Thursday, January 12, 2017

Pioneers of Possibility

As a wise man just wrote to me a few days ago, "Your students are making ideas, making assumptions, and making conclusions. Inquiry is mind-making and mind expanding." This has stuck with me since. I truly believe that as a teacher my responsibility is to teach my students how to teach themselves. To show my students there is a light inside them that only they can ignite. Learning is the "big dig" the construction zone, the last piece in the puzzle completing the big picture. The pieces of the jigsaw, the cones and hazard signs, the land mover all tools at their disposal. They are the engineers and architects while we are the foreman. It is my goal every day to let my students make. Simply have a quiet moment to make something. 

Students make both tactically and mindfully: using both hands and mind. Teachers tap into these using active, authentic learning experiences where students see their own tools whether a box of crayons, a container of play-doh or an ipad. Any creative measure we can provide them helps them layer the scaffolding. Making is a frame of mind. Tinkering, molding, shaping thought. Thought can permeate into more thought, voices and ideas leading a student forward. These ideas can express themselves in writing, reflection, music, art, scientific discovery. If we only let students find their own truth, their calling and instinct, their growth mindset. Let them make mistakes, falter, skip a beat, retrace, rework and push forward. Make.

When we set up our students to expect change, embrace failure, energize their minds with new information we give them the tools to make what ever they need to, whenever they want, to follow their curiosity and inquiry and become a part of, intertwined in, surrounded by, immersed in their personal schema. This individualized, fluid, amalgam of knowledge they make, they create, they embrace and this in turn makes them unique. Make your own knowledge base, create your own library, solidify your own sense of self. This is what makes us human.

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