Can We Allow Students to be Truly Autonomous?
Rules, routines, regular brain breaks. Rigor, resilience, resoluteness. There are so many expectations as teachers we place on ourselves and our students. The push for progress and mastery often overtakes our desire for joy, autonomy and pleasure in learning. When the focus of learning becomes intrinsic and competitive it loses two of its most valuable aspects- inquiry and curiosity. It is no longer personal and self-driven but has become expected. When children feel like a certain grade or positive evaluation is expected they forget to have fun and learn for the benefit of interest. But, grades are not going to go away. Standardized testing is ramping up not slowing down. So how can we create learning environments that foster creativity, optimism and joy? By giving our students autonomy and decision making opportunities that will directly impact them. Not just choices of demonstration of knowledge but "unpacking" the standards and helping to choose the lessons and activities themselves. Having input on their grades by being able to reflect, improve and rationalize them. Providing students with optimal seating, a comfortable arena for learning and a student-centered classroom. By preparing our students for the real world- self-guidance, self-motivation, self-determination and self-reflection.
Is Competition a Bad Thing?
In a student- centered classroom competition is inevitable. However, an A does not mean mastery, and an F does not mean failure. Unfortunately students often place a huge amount of pressure on themselves to always get the A. But, memorizing and regurgitating information one day on a quiz or test is not mastery. Staying up all night, the night before a project is due and cramming all the information into a mess of a presentation and getting a bad grade does not mean failure. It simply means you are not there yet. There are endless circumstances that cause students to perform badly on an assessment, that is why it is important to allow multiple attempts over time for students to reach the level of understanding needed to move on. I have always thought of mastery as such a weird word to describe a level of progress because to me it brings to mind an image of completion and expertise that no longer needs reflection or improvement. That is why I use the letters GT (getting there) we are always on the journey of exploration and we always have more room to travel. We may have reached the summit but now we must travel back down to base camp and as we take this adventure it may indeed be more challenging then the climb up. Competition will always be present, it is how we focus on it that makes all the difference.
Giving Students Autonomy with Grades, Feedback and Reflection
It seems very much counter-intuitive to let students provide you with what they feel their grade is depending on the amount of effort and knowledge acquired. Most teachers think students will always give themselves an A. However, especially with advanced students they are much harder on themselves than I am. I lack one component when I grade them: amount of effort. Only they truly know how much time and rigor they placed on their work. Knowing this gives them an edge in grading. This opportunity does not mean that the final evaluation, in the form of a grade, does not come from me. It simply means their input has a large role in determining the grade. This also provides them the opportunity to go back and improve their assignments and resubmit.
Feedback as any teacher knows is a critical part of the learning process. However, this often does not occur until A) it is too late for a grade change B) it leans more towards praise then constructive criticism and C) it is one-sided, teacher to student. In order for feedback to truly be meaningful, purposeful and have an impact on learning it needs to happen as immediate as possible after completion. It needs to be honest and sometimes critical because our students will not grow as learners if they do not feel a push to progress, urgency to reflect and the ability to provide feedback to others as well, especially the teacher. In my classroom students fill out google surveys after each lesson in order for me to grow and improve as an educator. They can be harsh at times, not generally though, but more importantly as the year goes on they become more constructive. This is when they become more meaningful. Feedback is an important part of learning and students should feel safe and comfortable to give feedback to one another as well as their teachers. This makes them feel like their learning is not predetermined but inclusive of their ideas and interests.
Reflection is just as important as feedback because it comes from within our own realm of desire. Everyone wants to be great at something and when we aren't, we can't just walk away and give up. We need to build resilience and confidence to fail and grow. Not simply move forward but pick ourselves up, determine what we can do better, what are our deficiencies and strengths and design a plan to overcome them. If we try to build a Jenga tower and it just keeps falling over but eventually we jiggy-rig it together and it stands does that mean we are successful? Temporarily. But if we stop lay out the blocks and devise a plan, recognize where we went wrong and why? then we will be able to build it easily the next time. If students are successful the first time this does not mean they do not need to reflect. In our classroom students reflect a lot. After a makerspace activity they justify why they chose to make the model or drawing they did. After a lab they explain their experience and what they learned, but more importantly they write about how they can improve on the activity. This is what makes a student-centered classroom operate more smoothly- student involvement in the grading process, feedback procedures and personal reflection.
Autonomy, Is There Ever too Much?
With any thing there can be too much. If there are no rules, goals or intentions and students simply do what they want, then that of course does not work. Believe it or not I have seen this happen in a classroom. A student-centered classroom is a fine balance between autonomy and directed learning, freedom and dependence and organized chaos and calm. There are times when I am talking to the class of course, however I limit myself to 15 minute increments. A mini-lesson per-se. Then most of the class is a student-led activity. Autonomy does not mean anarchy, unfortunately this is often the connotation made with a student-centered classroom. Modeling, community goals, teacher proximity and strong respectful relationships are the critical aspects that must be in place before pure autonomy can be granted. There has to be consequences for those who do not abide by the community norms but in my room they are not harsh nor embarrassing they are dealt with in the one-minute check-ins I have weekly with my students. Generally they self-monitor and redirect one-another, this of course takes several weeks to truly come to fruition. But it happens within the first quarter.
A good balance between autonomy and guidance for our classroom comes in the form of students participating in the design of the weekly lessons and assignments, because they are owners of the learning they tend to be more engaged and thus behavior issues are at a minimum. They rarely are all performing the same task, however, some labs like frog or chicken foot dissection require it. They have strategies and tools that we practice and model and then they choose from these or they create their own. So table groups are often interpreting the TEK or standard in unique ways and are demonstrating these in various ways from mini-debates, summits, skits or even simple makerspace activities. Autonomy in our room occurs in flexible seating, student-designed activities, input on grading, feedback and reflection and most importantly a lot of observation, communication and collaboration. Some days they are engaged and working hard, others they may be off-task a little, you have to be alright with this because over time and by making the wrong choices on occasion they will ultimately get on a track they choose and this track will lead them to learning in the best way for them individually.
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