Helping students find their own paths—not the ones we set out for them—has always been the focus in education, yet we need to be more explicit about this path.
A.J. Juliani and John Spencer do a great job of sharing why empowering our students is not only important in our world today but crucial. As they state, this is about shifting our mindset, which will ultimately lead to students not only believing they can change the world, but doing it because of school.
We all want our students to be respectful to educators and peers. Hopefully, we all want them to walk out of school, become intrinsically motivated, and find their own ways to success and happiness. Compliance is sometimes a part of this, but it is not the end goal. Are we trying to develop students to fit into our world, or are we hoping students feel they have the power to create a better world both now and in the future?2
Your legacy as an educator is always determined by what your students do. You change the world by empowering your students to do the same.
She came rushing up to me in a panic at the start of class.
“What’s wrong, Katie? Everything okay?”
“Well, Mr. J, I’m going to have to change my project. I really like making my own pair of sandals, but I just have to change what I’m doing. Is that allowed? Will I lose points for switching my project?”
We were in the middle of our first attempt at a 20% Time project in my class. My students were given 20 percent of their time to work on something about which they were passionate and curious, and they had to take their learning and make something for a final project.
Katie had been quiet for most of the project. She didn’t get fired up like a lot of my students when it was first introduced. She didn’t ask a lot of questions about how it would be graded or why we were doing something different.
In fact, she had enjoyed her time so far, making sandals. It was a project that meant something to her, so I was surprised to see how anxious she was to change her project.
I responded, “Yes, you can change your project, but I thought you liked what you were doing.”
Katie explained that she wanted to learn sign language. Her young cousin was deaf, and she had always told herself she would learn sign language when she had time. But between school, sports, and a summer packed with work she kept on putting it off.
Now her cousin was coming to live with her family for a short period of time due to a house fire. The situation was awful. It was even more heartbreaking to Katie because she had never taken the time to learn sign language.
The 20% Time project had given her a new hope that she might have some time to learn sign language in school.
Our conversation ended with me saying, “This is why we are doing this project. I want you to be able to learn because you have a purpose for learning beyond a grade. I’m going to help you learn sign language as best I can in the next six weeks!”
But I didn’t know a thing about sign language.
Sure, they were reading, writing, speaking, listening, and creating. But it was one of the first moments I ever felt helpless as a teacher, because I was not the content expert in the classroom on what my students were learning.
Yet I had a number of students like Katie (engaged and excited to learn), so I pushed forward. I helped her research local groups that used sign language; she jumped on YouTube Channels teaching her how to start learning sign language and even Skyped with one of the people who started this YouTube channel.
She was learning, but she was also making. She was solving her own problems and coming up with ways to learn faster and share that learning with the world on her blog.
When it came time for our class to present in TED-style talks, I wasn’t exactly sure what Katie had planned for her presentation.
That day, as I was rushing around to make sure everything was working, I missed seeing her Aunt and cousin walk into the auditorium and greet Katie.
After a few of her classmates had already presented, she stepped on stage to share her learning journey.
Katie was shy, and she was shaky at first in front of the audience. As she shared why she changed her project, the crowd began to engage in her story. At the end of her talk she told us that she had been working on learning the words to the song, “I Hope You Dance,” and was going to perform it in sign language.
People began to tear up immediately as the song started over the speakers, and she began to sign.
I found myself mesmerized by this shy young woman expressing such emotion and grace on stage. It is something I’ll never forget.
Just then, in the midst of this wonderful moment, the technology stopped working. The sound cut off, and the crowd began to murmur and look around in surprise.
I scrambled for what felt like five minutes (but was really only five seconds), trying to fix the problem. Underneath a table, looking for an aux cord, I heard the audience whispering completely stop.
Katie had started to sing the song herself, acapella. She was signing and singing at the same time, continuing right where the music left off.
It was beautiful.
Tears came to my eyes, and as she finished, the audience erupted into a standing ovation. Katie, a bit red in the face, gave a quick wave good-bye and rushed off the stage.
The next day in class, we had a round table reflection on the project and final presentations. Every student wanted to know how Katie had pulled this off. They wanted to know how she kept singing when the music stopped. What she said next will always stay with me:
“I didn’t want to let my cousin down. And I didn’t want to let all the people who helped me learn sign language down. I think though, what really got me is that I didn’t want to let myself down. I’d never worked so hard on a school assignment before. I spent hours and hours after school and on the weekends to get prepared. If I had stopped, that work may have been for nothing. Really, I didn’t even give myself an option not to continue and finish the song in some way.”
This story changed the way I thought about student work. For years, I had worked so hard to inspire, challenge, and engage my students.
Now the tables had turned.
Katie inspired me. She inspired her classmates. She inspired that audience, and her story continues to inspire today.
Yet this was one student. I wish I could say every student of mine had at least one experience in school like this.
Most did not.
I was never a perfect teacher. Not all of my students were empowered like Katie was in this project. And I didn’t spend 100 percent of my time embracing this type of empowered learning that was happening in my classroom that day.
But it was a start.
After this project, I shifted my focus. It wasn’t easy. It was extremely messy. But it was worth it. Empowering students became my goal, and giving students the opportunity to pursue their passions, goals, and future was the mission.
