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What does a student centered classroom look like? Imagine a class where a student is teaching you and other students the specifics of a particular app, or piece of technology. Or even better, a student is teaching you about something they are passionate about. This comes from a concept called Genius Hour.
Genius hour is a concept where students have an hour out of their day to learn whatever they have a passion for. During this time, the students will spend their time learning about something they have a passion for. This is a project based assignment where the students will get a chance to share with the class about what they have been working on. This sounds like "Show and Tell" to me. I remember I loved "Show and Tell" as a kid, because I had a chance to show off something of mine and potentially learn something cool about someone else's "thing".
This is just one way of having a student centered classroom. In the video, Reimagining Classroom: Teachers as Learners and Students as Leaders, a video by TedxFargo, Kayla Delzer speaks about the knowledge road block we can be as teachers. Years ago, without the technology we have today, teachers had to be the experts in everything they taught. They were the gatekeepers of knowledge. With the advancement of technology, we have so much knowledge at our fingertips. The phones we carry in our pockets have access to so much more knowledge and we somehow miss the opportunity to leverage this.
Many schools have written into their policies that "No Cell Phones Allowed". With the way technology is advancing and making knowledge more accessible, we as teachers do a disservice by not allowing some use of cell phones. There are many great apps that can be used where cell phones are very useful. Instead of being fearful of what kind of trouble students can get into, let's think about all of the possibilities are available at their fingertips, literally with cell phones.
Kayla Delzer makes a great point about how much of a disadvantage our students will have when it comes to something basic as getting a job, if they were never allowed to embrace technology and be able to become proficient in it. Let's stop holding our students back because of fear, and let's support them in their passion while they are learning.
