The Importance of Choice
The Importance of Choice
by Mackenzee Clouse
Take time to think about what this quote means either in general or what it means to you individually. We are able to help show our students that our choices and actions can make a difference. "A teacher must become more knowledge than ever about how issues of race, class, gender, and difference are being negotiated out in the world, and must tie readings and writing to perpetuating or resisting." Showing students readings that they can relate to will help them know that if they feel strongly about something it can be changed.
Four Guiding Principles For Classrooms
- Intention: Students will develop intention and a sense of purpose only if, much of the time, they are allowed to choose what to read and write and inquire into.
- Dialogue: They need to be able to respond to things they read or see, and to learn to stay open to multiple diverse perspectives
- Collaboration: Students and teacher will be able to think and work together.
- Inquiry: Teachers create an environment intended for curiosity to be open for more questions to be asked.
The community of the classroom can say a lot with how your students decide to behave. Allowing students to work with you on creating expectations and rules will help with keeping them focused and behave during the school day. If they students help make the rules they are less likely to not follow them because they are partially their rules. Allowing students to have a voice and choices in your classroom will help them want to be there.
Questions:
2. What kind if classroom environment do you wish to have for your future classroom? What would you like it to least be like?
3. Do you think allowing students to have a voice in the classroom is beneficial or harmful?
4. How important is choice in the classroom when it comes to students' learning? Why do you think this?
In response to your 4th question, I think that choice in the classroom is extremely important when it comes to students’ learning. As cited in Worthy, “when students are interested in what is being taught, and when they have access to materials that interest them, learning, motivation, and attitudes improve” (1996, p.488). I believe this to be true as well. Just from these past two semesters of working with students, I have seen this work. When I have let students have choice in what we do, they tend to be more engaged in what they are learning. Simple choices even show similar results, just by allowing students to choose what strategy they want to use when approaching a problem, or letting them pick what pages in a book they want to read, they become more engaged and thus they are more active in their learning. This semester I have been trying to implement student choice more in my activities, and it has proven to be effective so far. In literacy field, I have a student who likes to sing and dance. We were reading a book about the election and one of my activities was to create a campaign slogan, however, because I knew that she liked singing, I gave her the choice of creating a song (like a jingle), or to create a more traditional campaign that is similar to presidential campaign slogans. My student chose to create a song and through her song she was able to explain character traits of herself that make her a good leader. I think that by giving students choice, it allows them to feel that their opinion matters, that what they want to do is important, and it allows them to have creativity sometimes. It also shows students that learning is a collaborative effort too and that it can be effective without mimicking the banking model.
ReplyDeleteCitation:
Worthy, J. (1996). Removing Barriers to Voluntary Reading for Reluctant Readers: The Role of School and Classroom Libraries. National Council of Teachers of English, 73(7),483-491.
Olivia, I love how you chose to implement student choice into your lesson! I think how you gave her the option to do a song, knowing singing was an interest of hers, helps your student not only feel more engaged and active in her learning, but also lets her know that you're invested in building a relationship with her and are creating lessons that are meaningful to her. I think this relates back to Pose Wobble Flow Chapter 5, and how it talks about fostering students choice as a caring curator teacher (Garcia & O'Donnell-Allen, 2015). This chapter of the book also talks about cultivating students passions through texts and lessons, and by incorporating singing into the lesson, I think you have done this well! I look forward to hearing other ways you incorporate student choice in your lessons!
DeleteGarcia, A., & O'Donnell-Allen, C. (2015). Pose Wobble Flow A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literacy Instruction.
I agree with you that student choice is essential to increasing the engagement of students during learning activities. Students, analogous to any other human beings, exhibit more intrinsic motivation when autonomy is provided in the activities they are performing. Moreover, I believe this ideology is commonplace in our current stage in life since in the college realms, students who pick a major based on their interests or passion, often manifest more interests, engagement, and motivation while completing these related courses than during their general courses, which students are merely required to take. Therefore, I am not surprised when elementary school students, such as your field student, demonstrate more engagement in activities that allows leeway for choice on how to complete activities. Furthermore, this option of choice may potentially become more important to younger students’ motivation because elementary students probably do not perceive the extrinsic reward of a financially fulfilling occupation possibly outweighing the risk of a potential intrinsic rewarding but often finically unstable occupations, such as an artist, to the same extent as college students. Personally, through even providing small choices, such as allowing my field students to draw a picture of their answer rather than write them out, I have noticed that my student has become increasingly more engaged in our reading activities. Moreover, when I worked with my kindergarten student last year, I recognize that this student loved working on math problems when I allow him to shoot paper basketballs in a bucket to work on subtracting word problems. Furthermore, I believe this autonomy provided had an impact on my student because this kindergarten remembered me and the activities we did last year. Additionally, through working summer camp this summer is I really noticed the true power of children’s choice because sometimes parents would place their kid in a particular camp for the week that went against the option the child wanted. Although I recognize that the parents may have made their selections based on the different camp prices, these children would more noticeably throughout the week become disengaged during the activities than the other children who did have a choice of their camp. Furthermore, this understanding is important because the children who were placed in a camp that they did not desire frequently caused more issues throughout the week. Moreover, this is analogous to students who become disengaged in the classroom and start exhibiting less than favorable behaviors when autonomy is removed from the learning environment. Educators who do not provide student autonomy in the classroom can only blame themselves when students become disengaged by neglecting the human nature that intrinsic motivation increase in activities of one’s interests and choice.
DeleteWhen thinking about your fourth question, I believe it is very important to provide choice for students in the classroom. By allowing students to have choice in what they're reading, not only will they be more engaged in the activity, but they might also feel a sense of ownership over their learning. This relates to the part of the Removing Barriers article, where the teacher thought about the parallel between students disinterest in reading compared to her own reading habits, and discussed how in both situations it was extremely important to provide choice for students when reading to increase enjoyment as even she herself did not like to read when she was told she had to read specific books (Worthy, 1996). I think we have all probably experienced this ourselves as well. I remember when I was younger, the bookmobile would come to school and we would be able to choose any book we wanted to read for the month and all of the students in my class would be very excited, but when we were all given the same book and told to read it, that excitement was no longer there. I think as we have all experienced something similar in school, we realize how important choice is for student engagement, and will hopefully find ways to incorporate student choice not only in text for student reading but throughout other lessons as well.
ReplyDeleteWorthy, J. (1996). Removing Barriers to Voluntary Reading for Reluctant Readers: The Role of Schools and Classroom Libraries. 483-492.
Ilyssa, I really liked how talked about the teacher's lack of excitement when she had to read something she had no choice in! If we don't like to do it, then how come we get so surprised when students express disinterest in it as well? In addition, if educators make their dislike obvious, students can pick up on that and develop a negative outlook on learning. I also really liked your mention of the bookmobile. I have never heard of that before, but that is a cool way to make choosing a book more fun! The choices we make affect our points of view, so what we choose to read is important in shaping who we turn out to be.
DeleteI think choice is the most important aspect of education. Everyday. educators teach students to listen, participate, obey, etc., but students have the choice to act on it. The quote that you chose, "But until a person can say deeply and honestly "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise." really resonates the importance of teaching choice to our students by giving them voices in our classrooms. The four guiding principles for classrooms (intention, dialogue, collaboration, and inquiry) could be used to give students a voice. Due to their personal experiences, cultural beliefs, individual personalities, etc., I could see why giving students a voice could be seen as harmful. For example, hate and anger could find a way into the classroom. However, having opposing views and finding a way to respect each other's perspectives is essential in teaching students to be critical thinkers. Moreover, the quote, "Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny." by Tyron Edwards makes it apparent that by incorporating students' voices in the classroom, it influences their thoughts, leading to the motivation of their choices, and therefore, affecting their own outcomes. Which is why I believe choice is so crucial in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteGreat reply Lynne! I agree with you about choice being so important in education. Students need to know that they have a choice in their education and that they can act on the choice that they are given. Choice is so important for students because it's there education.
DeleteGreat blog, Mackenzee, I especially loved the quote! One piece of advice that always stuck with me was from one of the first classrooms I volunteered in with one of the best teachers I've had the privilege of working with. She taught first grade when I was with her and I can think of examples of her touching all of the guiding principles of classrooms you covered.
ReplyDeleteShe said to me, "I've found that giving students as much responsibility they can handle is the best thing for a classroom." She had students read off the snack list, students who would change the date on the calendar, line leaders, table group material checkers, etc. I loved how her students were (to an extent) in charge of their own classroom and their own learning environment, and that's how I want my classroom to be. She would bring in news stories that she thought would be important to the class and read to them, and the students would share their thoughts on what was happening. While I was with her, she brought in a story about lead in fidget spinners (which many of her students have). After explaining how lead can be a dangerous material, the class decided to write a letter to a government official (I can't remember which one) about the lead in the spinners. She took that opportunity to review sentence structure with the class and they drafted sentences for the letter together -- complete with commas, capitalization, punctuation, etc. I love how she ran her classroom and I love how eager her students were to learn with her, especially while writing this letter.
Great blog post Mackenzee! I liked your question 3, do you think allowing students to have a voice in the classroom is beneficial or harmful? I think that allowing the students to have a voice is important in the classroom because the students need to have a voice. As a future teacher I have learned that it is very important that everyone has a voice including the students and teachers. The students voice's are so important because they need to be vocal and have a say in there education. Ultimately, this is the students education and we have to be respectful of them and their thoughts. I believe it's beneficial because it's their education, they live in their community and they are humans too. It is beneficial for everyone to have a voice.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Jessica, it is important that our students share their voice so that students feel included in the classroom. I also agree with your point over students need to have a voice in their education. I am glad that we both share the same views on education and other things.
DeleteGreat blog post! To answer questions 3, I believe it is very beneficial for students to have a voice in the classroom. Their voice is important, and should have a space in the classroom to share their opinions. Though some opinions will need to be respected, the classroom will be set up as a safe place where students and freely share their opinions. It is beneficial for students to have a voice, so we as their teacher know the views of our students.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important for students to have a voice in the classroom. If students are silenced then they may feel like you don't care about them and they would maybe feel hostile and not want to be around you. They most likely would lose respect for you as a teacher and not want to listen to you or learn from you. When students have a voice you will get them to open up so you can learn about them as a person, not just as a student. They will become involved in the classroom and be able to participate in the community atmosphere of the classroom. They will also feel safe and respected and no that you aren't judging them like so many other adults and peers often do.
ReplyDeleteMackenzee, to answer your 3rd question, I believe students should have a voice in the classroom. It would be beneficial to the student and to the classroom environment. This way, both teacher and students are leaders in the classroom and because they are involved in the classroom, they will be involved in their own learning. I think it won't be perfect all the time, but as a teacher, conversation must be facilitated and re-directed as needed so it is a productive conversation as sometimes it can go off topic. Either way, the classroom will become a safe space where students feel they can share and be leaders since it is done so often instead of once in a while.
ReplyDeleteTo answer question number one, I feel the quote signifies taking responsibility for the choices you make regardless of the outcome they produce. Some decision are good, some aren't. But you have to learn to own the choices you make and make your next decision accordingly. If something doesn't go the way you plan, then you have to own it and find a way to fix it, not change your mind altogether because there is no going back.
ReplyDeleteThis is something we will encounter a lot as teachers. We will be responsible for making on the spot decisions that may, or may not, pan out. and that is okay. Part of being a teacher, is learning. Learning what our students need. Learning how to handle unforeseeable situations. Learning to build difficult relationships. Learning to be advocates. We have to learn to own our decisions in all of these aspects and learn from them.
Do you think allowing students to have a voice in the classroom is beneficial or harmful?
ReplyDeleteIt is beneficial to let them have a voice because they should be allowed to speak up for themselves or for others at times. If they feel what they have to say is important then the teacher should be respectful and listen to what they have to say. However, there should be guidelines to them speaking in class and to respect their peers. If a student can't follow these rules then they won't be allowed as much freedom to speak because they are unable to respect others.