Minimal Effort, Maximum Reward

Today I announced the portfolios for the civil liberties and civil rights unit will be due next Thursday.  "Portfolio of what?", I heard many times. "Portfolio of your work for this unit, like all the other units." I responded. "But we haven't done anything."  By that I usually interpret I haven't given specific work to be turned in and graded. We worked on civil liberties debates and will discuss more tomorrow, but I haven't told the students exactly what they should be learning.

This is one of the problems with our system.  We create students, not learners.  If I don't tell people exactly what to do, and frequently how to do it, they are at a lose. It's not really the student's fault.  They have been trained to behave this way.  Classes have never been places to explore ideas, they are things to get through.  The mindset is to get as high a grade as possible, by doing as little as possible.  By the time these kids are seniors they have become quite adept at this routine.

If this is going to change, the focus needs to change. The process of learning is just as, if not more, important than what is learned. What do we want the students to know and how do we know they know it, are the wrong questions.  What do the students want to know and how we going to help them develop the skills to know it are better questions that should guide our teaching.