Learner-Centered
Putting the “Learner” in Learner-Centered STEM
Students and teachers from Harmony Public Schools describe the learner experience in a Learner-Centered STEM classroom.
Two Strategies for Empowering Teacher Leaders
In a coherent system, everything works together for students and teachers: content, learning experiences, assessment, professional development, schedule, structure, staffing and supports. Here are two ways to create this coherence and empower teacher leaders.
Radical Student Choice: Student Designed and Demonstrated Projects
Takeaways and lessons learned from Adventure Days -- two full days when no middle school classes are held and each student pursues a project of their own design to showcase at the end of the second day.
How Project-Based Learning Fosters Community Change
When we bring real world issues to the classroom and allow students to lead real work, through powerful project-based learning, students can have a big impact. How does project-based learning foster community change? What started with a dialogue around slavery and reading the texts of Frederick Douglass resulted in students doing something about modern day slavery in their own community.
Meeting the 10 Expectations Students Have of School
By: Chris Jackson. Have we considered the expectations students have of school? Chris Jackson writes that the real paradigm shift may be in asking the question to students: What do you expect from school? We can take students' expectations and interests into classrooms--and outside of them. By doing so, we will increase student motivation.
10 Simple Lesson Plans for Scaffolding Student-Led Projects
From tips on assessment to how best to involve adult mentors, this is a guide for anyone who wants to lead student-led and student-centered projects in the classroom. The curriculum, adopted from Youth Engaged in Leadership & Learning, is broken down into 10 simple lessons-- to scaffolding student-led projects and create engagement and student ownership of learning.
The Future Demands Idea Economy Students
By: Elaine Menardi. Our new operating system, "edOS 3: Ask-Think-Solve" will emerge from students very soon. Students will be driven by their own desires to satisfy curiosity and achieve a sense of accomplishment.
Four Steps to Transforming a School
Four higher level practices that have the potential of transforming a school including data-informed instruction, student-centered pedagogy and approaches, continual improvement and innovation process, and caring adults.
Eight Ways Federal Policymakers Can Support Student-Centered Learning
By: Susan Gentz. We’re driven by a mission to transform K-12 education policy and practice to design powerful, personalized, learner-centered experiences through competency-based, blended and online learning. This is why we created a set of frameworks to move the needle in overcoming these barriers.
Modernizing Educator and Leader Development for Student-Centered Learning
By: Dale Frost. States can accelerate innovation by modernizing educator and leader development. In order to do so, states need to revise laws and regulations that were created for an outdated, one-size-fits-all model of K-12.