Hacking Traditional Education

How to Build an Engaging Student-Centered Classroom

www.hacklearningseries.com

Student-Centered Classrooms

Update Your Strategy and Engage All Learners

This is a system that hits at the heart of why we became educators in the first

place.

­­Laura Springer, Principal Coppell East Middle School

The Problem: Disengaged Students

Students are bored and disengaged. When teachers lecture and distribute yellowed

worksheets and bubble tests, students shut down. They come to class with an array of

issues outside of school that can inhibit their interest learning. Old­school teaching

methods simply don’t work in the 21st century. Students want and need to be involved.

Isn’t it time that we get out of their way and put students at the center of the learning?

The Hack: Create Student-Centered Classrooms

Many educators and parents confuse “student­centered” with disorganized and chaotic.

What makes student­centered classrooms successful is the sense of autonomy and

independence they instill in learners. Students are distracted or disinterested in

traditional teaching strategies, which create passive learning environments that are

teacher driven. Today’s learner wants to be active. He wants to talk, to move, to use

technology, to create, and to share. The best way to engage learners and eliminate

disruption and distraction is to move teachers to the side and students to the center.

And it’s not as difficult as one might think.

Love Hack Learning? Here are 10 Quick Fixes for Every School

What You Can Do Tomorrow

1. Ask students how they want to learn. Consider a unit of study and a standard

or learning outcome you must teach. Invite students to brainstorm ways they can

learn the material and demonstrate what they’ve learned. After a brief period of

individual brainstorming, create small groups so they can share their ideas.

2. Discuss what barriers exist. For example, if students want to use the Internet

to search for information on a new topic and you have no computers available,

consider alternative methods of learning. Share how you have taught the lesson

in the past and invite students to discuss the pros and cons of that strategy.

Attempt to reach an agreement on what will help students acquire new

knowledge in a way that is both possible and enjoyable.

3. Let them talk. For some teachers this may be easy, but for others it might seem

unreasonable. Many teachers run orderly, quiet classrooms, and the idea of

noise, movement, and what looks like chaos can be daunting. This is a perfect

time to discuss how a student­centered environment differs from a traditional

classroom and how students must respect certain guidelines.

4. Decide on a “Pause­for­Instruction” spot in the room. This is a place that is

used only to stop collaboration and provide instruction for the next transition or

activity. Teach students to recognize this spot and help bring the class back to

silence when you stand silently in that spot. There are many variations on this

strategy: Some teachers clap for attention, and others tell jokes. Construct a

system that works for you and for students. In time, students will realize that

when you stand in this special place, they are to wind down activity and group

conversation and listen for what is next.

5. Have students reflect on what they learned and how they learned it. This

can be written in a blog post or in a notebook, or they can share their reflections

in small groups as you circulate and listen in. If you do have access to computers

or mobile devices, a program like Socrative­­a web site and mobile app,

designed for formative assessment­­you can create short exit tickets that will help

students reflect, while giving you a quick report about what and how students

learned.

A Blueprint for Full Implementation

1. Create pilot teams. Transitioning to a student­centered classroom takes time,

practice, and perseverance. It’s best to work in small teams; these can be

academic teams, departments, or small pilot teams, composed of people who are

comfortable working together and sharing everything that may go wrong. Teams

allow for planning and periodic debriefing, which is a key process to building

capacity.

2. Participate in ongoing professional development. If you are in a very

traditional school, it’s important to find an expert, who can help you work through

the challenges of a progressive learning environment. Consider sending a pilot

team to a nearby school, where practiced educators can be observed. Create a

backchannel that can help you continue the conversation with the experts; Voxer

is an excellent choice.

3. Build a library of student­centered activities and strategies that all teachers

can access. In some cases, these may be subject or grade specific. Many,

though, will be methods and activities that can be applied to most classes. For

example, using a Google Doc for a writing activity and incorporating Kaizena for

verbal feedback is one strategy any teacher can employ when students are

writing essays, reports, or reflections.

4. Involve parents in the transition. Invite parents to come into your

classroom, so they can see what a student­centered classroom looks like.

Share feedback about learning constantly. This can be done with an online grade

book, classroom blog, Twitter feed, or weekly Periscope presentations.

5. Prepare for pushback from students and parents, because there will be

plenty of it. We’ll examine some in the next section, but it will be helpful for you

and your team to take a proactive approach to facing complaints. When Mark first

created his student­centered classroom, which completely eliminated traditional

homework and grades, he knew some parents would complain that their students

needed homework for practice and that they wouldn’t work without the threat of a

bad grade. He prepared for this pushback posting research, blog articles, and

pictures of activities on his classroom website, which all parents could easily

access.

If you like the powerful simplicity of this special report, don’t miss

Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School

Overcoming Pushback

How can students learn without textbooks and worksheets? Textbooks can still be

used at times, but most text lessons and worksheet activities are replaced with

interactive instructional videos, collaboration, and ongoing projects that allow students

to demonstrate mastery of skills and concepts over time.

My student needs homework to practice. All effective practice takes place in the

classroom, under the watchful eye of a teacher. There’s no valid research to support the

need for dozens of similar math problems or fill­in­the­blank vocabulary activities. Out of

class activity should involve enrichment activities that students choose. If they are given

engaging project options, they will be eager to work often to see the project through to

its conclusion.

Reluctant learners or students with disabilities need structure. In rare

circumstances this is true, but in most cases, this population excels even more than

high achievers, when placed in a student­centered classroom. Students with ADHD or

other behavior issues, for example, are prone to disrupt slow­moving, quiet classes that

are driven by lecture and boring workbook activities. They need a little controlled chaos

more than students who are better equipped to sit for long periods of time.

Without daily grades, how do I know a student is learning? The best indication of

learning comes from observing activity and interacting with students. Teachers are

naturally good at asking questions and, with ongoing practice and training, they’ll

become more efficient at sparking the kind of two­way feedback that builds an ongoing

conversation and a narrative record of student achievement.

This kind of class is noisy. It doesn’t look like a place of learning. Good! When

students, especially reluctant learners, don’t feel like they’re in a classroom, they’re

more likely to engage in the kinds of activities that inspire learning.

How will students pass standardized tests if they don’t practice taking tests?

Students in progressive classrooms become independent, self­evaluative, inquisitive

learners, who are eager to show off their skills on tests. They outperform their peers in

traditional classrooms in most cases.

We don’t have enough technology. Discuss methods that encourage interaction,

collaboration, movement, inquiry, and feedback. We didn’t create this kind of classroom.

It’s been around for centuries­­long before the advent of computers and smartphones.

Rely on each other and your experts to help you engage students with more traditional

instructional tools.

If you like the powerful simplicity of this special report, don’t miss

Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School

The Hack in Action

A few years ago, a principal and a few bold teachers at a Texas middle school decided

to completely change the culture of their classrooms. They eliminated most textbook

and workbook activities, discarded the worksheets they’d been using for years, and they

stopped placing numbers on students’ work. They created small groups and allowed

students to collaborate every day­­a strategy that had been foreign to them in the past.

The principal informed parents that this pilot team would rely on progressive,

student­centered practices, which meant less traditional homework, yearlong projects,

tons of independent reading, very few traditional tests, and no grades until report cards.

The results were remarkable.

Test scores skyrocketed, students became intrinsically­motivated, self­evaluative

independent learners. Here’s what the principal, Laura Springer, said:

To leave a system behind that just assigns numerical grading to a student, as opposed

to a growth system that promotes learning, has been life changing. My parents, students

and teachers have been reinvigorated about what true learning brings to each student.

We have seen such growth in our writing and reading from our students. Parents have

been so overwhelmed with the Results Only Learning Environment. It is a change that

we will continue to use as it allows us to facilitate risk taking and challenges. We are sold

on this program and the feedback piece of the system is where we have seen the most

growth. Our educators are improving as teachers as they pinpoint each learner’s needs

and provide them pathways to growth through consistent feedback. Our students are

begging to get into the ROLE classrooms so that they can be active participants in the

learning process. We can step away from the testing environment and standardized

world to be able to really teach our learners with a growth model. This is a system that

hits at the heart of why we became educators in the first place.

What are you waiting for? Use this hack and these strategies and start building your

own student­centered classroom today.

For 10 more amazing hacks like this one,

check out the first book in the Hack Learning Series, available now:

Hacking Education

More Hack Learning Resources

The Hack Learning Series

Brilliant or Insane: Education on the Edge

Free Hack Learning mobile app

Books by Mark Barnes

The #HackLearning Twitter feed

Follow @markbarnes19

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