It was a privilege to work with 22 educators at #EduCon today. I’m particularly grateful that they chose to attend the session considering that Chris Lehmann and Zac Chase were presenting at the same time.
The teaser:
If extended, self-propelled, challenging learning experiences are critical preparation for life, what do we mean by “preparation”? How can we know whether students have learned how to learn–enough to thrive in the next stage of their education? How can we help them document and demonstrate their readiness?
The work:
- Please sit with 3 people you did not know before yesterday.
- Think of a significant experience from your youth that helped prepare you for later life.
- Now think of an occasion when you saw a student have the experience that you got into education to help students have.
- Private work time: Please answer these three questions about the experiences you selected.
- What elements of that experience made it good preparation for later life?
- For which aspects of “later life” did it prepare you (or the student)?
- What changes in you (or the student) could be seen by others at the time?
- Team task: Please Organize the team’s collection of responses into groups or sets that go together.
- Team task: Consider the sets you made, and as a group, consider: What models and milestones can we hold up for students to help them envision, demonstrate, and document their preparedness?
- Individual task: Write three sentences about what’s on your mind as a result of the past hour of conversation.
A lot of intense thinking and talking went on in those groups. Not all the responses were recorded, but several were, and you can read them here. In my opinion the best stuff is in the final thoughts at the bottom.
Work in Pencil 