Teaching The Way Students Learn

Student Choice = Empowered Learning 

The hardest thing for an Educator (any Educator; Classroom Teacher, Administrator, Para-Professional and so on) to do is give up control so Students can be empowered.  For many, the Pedagogy is too radical.  For decades (if not centuries), students were expected to sit silently taking notes in graveyard style rows while the Teacher lectured on and on.  They were to take this information and through "drill and kill" memorization; regurgitate it on some type of standardized test (Campus, District, and State level...even though this type of "learning" was on the bottom rung of Blooms Taxonomy).

The question is; what do all these "old school" pedagogy have in common?  They all focus on where students are weak and almost ignore where they are strong.  Basically, it goes something like this; students take some type of standardized test.  Standardized tests show where students are weak.  Students are put into some type of "drill and kill re-teach"  so they can shore up their weak areas to pass "the test."  

What if, instead of focusing where students are weak; we instead focus on where they are strong?    So how can we do that?  Through empowerment.  We understand in physics through Ohm's law and fluid dynamics that electricity and fluids follow the pass of least resistance.  The more resistance you have, the less of an electrical charge or fluid flow you will have.  True learning is like that.  The less resistance you have to learning, the more the student will (want) to learn.  When you empower a student to focus on where they are strong (really, what they WANT to learn); they will much more easily follow the God-given talents they were born with.   Let's empower our students to follow their strengths and get away from the "one size fits all" mentality of standardization that focuses on their weaknesses.