What You Wish For Your Students

Recently, curriculum expert Steven Weber shared his thoughts on the impact of a bucket list for K-12 students. While the education system has previously focused on teaching students to solve math problems, write quality five-paragraph essays, and learn about the history of the U.S. and the world, some might wonder if there is more they should know when they leave high school. 

Of course math, English, history, and other subjects are important and a foundation for what is to come in students’ lives, but are we teaching them enough of the other skills they will need to know—time management, communication, financial skills, interview skills, etc.? Those are just some of the skills Weber lists in his personal bucket list for K-12 students.

Unfortunately, time isn’t on the side of teachers as they struggle to teach differentiated, personalized lessons to classrooms of over thirty students. To these teachers, a bucket list sounds like a dream or maybe a “nice idea.” But what if it were more than a nice idea? Weber explains

“If educators would commit to a bucket list for students, then there would be an intentional effort to see that more students are 'the total package.' Some students will still possess better reading skills and some students will have a deeper understanding of digital literacy. Some of the seniors will still go to Harvard and Stanford, while a majority will not qualify…Student success should not be left to the decision students make when they come to a fork in the road. Students will make choices for the remainder of their lives and those choices should be based on a solid foundation.”

So, if you could create a bucket list for what your students would know by the time they graduated high school, what would it include? What about a bucket list for the school year?

Fail: How Zeroes Affect Student Performance

You can’t parent every child the same. Almost every book on parenting will tell you that. The same is obviously true for teaching—you can’t teach every student in the same way because every child learns differently.

Yesterday, I read a blog post called, “Here’s what really happens when you give a zero.” Joe Bower, a teacher in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada explained, “The students who are the hardest to educate and the hardest to like, are the ones that already get a steady diet of zeroes, and yet they are the ones who need us the most.”

If educators are striving to differentiate learning, raise the level of understanding, and prepare students for college and career, where does giving zeroes for assignments play into those goals? Regardless of whether a child is the best or worst student in your class, zeroes don’t motivate students to learn or to improve.

Though there may be arguments that giving a student a zero prepares them for the consequences presented in the real world, Mr. Bower says:

“It is very likely that dropouts are the kids we have the most trouble with in the real world, and yet they are the ones who get the most zeroes. If giving zeroes helped prepare dropouts for the real world, why is that they are the ones who have the most trouble living in the real world?”

How do we help the students who already feel like failures? How do we help all of our students?