What if …

kids ran schools?

What if …

schools were designed to give kids the opportunity to learn what they wanted to learn?

What if …

teachers asked students to identify the problems they saw in their world…

And teachers designed their curricula to help kids solve these problems?

I am proposing a new program that will let us do just that.

“BUT,” you say… I’ve been designing assignments around issues that are relevant to my students’ lives for years. For example, I live in a town where prejudice abounds. There are lots of poor whites in the rural areas, but there are also poor blacks who live in town and tend to be transplants from larger, urban areas. Kids from these two populations carry lots of racial prejudice with them into schools, beliefs passed down from generation to generation. They’re not the only ones of course, but last semester, I designed a unit designed to help them overcome these prejudices.

The unit of study revolved around the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The racial issues in the book would be a good way to open up discussions about those in the community, I thought. The final project was about racial issues in the community. Small groups researched racial issues in the community and made presentations to their peers.

Did it change anything? “A bit”, you say, “but not much.”

What I’m proposing is similar but there are some key essential differences. Here are some reasons why your project was not as effective as it could have been.

It was designed by you (not students). It is school-centered, not really authentic. Ultimately it does little more than serve as a ruse for getting kids to the same old thing in a different way. It was not designed to DO something real (since it culminated in a presentation). You had great intentions but are limited by the way you think you need to teach school and assess students.

Here are some more reasons… Ultimately, the unit focuses on one discipline. – How many REAL problems limit themselves to one discipline so narrowly? For example, if the problem is pollution, and we really want to solve it, don’t we need at the very least scientists to study the problem and devise a solution, and literacy teachers to help students spread the word? To help persuade people to make changes that we have proposed?

“But,” the English teacher says I need to teach a novel/narrative! I’m supposed to teach The Red Badge of Courage. Do you really need to teach THAT novel? WHY do we teach novels anyway? No, we just need to read SOMETHING, and hmmm, I never thought about that (why we teach novels, that is). I guess I teach novels/narratives to help kids identify with the issues. To make the issues more real. To help students put themselves in others’ shoes. So how about a story that’s related to environmental issues? For example, Erin Brocovitch (sp?; AND I don’t know if there is a print narrative related to this film, but it is the first related text that comes to mind). Yes, you say. That just might work.

And the Biology teacher says Well that is great for covering my unit on ecosystems. But we’ve also got to learn about the human nervous system (and the circulatory system, etc.). Well doesn’t pollution affect human nervous systems? Couldn’t you follow up the unit on ecosystems with on things that cause disruptions to the normal functioning of the systems in the human body? Good idea (apologies to bio teachers ), you say, that just might work.

And the History teacher says But that unit really doesn’t work for me. I already covered pollution during the industrial revolution. Now I need to move on to the U.S. Civil War. Hmmm, I say. This unit really doesn’t work for you then, does it? No. Then…. (drum roll please), let’s go look at the FCP database (DigiTeen, Eracism, LIPS Thrive-ival Guide, etc.) and see whether there MIGHT be something related to the issues that you’ll be dealing with in that unit that you might be able to work on.

This is what the FCC 2011 has been: Educators working together to design curricula around projects proposed by kids, Projects that are designed to solve real problems that kids care about, that affect their world, their lives, their future, their friends and families.

Implications for Education If we can make this work of the FCC scalable, using digital media to connect with meaningful content (created by kids and for kids) and to connect teachers (and their students) with each other; AND we integrate this model into teacher education programs so that teachers begin to really rethink what education is and how it is delivered;

We just might be able to help these kids change their world.

Because that’s why we do this in the first place isn’t it?

That’s why we’re all here, right?

With this program, education becomes…. A time and place (a process, a journey) for fostering in kids the skills they need to make the world a better place.

And schools become… Places where young people are surrounded by adults who want to help them thrive and achieve that purpose.

How to Make this Happen? How to Make it Scalable? Organize FC projects so that they can be used in this way by educators and teacher educators. Have schools of teacher ed participate in using this database to begin to get teachers to rethink the way they plan instruction, think about teaching, school, learning, and especially about students.

Adults and teachers especially do know a few things: They can … Serve as guides; Have expert knowledge; Thereby help students achieve their goals; and Steer students away from things that they (adults) know from experience are unwise.

But adults can also honor the brilliance of young people...

… and dedicate themselves to helping them figure out how to make the seemingly impossible possible

So you’re wondering what’s this new program called?

DigiTeacher!