The Importance of the Teacher-Student Relationship and What the New Teacher Needs to Know

Students spend more than 1,000 hours with their teacher in a typical school year. That’s enough time to build a relationship that could ignite a student’s lifetime love of learning and it’s enough time for the dynamic to go totally off the rails. Although it looks like that the most qualified teacher will be the best for students but that’s not the healthiest approach in education.

A teacher should be able to develop a bond with all of their students at a level that promotes active role playing by students in the class.

Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive, and long-lasting implications for both students' academic and social development. Solely improving students' relationships with their teachers will produce gains in achievement…

To explain a healthy relationship between a teacher and a student I want you to imagine, a scenario that will lay the grown work for the rest of today’s discussion.

Think about your favorite teacher from elementary school. What made them so special? Maybe they were the first person who helped math “make sense” to you, or maybe they let you borrow books from their classroom library. The wisdom and mentorship that teachers provide can be life changing, especially for younger students.

Educators often focus on improving parent engagement, but student engagement is just as essential. The more self-motivated a student is as they learn to read, the better prepared they’ll be to reach their potential. One of the best ways to encourage this is by building meaningful teacher-student relationships.

Relationships between a teacher and a class of students are just as important as the daily academic instruction presented to the students. Building these relationships is the job of all teachers, but not all teachers are aware of how connecting with students will build student confidence and inevitably promotes high achievement.

The degree of a student’s achievements and improvement can be determined by the level of relationship built between the teacher and the student.

The initiation of an authentic relationship by a teacher with a student can result positively for a student’s desire to prioritize life of learning and succeeding. Teacher-student relationships begin the first day of school. Many teachers use “ice breaker” activities for both students and the teacher to learn fun and interesting facts about one another. Teachers can gather the interesting information shared by all students and use the facts to initiate conversations with students. Teachers can also inquire with students the results of weekend activities, such as sporting events and/or dance recitals. When teachers initiate conversations with students it allows for an expression of interest with an individual student, and making the student feel important.

Students of all grade levels desire to impress the teacher either with their aptitude for learning, or their unique talents. Students feel comfortable sharing their true self when the relationship with the teacher is secure and a level of trust has been achieved. The next level for teacher-student relationships involves mutual vulnerability where both individuals feel comfortable to sometimes share sensitive information. Once the teacher-student relationship is established, students will organically evolve into a confident and independent thinker and active learner, making teacher-student relationships extremely important and necessary in an educational setting.

But there is a catch, when there are issues in a social group position of a person and logic does not make much sense, the kind diplomacy must be introduced in the classroom with a mix of patience from the teacher to impart those noble traits into the students, leading by example perhaps. To qualitatively understand, coming up we will discuss the benefits of a healthy teacher - student relationship.

Positive relationships between a teacher and a student provide a level of comfort allowing a student to take academic risks that will advance academic achievements. All positivity expressed by a teacher with students impacts educational success. Students respond to positive comments, positive interactions and exchanges offered between a teacher and a student.

A positive relationship can start with a simple smile, gesture to welcome the student into the classroom. Engaging an authentic and not forced conversation between a teacher and student develops a positive relationship. The positive relationship can be trusted by the student and sometimes relied upon when students are struggling and need a much-desired ear for listening. The positive relationship requires a respected connection between both the teacher and student in order for a student to feel successful in the classroom.

Building rapport with your students and establishing yourself as their mentor is an excellent way to combat chronic absenteeism. Students are more motivated to attend classes if they know their teacher cares about them and will help them succeed. And by improving school engagement, these relationships can also improve academic achievement.

Even in elementary school, unexcused absences are linked to dropping grades, particularly in math. By motivating students to work hard and miss fewer lessons, teacher-student relationships can keep struggling students from falling behind and close the achievement gap in education. It’s one of the longest-lasting ways a teacher can impact student achievement and career success.

Personal connection with your students can also raise their intrinsic motivation to learn. When students feel interested in their work for the sake of mastering it, they develop a love of learning that will benefit them for their entire lives. Plus, they’re also more likely to have positive attitudes towards their teachers, classes, and lessons. When students focus less on grades and more on mastery, they’re on their way toward a successful school career.

Lastly, these relationships can even tie into your social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum. Positive teacher-student connections can help children develop self-regulation skills, particularly autonomy and self-determination. As students learn how to evaluate and manage their behavior, they’ll be able to reach their personal and academic goals. And over time, this can reduce failing grades and the need for redirection.

As beneficial as it can be, building healthy relationships can take more than just hard work, in fact it is not a place where ones’ authority is much of a benefit.

Here are some tips for teachers to implement in the class.

Provide structure- A mainstream of students respond well to a structured environment. So, teachers should provide clear expectations to their students. Rules and regulations must be followed and continuously reinforced.

Teach with enthusiasm and passion-teachers should teach the students with enthusiasm and passion. It will help to create a positive learning environment in the class. Effective educators are those who have the skill to get the best out of all students in their class. Evolving the positive student-teacher relationship is the basic factor of quality education and student learning.

Display a positive attitude-Positive attitude promotes a sense of belonging and encourages learners to take part cooperatively in study activities. Where students are not constrained by the fear of failure, it will enhance confidence level to do experiments. Teachers should help the students with inspiration and set the objective and in turn to them for guidance.

Make learning fun-fun learning helps to build a good relationship between students and teachers.

Treat students with admiration-teachers should treat students with admiration. It is true that a teacher who respects their students will get more respect from their students.

It will take a significant amount of time and effort to build a positive teacher-student relationship, but it will be beneficial for both students and teachers. It is clear that there are many noteworthy benefits of good student-teacher relationships.

Experts caution that for teachers and students, “relationship” does not equate to “friend,” particularly on social media. I want to be very clear here, there is a line here. Many districts have rules against teachers following or friending current students on Facebook, Twitter, or other platforms, in part because it might open teachers up to liability if they see inappropriate behavior from students online.

Teachers also should be upfront with students who confide in them that they are required by law to report evidence of abuse and can’t keep secrets that could put students in danger.

Teacher and education author Starr Sackstein, whose blog is hosted on the edweek.org website, also recommends that while teachers can and should share personal stories if they are “purposeful and appropriate” to the discussion, they should use these to model for students’ what level of detail is appropriate for sharing in social conversations.

Implementing Community-Based Learning

To produce great people, higher and expensive education is not the only necessary element, we are social beings, and the need of community Is important to survive and grow but respect for community and the hierarchical structure of the society does not form overnight, not everyone can be a doctor, engineer or a scientist, for the community to work, someone has to be a black smith, carpenter, and most importantly educator.

To realize the importance of every individual performing duties in a community and to help our coming generations figure out their passions textbooks in and of itself is not justice and community-based learning helps with such challenges to help students understand and learn from the community they will live their whole lives in.

This is a teaching and learning strategy that integrates meaningful community engagement with instruction and reflection to enrich the learning experience with a greater emphasis on reciprocal learning and reflection.

Community Based Learning (CBL) is a pedagogical approach that is based on the premise that the most profound learning often comes from experience that is supported by guidance, context-providing, foundational knowledge, and intellectual analysis. The opportunity for students to bring thoughtful knowledge and ideas based on personal observation and social interaction to a course’s theme and scholarly arguments brings depth to the learning experience for individuals and to the content of the course. The communities of which we are a part can benefit from the resources of our faculty and students, while the courses can be educationally transformative in powerful ways.

Community-based learning refers to a wide variety of instructional methods and programs that educators use to connect what is being taught in schools to their surrounding communities, including local institutions, history, literature, cultural heritage, and natural environments. Community-based learning is also motivated by the belief that all communities have intrinsic educational assets and resources that educators can use to enhance learning experiences for students.

Proponents of community-based learning generally argue that students will be more interested in the subjects and concepts being taught, and they will be more inspired to learn, if academic study is connected to concepts, issues, and contexts that are more familiar, understandable, accessible, or personally relevant to them. By using the “community as a classroom,” advocates would argue, teachers can improve knowledge retention, skill acquisition, and preparation for adult life because students can be given more opportunities, apply learning in practical, real-life settings—by researching a local ecosystem, for example, or by volunteering at a nonprofit organization that is working to improve the world in some meaningful way.

While the methods and forms of community-based learning are both sophisticated and numerous, the concept is perhaps most readily described in terms of four general approaches (all of which might be pursued independently or combined with other approaches):

Instructional connections: In this form of community-based learning, teachers would make explicit and purposeful connections between the material being taught in the classroom and local issues, contexts, and concepts. For example, the workings of a democratic political system may be described in terms of a local political process; statistics and probability may be taught using stats from a local sports team; a scientific concept may be explained using an example taken from a local habitat or ecosystem; or the Civil War may be taught using examples and stories drawn from local history. In this scenario, students may still be educated within the school walls, but community-related connections are being used to enhance student understanding or engagement in the learning process.

Community integration: In this approach, educators might take advantage of local experts by inviting them into the school to give presentations, participate in panel discussions, or mentor students who are working on a long-term research project. The school may also partner with a local organization or group to provide additional learning experiences in the school—e.g., a local engineering firm or scientific institution may help the school develop a robotics program or judge science-fair projects. In this scenario, students are still being educated within the school walls, but community resources and authorities are being used to enhance the learning experience.

Community participation: In this approach, students would learn, at least in part, by actively participating in their community. For example, students may undertake a research project on a local environmental problem in collaboration with a scientist or nonprofit organization; participate in an internship or job-shadowing program at a local business for which they can earn academic credit or recognition; volunteer at a local nonprofit or advocacy campaign during which they conduct related research, write a paper, or produce a documentary on what they learned; or they may interview doctors, urgent-care professionals, health-insurance executives, and individuals in the community without health insurance to learn about the practical challenges faced when attempting to expand health-care coverage. In this scenario, students are learning both within and outside of the school walls, and participatory community-based-learning experiences would be connected in some way to the school’s academic program.

Citizen action: This approach would be considered by some experts and educators to be the fullest or most “authentic” realization of community-based learning—students not only learn from and in their community, but they also use what they are learning to influence, change, or give back to the community in some meaningful way. For example, students may write a regular column for the local newspaper (rather than simply turning in their writing to a teacher); research an environmental or social problem and then create an online petition or deliver a presentation to the city council with the goal of influencing local policy; or volunteer for a local nonprofit and create a multimedia presentation, citizen-action campaign, or short documentary intended to raise awareness in their community about a particular cause. In this scenario, the audience for and potential beneficiaries of a student’s learning products would extend beyond teachers, mentors, and other students to include community organizations and the general public.

While community-based learning possesses many benefits for students but it all comes at a cost and now let us discuss the challenges that comes with the community based learning.

Compared to more traditional course offerings, the workload is higher for students and instructors.

Working on authentic problems may be chaotic and confusing, just as it is in the real world. Students may become frustrated with the process and higher workload and be unclear about the learning goals when compared to more traditional courses.

Engaging students in a reflective process is necessary to help students recognize the learning that is taking place.

Instructors may require extra operational support to handle the details of the project. The details can range from ensuring that students have completed the necessary ethics and data sharing agreement to the time and effort required to foster the relationship with the community partner.

It can be difficult too to complete a project within the time frame of a term.

Despite these challenges as an educator, we all want to bring the best possible education and learning experience for our class no matter how burdensome it can get for us but getting started with community-based learning might not be as hard as people might make you think.

To introduce community-based learning, you do not necessarily have to plan field trips and align schedules with busy industries, your classroom is a set of individuals with different backgrounds and academic abilities.

Start with...

Creating groups composed of students with different and complementary skills sets and learning styles

Keep groups in the 4-6 size range. Help students identify the roles necessary to complete the project and encourage them to create teams based on the identified skills sets or create the teams yourself.

Emphasize that this is not the type of project that can be completed at the last minute, and success depends on the collaboration and cooperation of each group member.

Hold each student accountable for completing all pieces of the project. The group can then use each team member’s contribution to develop the best solution for the next stage of the project. This helps reinforce the social and collaborative nature of the project. Exposure to multiple solutions and reacting to these helps each individual develop a deeper understanding of the discipline.

Invite the experts into your classroom

Introduce the community partner and the project to your students early in the term. This reinforces that the project includes stakeholders beyond the instructor and the student. Students experience what it is like to work within the culture of the discipline, and the community partner is provided with a potential viable solution to an authentic problem.

Having these people facilitate in-class activities introduces your students to other support people on-campus, people who can help them during and after the course.

Create opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications

Explicitly outline and describe the relevance the project has to real-world performance. Explain how the project mirrors the work done by members of the discipline. Emphasize that, as in the real world, this project involves working in a social context, that is, working with others to complete a project, solve a problem, and/or address an issue.

Incorporate frequent, timely and constructive feedback.

Use formative assessment methods which reward both process and final product. If possible, require students to complete work at an appropriate level before being able to move to the next stage of the project. This means providing them with feedback and the opportunity to use the feedback in order to complete the project to an accepted standard. Provide opportunities for students to assess their existing knowledge and receive suggestions for improvement. Most important, give them the opportunity to incorporate the feedback they’ve been given to help them improve future performance.

Provide time and space for interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters.

Use in-class time for project work where you circulate throughout the classroom providing feedback and suggestions to groups as they work on the designated activity for that day. Help students understand how each activity contributes to the project and how to connect the various pieces. Have students submit deliverables prior to the class to ensure that each student has prepared for the in-class group activity.

Provide feedback to the individual or group contributions online and in advance of the in-class time so that groups are able to work productively together during the class time and you are able to identify where possible problems and challenges exist. Using a ‘flipped classroom model’ can help provide the structure students need to address the open-ended nature of the project and provide the opportunity to make best use of your expertise during the class time.

Incorporate opportunities for public demonstration of competence.

Schedule regular in-class opportunities for students to showcase their development of competence to their classmates. Students are able to see and respond to each other’s work. Not only will they learn from each other, but also knowing that they will be presenting to their peers raises the bar and motivates students to do better work. Presenting to their classmates within the safe environment of the classroom prepares them for the final presentation they will present to the community partner.

Provide a rubric to help students plan for their presentation- particularly to help them prepare for the presentation to the community partner.

Concepts of STEM and STEAM

The educational system that we are following for decades urges us to get our children back to basics through the “three Rs” of reading, writing and arithmetic. For educators, there is now a greater need for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts to integrate with the arts (STEAM) across the wider curriculum.

We know this because business and industry broadcast that future-ready employees need to have multiple areas of expertise or at least appreciate how a range of skills fit together.

Teachers working in cross-curricular STEAM settings often see their students making connections between concepts and solving problems in new and exciting ways. They demonstrate this by active engagement, their discoveries visible in enthusiastic “aha” moments.

You’ve probably heard of the acronym STEM. The term was introduced early in the 21st century as a way to refer to careers and/or curriculum centered around science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- the most rapidly growing industries in the U.S. economy. Then as the U.S. and companies continued to ramp up technological innovation, in order to remain competitive across the globe, the movement around integrating STEM into educational frameworks began to gain a lot of traction.

In a nutshell, people began to recognize that it was time to start preparing our youth, and our economy, for the future, by helping students of all ages develop the 21st century skills they will need to be successful, and to play an effective role, in the future workforce.

Fast forward several years, after STEM had become a buzzword in the world of education, and a new, very similar term emerged -- STEAM. The “A” in steam refers to arts. And this addition plays a critical role in how we need to be preparing our youth for the future.

To give you a better understanding of how STEAM came about and the importance of implementing a STEAM learning environment, let’s take a look at what led to this movement, what the “A” brings to the table, and how educators and parents can implement this framework in ways that enhance our kids’ continued educational and personal development.

For far too long in education, we’ve been working with the presumption of teaching to ensure our students get a “good job”. But what does that look like? We are preparing students for jobs that don’t even exist.

We are at a point where it is not only possible, but imperative that we facilitate learning environments that are fluid, dynamic, and relevant. None of us go outside and look at a tree and say, “that’s a tree, so that’s science” or, “the sky is blue, so that’s art.”

Our world is a beautiful, complex, and intricate tapestry of learning all in its own right. Why do we believe that we have the ability or the right to box it in behind brick walls and classroom doors in a place called school?

Integrating concepts, topics, standards and assessments is a powerful way to disrupt the typical course of events for our students and to help change the merry-go-round of “school.”

It takes what we do when we open the doors to the real world and places those same practices in our cycles of teaching and learning. So, we can finally remove the brick walls and classroom doors to get at the heart of learning.

So, what is the difference between STEM and STEAM?

STEM represents science, technology, engineering and math. “STEAM” represents STEM plus the arts – humanities, language arts, dance, drama, music, visual arts, design and new media.

The main difference between STEM and STEAM is STEM explicitly focuses on scientific concepts. STEAM investigates the same concepts but does this through inquiry and problem-based learning methods used in the creative process.

This looks like groups of learners working collaboratively to create a visually appealing product or object that is based in the understanding of a STEM concept, such as the mathematics of the parabola used to create fine art imagery.

STEAM is not a new concept. People such as Leonardo Da Vinci have shown us the importance of combining science and art to make discoveries. Indigenous Australians also have a long-standing tradition of scientific knowledge passed down through song as a memory system.

So why is STEM and STEAM important in education, more on that after this message from our sponsor…

The pathway to STEAM is exciting but can also be risky without an understanding of what STEAM truly means in both its intention and its implementation.  Like its STEM predecessor, STEAM can stop short of its best manifestation without several core components:

1.       STEAM is an integrated approach to learning which requires an intentional connection between standards, assessments and lesson design/implementation

2.       True STEAM experiences involve two or more standards from Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and the Arts to be taught AND assessed in and through each other

3.       Inquiry, collaboration, and an emphasis on process-based learning are at the heart of the STEAM approach

4.       Utilizing and leveraging the integrity of the arts themselves is essential to an authentic STEAM initiative

How to Use STEAM:

There are actually 6 steps to creating a STEAM-Centered classroom, no matter what area you teach.  In each step, you’re working through both the content and the arts standards to address a central problem or essential question.

What’s great about this process is that you can as easily use it to help plan for a lesson as you can to facilitate the actual learning process in your STEAM classroom.  Let’s take a look at each step.

1. Focus

In this step, we’re selecting an essential question to answer or problem to solve.  It’s important to have a clear focus on both how this question or problem relates to the STEM and the Arts content areas you’ve chosen.

 2. Detail

During the detail phase, you’re looking for the elements that are contributing to the problem or question.  When you’re observing the correlations to other areas or why the problem exists, you begin to unearth a lot of key background information, skills or processes that students already have to address the question.

3. Discovery

Discovery is all about active research and intentional teaching.  In this step, students are researching current solutions, as well as what ISN’T working based on the solutions that already exist.  As a teacher, you can use this stage to both analyze the gaps your students may have in a skill or process and to teach those skills or processes explicitly.

4. Application

This is where the fun happens!  After students have dived deep into a problem or question and have analyzed current solutions as well as what still needs addressed, they can begin to create their own solution or composition to the problem.  This is where they use the skills, processes and knowledge that were taught in the discovery stage and put them to work.

5. Presentation

Once students have created their solution or composition, it’s time to share it.  It’s important that the work is presented for feedback and as a way for expression based on a student’s own perspective surrounding the question or problem at hand.  This is also an important opportunity to facilitate feedback and help students learn how to give and receive input.

6. Link

This step is what closes the loop.  Students have a chance to reflect on the feedback that was shared and on their own process and skills.  Based on that reflection, students are able to revise their work as needed and to produce an even better solution.

Connecting STEAM and Literacy

STEAM’s foundations lie in inquiry, critical thinking, and process-based learning. That is extremely important. The entire idea surrounding STEAM lessons and the STEAM approach is that it’s based around questioning, and really deep questioning.  We want to start asking non-Googleable questions.

Inquiry, curiosity, being able to find solutions to a problem, and being creative in the finding of the solutions is at the heart of this approach. This means that the humanities are woven into STEAM just like everything else.

Using STEAM does not mean letting english language arts or social studies go to the wayside.

You can use a STEAM lesson with those ideas, because it’s fundamentally built upon asking really good questions, and then seeking solutions to the problems that are presented in those content areas.

That doesn’t have to just happen in the STEM areas, or in the arts areas with STEM; you can connect all of the humanities through STEAM through the idea that you’re looking for a solution to a very specific problem which comes out of the inquiry process.

But this begs the question: if STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Math, what happens to reading and writing?  Do we just drop them completely, or do we move to something else and call it STREAM (adding “reading” into the acronym)?  And then… aren’t we back to teaching everything?

These are excellent questions. The answers come down to two deep understandings:

1.  Literacy is a part of every content area – always.

You can be literate in math, art, reading, social studies, music and science.  Literacy is an action with common components that are embedded into how we consume and share information.  As such, it is naturally a part of STEAM.

2. Intentional selection of naturally aligned standards is key.

STEAM is the intentional alignment of standards within these identified content areas and includes equitable assessment of both areas in the lesson.  It’s guided by inquiry and is focused on application, creation and evaluation. Adding another letter isn’t the point.

With those understandings in mind, there are many ways to integrate literacy and STEAM intentionally in your classroom.  Here are some examples that you may find helpful in your planning for this year.

Visual Thinking:

Utilizing visual thinking is drawing upon the foundation of literacy itself.  You can read a piece of art or music, the same way you can read a piece of traditional text.  Visual thinking strategies are a terrific way to introduce this concept to your students and to practice literacy across all content areas.

Embodying Text:

Being able to make personal meaning requires moving from the abstract to the literal.  Many of the STEM areas deal with abstract concepts which are hard to visualize or feel. This can be done quickly and easily through movement.  Using dance as a tool to explore a concept and then translate that into a literal interpretation is a form of writing. Just because it’s done with the body doesn’t make it any less of a composition.

Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching is all about using comprehension strategies to have formal conversations about text.  If the text is a piece of art, or if it’s a scientific finding, the reciprocal teaching strategy will work regardless of content.  Here’s the steps you need:

1.                 Predict

2.                 Question

3.                 Clarify

4.                 Summarize

Start by asking students to predict an outcome based on a problem, process, or artistic prompt.  Then, ask some guiding questions and encourage your students to ask each other questions about the work.  Students can then point out elements of the problem, process, or arts prompt that they don’t understand. They can then research answers to these questions and summarize their findings.  This strategy is often used to analyze traditional text and is a core component of literacy but can easily be applied to any content area.

Progressivism

We all hope for the best possible education for our children but with so many options it is hard to pick what is going to be best for your students; however, the real question is should you settle for more traditional approaches or opt for more forward-thinking modern approach.

Educators disagree about the best ways to learn and why, and whether students should have a say in their education. Today, school administrators focus the debate on the advantages of traditional versus progressive education.

A student-centered classroom is built on autonomy and the elimination of traditional teaching practices. The student-centered classroom operates on collaboration, project-based learning, technology integration, and plenty of conversation between students and teachers about learning. Here are five steps to building a remarkable student-centered classroom.

Administrators often question whether they should implement traditional versus progressive education in their schools. To provide all students with direct information and facts, teachers have implemented what is now known as the traditional method of teaching. In this educational model, educators are front and center. As gatekeepers of knowledge, they choose what to teach and how to teach it. They pass information to students that will help prepare them for life beyond school. In traditional education, schools are less concerned about students themselves and what they get out of their lessons. Rather, they focus on shaping students into moral and educated individuals who can contribute to the working world when they become adults.

Beginning in the 1880s, theorists such as John Dewey (I’m sure that you heard his name come up in your teacher prep classes) argued for a different approach to teaching, introducing progressive education. One of the most important distinctions in traditional versus progressive education is that the latter places the student in the center of the educational model. Dewey drew upon the ideas of philosophers John Locke and Jean Rousseau when developing his theories that students learn better with hands-on and experiential learning. Progressive education focuses less on how a teacher prepares students for jobs and more on what students are passionate about and what critical thinking skills they can develop. Administrators who implement this style of education in their schools help students understand how they can be lifelong learners, constantly engaging with new ideas and solving new problems.

CORE QUALITIES OF A PROGRESSIVE CLASSROOM:

Experiential learning:

A progressive classroom emphasis learning by doing through hands-on projects and active, expeditionary learning. Instruction relates to the real world, provided context and meaning to students. It also allows students to construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world through experiences and reflecting on those experiences.

Emphasis on lifelong learning and skills – Teaching students how to be engaged, active, and responsible learners helps them develop the skills and habits of mind that make learning both accessible and fun. When students know themselves as learners, they become self-motivated, disciplined, and open-minded, flexible thinkers. This helps them cultivate a lifelong love of learning and key skills necessary for succeeding in the workplace.

Interdisciplinary learning:

Progressive classrooms use integrated curriculum so that students learn by forging connections between concepts and ideas across different disciplinary boundaries. When students apply the knowledge, they have gained in one discipline to a different discipline, it deepens their understanding of a concept by looking at its real-world applications. That is why there is less reliance on a single textbook for a subject in favor of varied learning resources.

Understanding as the goal of learning instead of rote knowledge:

Traditional schools primarily focus on rote learning – the memorization of information based on repetition. While this allows students to quickly recall basic facts, it doesn’t provide a deep understanding of the information and how these facts relate to one another. Progressive education focuses on having a sound understanding of a subject so that students can apply the information to a variety of scenarios and form connections between new and previous knowledge. Students learn how to investigate, evaluate, analyze, remember, make comparisons, and communicate, giving them better problem solving and cognitive skills.

Collaborative and cooperative learning – By focusing on community, responsibility, and group participation, progressive classrooms help students develop the emotional intelligence and social skills they need to work in groups, enjoy healthy relationships, and to live fulfilling and successful lives.

Emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking:

Progressive learning builds higher-order skills in students like investigating, evaluating, problem-solving, and communicating and encourage them to frequently reflect on their learning and follow their own questions so that they gradually fit knowledge into a meaningful whole. Students practice risk taking and teachers help them learn how to bounce back and learn from mistakes.

There are a number of reasons why students and parents choose progressive schools over traditional schools. In order to better understand the advantages that progressive schools offer, let’s first take a look at the traditional model.

Most of us were educated within the traditional school system. Our teachers expected us to look to them as experts, keepers of knowledge. They provided us with information, usually with the aid of a textbook, and we were required to understand or otherwise absorb that information (through rote memorization, for example). Our teachers made us take tests and quizzes periodically to see how well we were absorbing the information. The grades they gave us were intended to reflect how well we learned (or remembered) the material.

Within this system, students are seen as empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge. They are expected to conform to the teacher’s expectations of what “learning” looks like. Picture uniform rows of students facing the teacher in assigned seats at individual desks, taking detailed notes that they will be expected to study and memorize later.

As we examine this teaching method, questions may arise: How well are these students retaining what they are learning? How much of what they learn applies to their lives? Is this the best way to help students reach their fullest potential? And what does it truly mean to be educated?

Progressive education, on the other hand (which has been around in one form or another for several hundred years) is a much more open-ended process that can result in a more genuine form of learning—and greater retention of that which is learned.

Personalized learning is a fundamental principle and main advantage of progressive education. Progressive educators recognize that there is no one size fits all model when it comes to learning. This recognition serves as the jumping-off point for a range of improvements on the traditional model. Progressive educators believe that learning should be tailored to the needs and interests of each student.

This is one of the reasons why small class sizes are generally emphasized. In a room of 30+ kids, it’s nearly impossible to work with each student individually, much less get to know them as individual learners and be responsive to each one’s individual needs.

Progressive educators also generally believe that learning should be interest-based—connected to things that really interest their students. They recognize that actual interest in learning about a topic is a more powerful motivating factor than grades and tests.

Within this more personalized framework, students are empowered to take charge of their learning to a much greater extent. Teachers serve as guides rather than experts, and lectures are replaced with a more active and collaborative learning culture. Students may work one-on-one with their teachers to set their own learning goals. (Unlike the traditional classroom, students can have a voice in terms of deciding what topics they study.)

What’s more, students can move through the material at their own pace, based on how well they have mastered it. They may choose from a variety of ways to demonstrate that mastery as well. However, it’s highly unlikely that they will take a test that focuses on how well they remember information. Students are much more likely to be learning by doing, for example working on projects —and tackling complex issues, rather than simply memorizing facts.

As you can tell, personalized learning is more dynamic than the traditional method—more interactive, more participatory, and more collaborative than listening to a lecture while hastily scribbling notes. Additionally, more dynamic classroom designs encourage greater student participation. Picture a learning space where everyone is seated around a table facing each other, as opposed to rows of students sitting isolated at individual desks, facing an authority figure. By eliminating the back row, teachers can better ensure that all students are engaged in learning. It also sends a strong message that all members of the class are valued equally.

One type of classroom activity that utilizes this learning space effectively is the Socratic seminar. Usually taught in History and English/Language Arts classes, Socratic seminars place the emphasis on students’ thoughts and ideas regarding historical events and works of literature. During these structured discussions, the teacher steps back and the students lead the way. They listen and respond to each other’s ideas, and construct meaning on their own. The activity emphasizes intellectual inquiry and critical thinking skills.

Through these types of classroom activities, students learn how to collaborate with one another and become intrinsically motivated learners in the process. Compared to “traditional” school tasks - for example, all students being blanket-assigned a set of discussion questions or math problems to complete individually—this level of student involvement can reap much greater rewards.

1. Create ongoing projects.

The ongoing project plays an essential role in promoting mastery. The key to ongoing projects is to provide plenty of project choices that enable students to demonstrate what they are learning. Many objectives or standards can be met in one well-crafted project that allows students to decide what the final product looks like. The ongoing project stimulates the workshop environment that is the foundation upon which the student-centered classroom is built.

2. Integrate technology.

In today’s digital world, it doesn’t matter if your classroom is filled with computers; students have them in the palms of their hands. Mobile learning is no longer the wave of the future; it’s the present. Learners will be more engaged in any activity or project if they can choose from the hundreds of amazing, free web tools that provide excellent platforms for presenting, curating, and sharing information. When students have an array of exciting web tools at their disposal, they become eager to participate in almost any class activity.

3. Replace homework with engaging in-class activities.

The research on the effectiveness of homework ends up on both the pro and con sides. Most studies that support assigning homework suggest that it increases grades in class or on tests. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. Measuring achievement with grades and test scores is a false barometer of learning because all the control in these areas is in the hands of the teacher, and there is no place for control in a student-centered classroom. With engaging, ongoing projects that are driven by interactive web tools, students produce more in class, making homework obsolete. Best of all, when not faced with “do-this-and-do-it-my-way” assignments, students become eager to complete the projects that they have created and choose to do schoolwork outside of class. This autonomy breeds learning for the sake of learning—one of the best parts of the student-centered classroom.

4. Eliminate rules and consequences.

The workshop environment of a bustling student-centered classroom encourages a pursuit of learning that allows little time for disruption. Explain that your learning environment is built on mutual respect and a quest for knowledge, so there won’t be time for any behavior issues. Keep activities engaging, and behavior will never be an issue.

5. Involve students in evaluation.

Numbers, percentages, and letters on activities, projects, and report cards say little about learning. A student-centered environment thrives through the use of narrative feedback that follows a specific formula and encourages students to resubmit assignments that do not demonstrate mastery. This approach relies on reciprocal feedback between the student and the teacher. Involving students in conversations about their learning not only builds trust, but also helps them become critics of their own work, which is a remarkable part of the amazing student-centered classroom.