Heather- Student Centered Learning

One of my favorite parts of the chapter; something that really just hit me, and sparked my thinking, was the quote that said “The best starting point for school is young people’s real interests; all across the curriculum, investigating students’ own questions should always take precedence over studying arbitrarily and distantly selected ‘content’”. I love this! This is the way I want to implement student centered learning. I have realized that I, as the teacher, should choose a course of study for my class to take, but what we end up learning from those different units of study is up to the questions my students have and the direction they are interested in taking. The example of the study of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ is perfect. I was thinking, there are so many different ways to go with the study of that play, but rather than the teacher choosing the way she wants to implement the play, why not see where the students’ interests and questions take it, and then mold the future lessons and activates around them? Student centered learning will be my future classroom. There is no question in my mind that I learned more fully when I was a participant in student centered learning. It’s wonderful for the teacher to love and feel passionate about the subject, but it means nothing in a classroom where the students feel nothing for what they are learning; it means nothing in a classroom where students’ questions are not being explored and answered. It will be my goal to always assess where the students are at, let them ask questions, and then let those question shape where our lessons go, and what the real goal of the units becomes.