As an English and speech teacher for mostly sophomores, I found myself frustrated when students seemed to be just going through the motions, looking for every shortcut available (ahem, Sparks Notes). I wanted my students to be genuinely curious about the literature we were examining or to be genuinely excited to write for an audience. The speech teacher in me wanted students antsy for their...
When I first started facilitating making experiences with students, one of the challenges I found was that I didn’t really know how to plan for this type of learning. I was comfortable with teacher-centered instruction. My students didn’t do a lot of self-directed discovery and learning. So, when I started pursuing maker education, I found it difficult to predict instruction and what each day...
STEM and social justice are deeply intertwined. When we show students how STEM can be mobilized in ways that can help (or harm) groups who have been marginalized, we are doing more than just teaching skills, we are planting seeds for social change through STEM. While it is increasingly common for STEM classes to include projects about solving real-world problems, when you apply a social...
Working with English/Language Arts teachers on developing highly engaging and intentional inquiry units of study, one of the concerns I hear most often is, “We don’t have TIME to allow for student discovery and inquiry.” Educators absolutely want to provide the conditions for students to construct their own understandings, to explore their own questions, and to approach learning with...