“What do you want to be when you grow up?!” I'm personally guilty of asking that question far too many times. I've asked it at morning meetings, I've asked it in a writing prompt, I've even asked my own child at home. We need to create a philosophy of problem solving, not one of a career stated endpoint.
Obsess over the learner, not the process, not the prescribed program, not the data, and not the failures. Katie Martin is the author of Learner Centered Innovation, she encourages teachers to be obsessively learner-focused in our schools. We can have all the best and newest resources at our fingertips and still not meet the needs of our students if we don’t know who they are. We could also be poorly funded, under-supported, and have overly large class sizes; but if we know our students as individuals with potential we can still make a difference. Martin touches on ensuring that teachers have what they need to be student obsessed, “time, support, and trust to do what’s best”.
The number of demands on teachers continues to grow, especially considering the pandemic we’re currently facing and what some districts and states could be asking of their teachers. On the extreme side of things, teachers have been known to physically place themselves between students and bullets, they’ve been known to cover students with their bodies during tornados, and now we could be expected to face groups of children each day and put ourselves and our families at risk for exposure. Teachers obsess over their learners because they are drawn to their profession and want to make a difference. Our obsession is to help kids, but we need to be valued in order to stay.
What can a teacher do to become more learner-focused? RELATIONSHIPS! Know your students!
Addressing the overload of materials and interventions tried on students that don't work, Katie Martin shares with the readers of her book that “It’s costly and wasteful for (districts to buy) expensive programs and resources to go largely unused and then be shelved as ineffective”. This part resonated with me because I’m just finishing reading Visible Learning by John Hatti. That book has really made me question the use and sometimes overuse of intervention programs when at times we as teachers need to reflect on our practices. What piece of the puzzle is the student missing, have we tried to teach it in multiple ways, or are we using a few lazy data points to guide our thinking blindly? It’s a pain in the butt to track all of the progress monitoring details of a reading intervention, so before diving headfirst let’s do what we know how to do; get to know students as people and work with them in a way that works for them!
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