What motivates students to learn?  It's inspiring to see my students take control of their own learning.  Over the last two days students stepped up and initiated learning in my classroom.

Student: "Can we go see this guest speaker?"
A student walked into my business law classroom and explained that a 92 year old Holocaust survivor was speaking to the Junior social studies classes.  He made a great point - there wasn't going to be many more opportunities to hear a man speak about these experiences.  So I thought about it - how amazing was it that students wanted to take on this rare opportunity to learn.

Me: "You have a choice"
If we go to the speaker, there will be less review of the material we've learned for the next test.  There won't be any time for activities so what's left will be lectures.  If we stay in class there are review activities, debates and lecture.  It's your vote.  They voted to go to the speaker and I was really proud of them.  Sure it crossed my mind if they were just wanting to get out of the classroom but when we sat in the theater it was silent and the students were just as engaged listen to this elder with many years of wisdom as they were with the motivational speaker last week with his comedic twist.  REFLECTION: spontaneous learning moment = inspiring

Me: "Who has a smart phone?"
I tried something new today in my business law class.  I was going over new vocabulary like merger, conglomerate, asset acquisition, and franchises.  The definitions were on the guided note sheet and below that I left a space for examples.  I asked, "Who has a smart phone?"  I had seven students raise their hands.  I asked them to take them out and I wish I had a picture of their reaction - it was of shock!  I asked if they would volunteer to look up the vocabulary they had in front of them and search examples to share in the class.  What happened next was very cool!  As they found their examples they shared it with the class.  Students without phones started asking more questions and so the search continued to find more answers and more examples.  Students that don't normally volunteer where speaking, students were sharing their prior knowledge and the classroom became a learning community.  REFLECTION:  Great example of technology in the classroom!

Me: "Who's Judy?"
I was inspired by a blog post I read by Clarence Fisher where his students and students at another school collaborated in a Google Doc about the recent news of the tsunami in Japan.  It was inspiring to me how these students took control of their own learning and collected web links, videos, and facts about the recent news.  In my management class we are finishing up the management unit and going to start talking about leadership.  I showed them a video The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink  (which they LOVED by the way).  (Make sure if you go to this link you find the right video.  I linked to this versus Youtube or TED talks so you can see all of Daniel Pink's videos.)  I pre-setup the google doc and set invitations to all my student.  Before going into the computer lab I showed them the google doc and explained the concept of this collaborative learning space.  The time spent in the lab was really fun to see.  Some students gravitated towards videos, others went to pictures, and a few others went to find facts.  Some of it was top surface level and I wish they read and thought more versus a copy and paste.  But at the same time they got really engaged in the subject matter.  I asked them afterwards what they thought and they all gave me thumbs up.  Some students were excited for what they found and many students got really excited to start learning more about leadership.  To top it off -  we had fun too.  So who's Judy?  That's exactly what I asked during the IM chat my class was having during the Google Doc session.  Judy was this random person they popped into the IM conversation - I played along and we all had fun with the joke - Who's Judy?

REFLECTION:  Teachable moments = student driven learning = why I became a teacher!

Follow Up: High School Business Management

My goal in this blog is to write about inspiring moments I experience and often that's seen in my classroom.  I teach business education at the high school level.  A few months ago I posted about revising my management curriculum from first semester to second semester.  In this class, we've partnered with Market Day to run a student business. 

Try, Try Again:
With its ups and downs, I changed the structure of our business and how the students would reflect on the experience.  I truly believe that the structure improved and so did the learning process.  But after running the business for one month, the students approached our student President about their desire to stop running Market Day.  I gave my pep talk.  I felt like I was a coach giving a pep talk before a big game.  I explained how team's watch tapes of their games, analyze what they could of done better and go into the next game to improve. That's why we are going to do Market Day for two months to see how we can improve. I met with the department managers and they expressed their concern.  They felt that they got everything out of the Market Day experience they could.  They were interested in learning other management and leadership content AND they had a lot of ideas on how to make that happen.  I gave them props for approaching me.  I gave them props for taking responsibility for their learning.  And after my students spent a month reading the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens I decided to put myself in their shoes.  Even with the changes I made it came down to purpose - the students didn't feel as connected to the cause (business model) despite all attempts at improving the structure of the activity.  We had a class meeting, I listened, I decided... it was time cease and desist.

REFLECTION: It's OK To Give Up:
Actually I don't really consider it giving up.  It's all the way you look at it.  I tried something new and took a risk - I'm a better teacher for it.  There are a lot of great parts to the concept of running the business in a management class.  And there's a lot of great things I learned along the way.  One being that I think it's a great experience for students to have an opportunity to reflect about what they learned.  I believe self-reflection is a life long skill that helps anyone become more successful.

Do you reflect on your experiences?  My motto is live better, do better and just be better!  Let me ask you this - how has reflection helped you "be better"?