Response to The Nuts &Bolts of 21^st Century Teaching

I really liked how the teacher, Shelley Wright, put the project into the students’ hands and let them struggle. What a painful thing to do! This is how students become real problem solvers. Rather than controlling the learning and telling students what to do, she let them take control and CHOOSE what they wanted to do. In a lot of projects like this teachers want to stay on schedule and make sure that the research topics are spread out. In this class, only three students wanted to research Nazis and instead of telling other students that they have to research a topic they did not choose themselves, she just let it be what it was. This is great because it makes the information meaningful to the student. I mean, why do we make students research topics they don’t choose in the first place? Doesn’t that take away their motivation and curiosity?

In this situation, Shelley Wright has given all the decisions over to the students. They had to work collaboratively, they had to problem solve, they had to communicate, and like in the real world, they had to struggle together to have a breakthrough. I loved what Shelley said about facilitating their learning and now knowing how much to let them fail. She said something so important, “If I do it for them, they won’t develop this skill.” I really enjoyed reading this post and I got a lot out of it. I think it’s more important to let our students struggle and work through problems as they would in the work world. No one tells you how to solve the problems in other areas of life except for in school. We need to be setting up our students for success by letting them practice and gain problem solving skills in school.