It's Time to Take a Risk

Illustrated by iFp Mentor Julia

Our current education system has been around for a long time. It was created to teach factory workers to be punctual and do their work the correct way. With so much innovation, potential, and need for creativity going on nowadays, doesn’t that educational system sound like the opposite of what we need?

Illustrated by Teen Creative Ashi

What’s needed

Students, teachers, school administration, and the general public are incorporated into this topic. We all have things we want to have implemented in the educational system, as well as things that we need to be changed.

We, as students, think that the relationships between students and educators is crucial for an engaging learning experience. These relationships are important because it gives students a sense of individuality instead of being a number on a report card. In order for them to show their individuality, they should be given room to demonstrate their creativity. The people who are able to provide that space are the educators, administrators, and anyone else who has the influence to make those crucial decisions. Additionally, educators who build positive relationships with students and teach using the best of their abilities will give students a more enjoyable learning experience.

Standardized tests showcase how well we can memorize and understand information for that grade level. Standardized testing does not focus on the creative mindsets that we need. Students have the potential to show educators and politicians, who are the people that decide what they learn, that they can be creative. Being creative is an important 21st century skill. Our job opportunities are being based around creative thinking.

Teachers are the ones that help us get prepared for life, and teaching is one of the most important professions in the world. What teachers want from their students is respect. We need to appreciate the fact that they are here to teach us and are here for us. The way to solve these types of problems is not to just raise the salaries of educators and administrators. As said before, engagement between students and educators does not just relate to students, but relates to educators as well, as they are the ones that are also in the classrooms, and the leading the engagement.

Because the times are changing, society as we see is changing rapidly. The growth mindset of innovation is becoming more important than the fixed mindset of industrialization. Since the creation of computers and the internet, the whole world is practically at our fingertips. It has gotten significantly easier to acquire information and because of that, the world doesn’t really care about what you know anymore, but what you can do with that knowledge. Our education system today was not set up to teach students how to use information, but only how to make sure it’s credible for a specific assignment. It’s very easy to find information on the internet, but to synthesize the information that we get and to create our own ideas with it is not exactly what schools are focusing on. It should be, if we want to make the way we learn more relevant to our society today.

Illustrated by Teen Creative Ashi

What does it all mean?

While there are many different types of learning styles in the world, we want to first focus on three small but impactful learning strategies/styles to be tried out in our schools. We’ve seen these learning strategies being used in other public schools around the country, and they have had many positive effects and impacts on the schools without tampering too much with the system that already exists.

The socratic seminar is one of the strategies that we would like to implement. We’ve actually experienced something similar to this in our schools, as socratic circles. However, the biggest difference between these two activities was that in the one we wanted to implement, there was significantly less teacher involvement. The students are the ones that are left to discuss what they want and lead the conversation. They get a voice in the conversation instead of being told what to say and answer. Little rulesets like saying ‘I understand’ instead of ‘I agree’ help students learn to have a conversation, respect, and listen to other people and their opinions. Additionally, this gives teachers a way to see students shine in different ways from just standardized testing, writing on paper, or talking to the teacher one on one.

Student-led conferences can make a huge impact in the relationships between students, teachers, and parents. This would be in place of parent-teacher conferences. Students are the ones to lead the conversation around their school life, whereas in a traditional parent-teacher conference, parents and teachers would discuss the students’ grades and behavior without the student themselves being involved or knowing what exactly the student is going through in the class. The students would take time to reflect on the work that they did instead of throwing it away once they get a grade. They will then present some works to the parents and teachers. Not only does it improve the student-parent-teacher relationships, but it improves the way students are able to present their work by using their voices instead of being just on paper or on the screen. Students can focus on what they need to grow and make them present in the conversation about how they do in class.

Passion projects provide an environment for creative thinking while allowing students to develop and work on their own projects. Often, students relate their projects to subjects that are relevant to real world jobs and skills. Passion projects give students one day a week to do an independent project on something they are passionate about without restrictions. By letting them research their passions, they can become experts in what they are interested in, while also finding more passions they can hold on to. During the research step, students take notes about what they are researching. This can also be a record of students actively participating, and these notes can help teachers learn what the students are interested in. The students can then turn this research into presentations, galleries, demonstrations, or videos. This helps students with their presentation skills, while allowing them to express themselves in the way that they are most comfortable. This type of project can be adapted for various learning levels, and is encouraged by other teachers who have tried this method before.

Illustrated by iFp Teen Creative Jeanne

The Next Steps

In order for us to move forward with more innovative teaching styles, we need to remember that it’s good to take risks. The types of tests and grades that we have now either tell us that we pass or fail. This sets up students to always think in grade point averages and not in comprehension. Even if we do everything 100%, it doesn’t mean that we can fully understand what we learned. Life isn’t like that. We need to take risks in life. If we have the fear of failing, then we’ll never be able to learn!