Learning Manifesto
Today, students are increasingly frustrated with the education system. When talking to my students that struggle with low motivation or behavior issues, the number one issue I hear is that they feel that the work they are doing and the topics they are supposed to be learning are pointless and boring. They feel that they will never need the information later in their lives and see the effort needed to complete the assignments just isn’t worthwhile. Sadly they are correct about some of that, the traditional way of teaching is full of pointless things that do not prepare our students for the future and it is frustrating for everyone involved. We all know that technology is not going anywhere. It is completely ingrained in our society and cultural norms now, in fact, this is even more true for our students that have grown up inundated with technology and technological tools their entire lives. Why are educators and districts still fighting technology when it is our best bet to make the most of what little resources we have?
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I believe that all students want to learn and want to be successful, yes, even the ones that seem to not care or act out and push everyone away. I know there is a disconnect between the teachers and students that can be solved using technology to differentiate learning while giving students the power of choice and ownership over their learning. Change is intimidating and it is hard to redesign lesson materials, but if we can initiate this change we will have our time freed up to initiate small groups and student-teacher interactions that add meaningfulness to everyone’s day, which is the most important reason I got into education and I am assuming you feel the same. Education is a work of heart and often thankless (shout out my fellow middle school teachers - is thank you even in their vocabulary?) So why are we here? Take a journey with me to see if you can relate to my beliefs on education and learning.
My passion is connecting with students and letting them know that I will always be there to support them, because of this I am really good at forming connections and positive bonds with my students and in return they are willing to be open and honest with me. When I ask my students why they don’t care about school or why assignments don’t get done, I hear “it is so boring” or “I don’t want to do this because I won’t ever use this stuff”. This tells me that students want to learn, but they are struggling to stay motivated because it seems that what they are learning is not worthwhile in the long run because it isn’t preparing them for their futures. I can respect the reasoning, but absolutely hate that it translates to completely apathetic students that refuse to do the work I ask them to do.
Not only is motivation and engagement an issue, I also feel that I am competing with TikTok, X (formerly twitter), SnapChat, and many other social media platforms for the focus and attention of my students. There is a disconnect in this generation that starts with communication gaps because my students prefer digital forms of communication like texts, DM’s, and chat options over talking face-to-face. Many students lack the soft skills to communicate effectively face-to-face because they were raised with technology as their primary form of communication and entertainment. My students admit that they prefer to message me through a chat box on their chromebooks or private messaging on Google Classroom assignments. I asked some students why they prefer to chat instead of just ask me and some reported that it felt less intimidating, or they felt that other students wouldn’t be able to judge them by overhearing their question or problem, and finally some students reported that they felt they are more able to get their point across and communicate effectively when they can type it out and reread it as needed.
Another issue that is making teaching difficult right now is that the divide between generations and lack of motivation make it really hard to differentiate learning for students. I feel like I am spending too much time managing behavior and just trying to get students to put in the bare minimum that I am not able to teach high quality lessons that offer any differentiation. I feel that I am just teaching and throwing out information hoping it sticks instead of being able to create valuable learning environments and challenges into the classroom. Without honest feedback from the students, I am struggling to actually help students in areas they are weak in because I don’t know exactly where the misconception is or what key piece of information they are missing that is causing them to be unsuccessful in class.
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I believe that technology is the best solution for the current academic struggles we are seeing. Students are increasingly frustrated with the type of work and activities they are asked to do because they don’t find the work relatable to skills they will need and work they will do in the future. Teachers are frustrated with the lack of motivation students have and don’t know how to help students that just won’t do their work. Teachers are increasingly stressed because resources are slim and the variety of needs in the classroom is increasing with little to no added support for teachers. There are record high numbers of students in each class and they are all at different academic levels, obviously differentiation is needed, but how do teachers differentiate when there are so many students and only one teacher? Technology can step in and help. With the creation of online or digital based lessons that introduce students to topics with a variety of methods like slides, video demos, video explanations, podcasts, teacher recorded videos, and any other form of lesson delivery that can be applied students can choose methods that make sense to them and review sources until they fully understand the content. This frees educators up to create small groups based on individual needs and gives us the chance to engage in interactions that will promote deeper understanding and connection of the topics being discussed to the real world.
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I relate to my students’ preference of completing tasks online and communicating with others in digital formats. In my undergraduate studies I preferred online courses because I was able to get the important information in small chunks and give myself time to process everything instead of having to concentrate as best I could and write everything down that I could during the hour plus lectures. I liked that if I had extensive knowledge of a topic in an online course I could move through the material quickly and if I struggled with a topic I could slow down and take my time through the materials. It was also helpful for times when I was sick, I may have been too sick to drive and expose people to what I had, but I was able to log into my classes and keep working in between napping and resting.
The content wasn’t only more accessible to me, it was also more interesting to me because most of my professor’s gave us a lot more choice in how to show our knowledge and understanding of a topic. We had a choice in what topics we covered in research papers, we often got to choose from a few practice assignments and we could choose to watch a video, listen to a podcast, or read through some slides to get the basic information we were supposed to get in each module/unit. This worked for me the best because when something is too easy or the assignments are boring I tend to procrastinate and end up not doing as well on assignments as I am capable of, but when I was given a choice on online classes I could pick assignments that interested me and I was excited to complete the work. The reason I even enrolled in this online masters program was because I heard about the more open ended project based format and I prefer online classes and digital content. I wanted to be challenged and gain necessary skills for my future and I knew the best way to do this was to enroll in a program that would challenge me with all the contemporary skills that I would need to be successful with digital technology.
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My accomplishments are pretty limited in the world of teaching. I pride myself most on my ability to build relationships with my students that provides me the opportunity to help them more than most teachers are able to, especially more challenging students that other teachers don’t seem able to reach. I consider myself to be an open minded innovative educator and I am implementing technology into my classroom in new ways often, but I don’t think I have made any major innovations to education. I challenge myself to create more opportunities for critical thinking for my students and appeal to a variety of interests using technology. For example, I noticed that moon phases seemed to be one of the most boring units for students, so I decided to incorporate more projects and assignment options this year than I have in previous years. The assignment options included creating a GIF of the lunar cycle, creating a video predicting moon phases, and allowing students to research a moon phase and present it to the class with Flipgrid. The result was more engaged students with higher test score averages than I have had in previous years. I enjoyed being able to walk around and offer suggestions or just hear the creativity of my students come to life and not necessarily having to “teach” anyone. I got to see what they could do and was able to talk to them in a more casual way, which lead to my students being more open about what they weren’t sure about. I could clear up misconceptions easily and I didn’t have to wait until the end of the day to grade or at least glance through the paper assignments. Most importantly to me these changes have made my classroom joyous and kids were laughing and having fun even while talking about science and completing their work. Everyone was happy and it was refreshing to everyone to just have fun and create. The success of that unit has caused me to try to incorporate similar things into all the units since then.