Are Your Students Coachable?
Have you ever heard teachers complain that their students resist learning?
They say:
My students won’t practice their skills, even though I tell them it’s important for their life.
My class doesn’t pay attention when we go over a test. Don’t they want to learn from their mistakes?
My kids are bored with this unit, but I tell them we just have to get through it.
If my students see a lot of words on the page, they give up before we get started.
Most of my kids just do enough to get by.
When I give students a chance to revise and resubmit, they say a passing grade is good enough.
I would love to coach my students, but they just aren’t interested.
Teachers tell me they’re discouraged. What’s happening in their classroom is a far cry from those wistful dreams of making a difference that enticed them into this profession.
They shrug and say, You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink!
But maybe the problem isn’t our students. Maybe it’s not you teachers either. Maybe it’s the way we set up the system. I wonder if it’s even possible for students to be active learners inside a traditional, teacher-centered environment? When curriculum pacing guides dictate the content, when teachers tell students what they have to learn, when teachers dole out information and prescribe methods for students to practice, and when teachers announce guidelines for students to demonstrate their mastery, what’s the role for students? Essentially, they are relegated to a passive “do what you’re told” role. Right?
Where is that excitement for learning that we see in active toddlers and pre-kindergarten kiddos? Don’t you just love to watch those intense little faces scrunch in concentration as they figure out some new challenge in their universe. Then they blaze with delight with each incremental success. We’ve all seen it. What will our traditional educational system do to their enthusiasm for learning?
What do we need to change if we want our students to be coachable? Consider this definition of a coach: “a vehicle that carries you from where you are to where you want to go.” How can we transform our system so that students can pursue a journey where THEY want to go? How can we put the reins into THEIR hands?
Now picture this scene: your students pour into the room, eagerly bombarding you with questions about today’s topic. They share with each other what they’ve already learned from their independent research yesterday and last night into the topic. They lean into groups helping each other develop questions that will take their investigations to a deeper level. Then they meet individually with you, their teacher/ mentor, about their preferences to demonstrate mastery – writing an essay, delivering a presentation, or sharing a creative project. This is student-centered learning. Students use teacher coaching to guide their journey. They have opportunities to chose from learning options and to voice preferences for performance outcomes along the way. They seek feedback on early drafts from their peers and their teachers and use it to revise and improve their mastery.
Classrooms and whole schools like this exist — where students want coaching on a learning path of THEIR CHOICE. You could experiment with student-centered learning within the current parameters of your traditional schedule. OR you could think outside the box with personalized learning. The personalized learning movement is solidly grounded in practices which target developing student responsibility. The intention of personalized learning systems is to put each student into the driver’s seat – to coach him to develop the routine learning habits of a life-long self-starter who takes ownership of his own mastery. What I love best is that students with disabilities are not the only ones learning self-advocacy.
