Understanding What Is Really Important To Our Students

 

    Dr. Michael Wesch uses his one year old son as an example for what he would like to see as far as learning is concerned in the classroom.  Although his son falls off the step over and over again, he continues to get up with a smile on his face, and try again every time.  He explains that education has not been very conducive to producing this kind of attitude of persistence.  Education has been viewed as the dumping of information into the heads of the students, and then assessing how much of it was successfully absorbed by them.  He says that this is what leads students to asking questions like "what is on the test?", and developing an attitude towards education of "getting by".  His approach of beginning to go to lunch with students, and actually talking to them about what they were really concerned about is what opened his eyes to what is really important to these students.  Their main questions were "who am I?", "what am I going to do?", and "Am I going to make it?".  These are serious questions of identity and survival.  These concerns go greatly beyond the superficial question of "what is on the test?".  Dr. Wesch saw these authentic questions as something that needed to become part of learning.  He reinforced the validity of these questions with heart wrenching stories he was told by his students about their own lives.  

    The example that Dr. Wesch gives of a student who stayed up all night gaming, and then slept or seemed disinterested in class is probably something many of us as teachers have experienced in our own classes.  Taking a chance, and diving into what is causing this issue, left Dr. Wesch realizing that this student was interesting, and actually had a lot to offer if challenged in a proper way.  This student turned out to be very successful when challenged in a way that was important to him, and gave him the ability to answer some of the previously discussed meaningful questions for himself.  This student began to see who he was, what he was going to do, and began to realize that he could make it.  I personally think that as a teacher I could not ask for a better result if my students came to this realization because of something I may have been able to help them realize about themselves.

    

    Through stories of his students, animation, and the stubborn refusal of his son to accept failure in his walking attempts, Dr. Wesch tells us how be believes this all comes together to explain how children learn.  Learning should be scaffolded, and failing grades should not just be handed out for those that stumble on the first steps.  Students need to keep going, with the help of the entire class, to make it to the next step.  This will proceed through multiple steps, and at the end of the process would be a final project that would be "worth it".  In his description of his model he stresses that students would help each other achieve the goal.  The journey through the steps of the project would help students realize the answers to the meaningful questions that they have.  Students would realize that they "could do it", they were "going to make it", and learn more about "who they are".  These questions would not be fully answered in one project, but the realization that they were learning answers to these authentically important and meaningful questions would spur them on to continue learning more about themselves, and develop compassion for others through the cooperative learning in the classroom .  Answering these questions about themselves would help give them the tools to weather the storms that happen in life, and make them more confident in knowing that they will make it.  This type of educational experience can lead to students learning a lot about themselves in the process of a project based learning model.