Big Ideas Fest (#bif2010), Day 20 Comments
Today's
theme of the rapid-fire talks at Big Ideas Fest (twitter hash tag
#Bif2010) stressed the importance of incorporating student feedback into
the design process of a school's educational lessons.
Sharyn
Gabriel, a Middle School Principal in Florida, shared how she listened
to students to create a video game design course that incorporated
collaborative problem solving, mathematics and English language arts.
This course helped to get some of even her most disillusioned
students back on track to being engaged learners inside of their
classrooms.
Diego
Navarro, Founder, Director and Instructor of the Academy for College
Excellence, stressed the importance of allowing students kicked out of
the traditional high school experience to become equal stake-holders
when they attempt to reclaim their high school degree and become college
ready in an alternative learning setting. He argued against the
proliferation of the industrial model of education in lower income
communities in favor of creating Socratic dialogues and seminar style
class environments for these students that had been deemed failures by
the traditional education system.
The
take-home message from these speakers, and others like them, emphasized
making students, especially those not responding to traditional
educational pedagogy, equal stake-holders in the restructuring of their
educational plans. Both Sharyn and Diego spoke to the hardships
many adult educators face when trying to ‘go up against’ the learning
status-quo in their districts, but they both expounded upon the payoffs
that you can get from your at-risk students that make the upward battle
to restructure traditional education for your failing and/or flailing
student population all the more worthwhile.