Shifts in Understanding of Learning and School

This is our 2nd week of our self-directed learning inquiry. We continue to have interesting conversations about learning. One thing that surprises me is how much more time I have to work one on one with students. Because all students are busy and productive, I have time to sit down for extended periods with individuals and small groups to discuss their learning. What I'm finding is that the quality of self-assessment and descriptive feedback is better. We have time to converse about goals, challenges, road-blocks, successes and discoveries.

What I am curious about is whether students have experienced  a shift in their understanding of learning and school. I asked them to write about it.

"I have experienced a shift in my learning. I have never actually had to pick a topic before.  I was so stumped, I did not know what to pick. We had the freedom to pick anything, but I stuck with something educational (fast food). I did not do nails, cooking or art; I made a presentation on prezi, what teachers would expect. On the 2nd week I got creative, I chose The Art of Cooking. Instead of making a presentation, I got more creative so I baked fairy cakes and I talked about the art of baking. We're so used to teachers directing our learning and telling us what to do, that we lose focus on creativity and what we would like to present and how. We should get that little chance to explore on what we want to learn."

"I think school is more comfortable now that we are doing i.i. because I feel I'm learning more about what I want to learn instead of writing about random stuff I don't want to learn about.  This is challenging me because I have to set my own goals, teach myself everything and tell myself how I'm going to do it.  I think I need to work on my organization of my time because last week I think I would have done better if I had planned my time out better."

"Yes, I believe I have experienced a shift in learning. It's been affected in a positive way, and I feel that in the future, people will be advanced learners because of this program.  Having no instruction and total freedom is really nice and it teaches us to figure out by ourselves.  This is then giving us skills we will need when we are older but giving it to us much earlier.  I feel like if this program becomes major in the future, children will learn to have skills such as time management, self-management, learning how to properly search information on the internet and much more.  These are all the things we'll need when we're older. Kids in the future will be more aware than kids today. This experience I find is a very good one and I enjoy it very much."

"I do think my understanding of school and learning has shifted because I think that I understand why independent learning is so important. It's important because if we learn to be independent then we can learn to do things by ourselves instead of always relying on other people all the time."

"Yes, I have experienced a shift in my understanding of learning and school because when I start with a topic I get to choose, a topic that I enjoy more than what a teacher would tell me to do, this learning makes me have more confidence in my skills with school and confidence for anything else that I have to do on my own.  You can see all the different personalities from different people because they are working on their own and finding new ways to learn on their own.  This is really a way of learning that takes thick skin.  In other words you have to be able to control your time and get a decent amount of work into your final product; you have to be able to research well and to have good skills with presenting to groups of people. This is personally a great way to learn because  you get to learn so much more than just what you are learning on your topic."

"I think my learning experience has been affected quite a bit. Being able to learn with no REAL boundaries and no REAL instruction has been very interesting and a great way to learn that you don't NEED a teacher to be taught. It has (in my opinion) taught me that learning things on my own is just as important as learning things OTHER people think is important. I now know skills that I may have never known or never tried to learn, and these skills may help me in the future.  I can definitely see this being the new way of learning in the future for students of all ages, with a FEW boundaries, of course. I hope this way of learning continues on for a long, long time."

"This method of learning is superior in nearly every way. It has changed the understanding I have about what school can actually be, because I now know that school can offer a lot more freedom than I previously thought.  The freedom gives students the option to learn about what they want to learn about."

"Yes, I like the type of learning better because it is more interesting.  I actually want to learn more about my topic because my topic is something I see and do every day and I want to learn how to do it better or learn what is better for me to do. Because I want to know so badly, I work harder and when I do I'll get better grades."

"Yes, I have experienced a shift in my school learning in many ways. One is that we have total freedom to do what we want, why we want and how we want. I think this gets students engaged in their work. Also, I find it is very independent and if we have a questions there is nothing anyone else can do to help you, not even the teacher and I think this develops a great sense of independent learning for us which is important in life. I think this is a very less stressful way of learning because you set the criteria, there is no certain way of the teacher grading you. I have also noticed that with this, if we find something interesting, we can check it out but with the certain criteria, there is no time to look at anything else. My old understanding of school is when you sit down and the teacher tells you what you are going to do and everything is taught in class. Now I think of it as a place to learn things that really interest me."

"I think that by experiencing this way of learning I have been affected in a few ways. One way is that by having all the freedom of using every possible resource around the school, I have been influenced to use every tool in order to help me with research. For example, before I might have used a book or a textbook, but after the independent inquiry idea, I have a wider understanding of the tools (a computer is one example) that I can use in order to learn in a way I might enjoy better.

However, I also have another point of view on learning. This is that I am just used to being taught by a teacher that has been taught that before and has a way of teaching that is not as grey and boring as being taught by reading a book that has the same information but doesn't explain it in the way the teacher (who in this case is Mrs. Siwak) does.

At the end of the day I remind myself of how I have been taught my whole life but then I realize that people aren't always going to be there to teach me these things. I have to do a hands on experience of everything eventually. To me this seems like the way children should learn because if they are taught the way that we are used to being taught, they will eventually become confused when they enter the real world and are faced with situations where they should have been taught like this. This is my opinion of independent inquiry"

This next student knew she wasn't comfortable with independent inquiry, but couldn't explain what bothered her. After discussing this with her last week, I pointed out that she needed to figure out what she values in a learning environment. This week she reached clarity.

"No, I have not experienced a shift in learning. I still think of school as a place where teachers are supposed to teach you everything, and you can always go to them and ask them a question about your work and get an answer. Not where you pick a subject and research it and share with your peers. (School is ) a place where you can go up and get a straight forward "yes" or "no" answer instead of "What do you think?" because it's your work. I liked the idea of being able to choose your own idea to research, but once I did it I realized that it wasn't the best idea. I prefer to have a project with boundaries, but you have the freedom on how to present your information like prezi, linoit or powerpoint!"