Just ran across a great blog post: Do kids have a voice? The power of choice | Connected Principals by Sam LeDeaux.

Mr. LeDeaux recently attended an EdCamp and experienced the power of choice learning. I applaud him for doing this training with the staff at his school!

I further applaud him for this thought:

Do we provide our kids these same learning opportunities?  Do we allow our kids to have a voice?  Do we grant our kids the power and responsibility of choice?  Do we empower them to take ownership of their learning and be active participants?

 

That sure isn’t what I see happening in my daughter’s experience. She’s funneled through a system with some choice of classes, but not much. Classes are structured for what sometimes seems the ease of teaching (multiple choice, machine graded exams that are reused every trimester), not for student exploration of content or student directed learning. There’s more rote memorization than content creation. It’s not engaging to her, it’s suffocating and defeating. She does not feel successful and by this age, she and her peers totally see through the game and the test score hamster wheel. They deserve more.