our own Whitefish schools), where pioneering teachers are making innovation a priority. Their strategies vary widely, from workshops and project-based learning, to community service, and global communication. By emphasizing problem solving and creativity in the core curriculum, teachers are demonstrating that innovation is both powerful and teachable.
The consensus among many researchers holds that relevant teaching and learning is not simply another swing of the pendulum. Instead, they insist that teachers are making fresh discoveries of how to engage students in learning with energy, curiosity, and joy.
I agree with policy makers and educators when they acknowledge that this shift in teaching is essential for all students to reach the promised outcomes of college and career readiness.
— Kate Orozco is superintendent of the Whitefish School District