This time last year, I was feeling restless, because I did not believe in what I was doing anymore. No matter how hard I tried to make learning meaningful for students, I just kept on hitting a brick wall. I was putting so much effort on my end by designing solid lessons, bringing in the experts and allowing students to have more choice in their own learning, yet it still felt somewhat contrived.
I was slowly starting to become disillusioned by it all, because I knew, deep down, that I had been foolishly trying to fit the square peg in the round whole.
And now, as I look back at last year, I can see things more clearly. Back then, I'd say that we couldn't create meaningful work in 90 minutes of class with only the internet as a resource; I couldn't provide meaningful feedback to 90 students; students couldn't juggle multiple projects. Yet, while these were all valid issues, I still did not understand the mother of all problems: students were not buying into those projects because they did not own them; I owned those projects, and the weight was starting to crush me.
But then the IA came along, and it all starting to fall into place. Don't get me wrong, this job is challenging; never have I felt this accountable before. Creating a professional magazine that will be judged by a real audience can be daunting. But no matter, how stressful things get, I know that this time I'm not carrying that burden of the project on my own because there are 22 students who have their hearts set on this project and are ready to shoulder responsibility.
These students own this project because the've had a say in it; when I pitched it to them, we took a whole hour to look at the pros and the cons, we took other options into consideration, and most importantly, we did not make the decision until everybody gave their thumbs up. It took a lot of negotiating from the students' side, but they knew that their voices were being heard.
I guess it all really hit me last Friday; some IA students had gathered to discuss their current class project and out of the blue, Nicolas came up with an idea for the next project: why not start our own food business in the next semester and sell maki's at school? Deep down, I feel that we're not yet ready for such an undertaking; however, I noticed that while I was feeling doubtful about this idea, I wasn't dismissing it either; instead, I kept on listening to Nicolas. And this was my great epiphany: in my head, Nicolas wasn't the student addressing the teacher anymore; instead, in that moment, he was my colleague, we were equal and his ideas mattered as much as mine.
What I love most about my Grade 10 cohort is that we're not really a class anymore; we're an organization. We all have our different roles that we want to fulfill at the best of our ability, because we share a common purpose. After all, when you have their buy-in, learning will become an organic outcome.
In education, we've invested our time and resources creating traditional homogenous classes, because of our ingrained belief that this would be conducive to learning. And here's the irony: it's only by knocking down that very system that you can see deeper learning happen.
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