Help Students Become Independent

The content we teach is important.  But just as important, if not more so, are the habits and mindsets we instill in our students.  We want them to leave school not only with solid foundations in our chosen subject areas, but also with the skills and attitudes to continue learning, growing, and taking on new challenges for the rest of their lives.

The traditional model of education, in which students sit quietly and listen -- regardless of whether they understand or not -- breeds passivity.  This may have worked for the industrial society in which it was developed, but in our rapidly changing world, it no longer prepares students for success.  Our young people need 21st-century skills: adaptability, problem-solving, and resilience.  Perhaps more than anything, they need to be able to learn independently.  After all, they won't have a teacher telling them what to do for most of their lives.

We designed the Modern Classroom model in large part to help our students develop this level of independence.  Here are three practices we use to nurture it:  

 ★ Ask 3 Before Me: Before answering students' questions, we ask that they consult with three classmates.  Collaboration may not be pure independent work, but it helps reduce students' dependence on the teacher as the source of all knowledge -- and gives students the confidence that they can learn without the teacher's assistance.  See our webinar on Collaboration for more tips. 

★ Pre-Planning Revision: When students fall short in their attempts to demonstrate mastery, they revise.  While it's tempting to explain directly to students what they missed, consider planning in advance the things that students can do independently -- re-watching a particular video, for instance, or consulting another relevant resource -- to fill in those gaps.  This aspire-to-do activity from our Mentorship Program offers several more ideas.

★ Encourage Productive Struggle:  I won't sugar-coat it: this was very hard for me.  When students struggled to learn, I was tempted to step in right away.  I wanted them to feel successful all the time, and worried that student struggle reflected poorly on my teaching abilities.  But over time, I realize that struggling with challenging content, and eventually succeeding in achieving real mastery, not only built lasting content knowledge -- it also developed resilience and self-esteem.  I tried not to let my students get too frustrated (in which case they'd shut down), but emphasized that a bit of frustration is part and parcel of real learning.  This recent article on destigmatizing failure explains more.

Ultimately, our students won't acquire the skills and mindsets they need until we require them.  And if we don't require them in our classrooms, we may not adequately prepare our students for environments -- college, the workplace, or otherwise -- where independence is truly needed.  So, this 4th of July, let's all aspire to develop resilient, self-directed learners, who are capable of learning and achieving anything.  Our students, and our world, deserve nothing less!