Freedom of Choice in Education

I recently had an article published in the NELMS Midlines Newsletter and wanted to make (a slightly abridged version) available to folks who are not NELMS members. Hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!

In schools these days many believe there isn’t much room for choice when there are so many standards that need to be taught and so many state and national tests checking to make sure they are being taught. So when students are given the opportunity to choose what they would learn, they will most certainly jump at the opportunity.

For the last month and a half of the school year, I decided to test out a more personalized method for teaching the specific skills each student still needed using content of their choosing. The project proved to be one of the most popular and one of the most motivating and successful of the year with most students opting to challenge themselves instead of taking the easy route, which could be considered typical of 8th graders in May and June.

The idea was that with a personalized curriculum, it would be possible to determine what skills still needed to be learned by a student or groups of students (such as constructing a realistic story line, properly using simile/metaphor, connect text to self/world, etc.) and then have them work towards acquiring those skills while learning about a subject they are especially interested in.

As a student at the University of New Hampshire taking graduate level classes in education I had one professor who stood out to me, Heather Barker. Her class was the only class where, as students, we were given a skill we needed to learn and then given somewhere between four and eight options for the work that we would like to create to show that we had in fact learned the necessary skill. This made a profound impact on my teaching because it made me realize that it is possible to personalize education and although it means more work in the short term, it can mean a great deal more interest and success from the students in the long term.

Students were given the opportunity to pick a subject that was of interest to them and then together we worked on creating what it was they would be working towards accomplishing through learning about this topic. In this manner students were given pretty much free reign to choose a topic that really interested them. There wasn’t a great deal of brainstorming that needed to go on about topic ideas, once the first student decided on unicycling and students found out that I approved it, they almost all had an idea immediately for something that they were hoping to learn.

Some of the projects from the sixty-eight students in the grade included learning American Sign Language, writing and promoting a short novel, leaning to play lacrosse, communicating with animals, fly tying for fly fishing, and learning to ride a unicycle. The skills being learned ranged from direction writing to presenting to note-taking to writing a logical story line, and everything in-between.
Allowing students to choose something they were interested in doing, and then having them decide what it is they wanted to accomplish by the end of the prescribed time put the real power in the hands of the students. For example, one student who chose to study American Sign Language, decided on writing an instruction manual teaching the alphabet for other students to reference and this student also signed a full song to the class. This student’s area of need was two fold; instructional writing and presenting.

We worked together to decide what her final product would be and we figured that the manual would prove her instructional writing ability while her demonstration would strengthen her presenting skills. The student was given enough choice to feel truly invested in the project and I still had enough of a voice to let her know what I felt they still needed to work on. I completed this process with all of the 8th graders and there was not a single student who disagreed with what I felt they needed to work on as well.

Some students were wary of the idea, thinking that it might be unreasonable to allow them to choose their own topic of study. Erica, who chose to learn the guitar said, “To be honest, when the choice project was initially introduced I thought (Mr. Fersch) was a little crazy. I didn’t think that every student would actually be able to learn something that they wanted to learn, but I liked the idea that we were controlling our education. Although I had my doubts, I was excited to begin the process.” As the process went on though, Erica commented about how happy she was that she was believed in enough to try to learn something of her choosing.

For students such as Erica it was a welcome opportunity to really challenge themselves, a genuine in-class enrichment opportunity. Students who tended to be above grade level in their reading and writing tended to choose more artistic projects (music and performing arts primarily) and were able to intelligently incorporate writing and reading into an area of their life that they might either be lacking knowledge about or have a strong thirst for knowledge in.

As a part of this project there were an unprecedented number of community members who volunteered their time and talents to help students out including a fly fishing expert, a local actress, and even three members of the UNH Women’s Lacrosse team. This is a perfect opportunity to garner community interest and support. Next year I know to contact parents or other community members such as participants in the local senior center, to see what skills they might have that might be usable in the classroom when this project rolls around.

One volunteer, who is in his seventies, was delighted to be invited to the school to share his love of fly fishing. He worked with 3 students, but one in particular, bringing supplies to tie flies. “This was a great opportunity for me to listen to the young men and share a personal interest with them. I loved the idea that they are learning English skills while doing something I know they will enjoy.”

The project certainly had many aspects I would consider to be works-in-progress; there were students who even when given the opportunity to choose their own topics for learning had a hard time picking one, or staying with one when they finally did make the choice. A small handful of students were clearly not used to the freedom or responsibility and when the class broke apart on a daily basis to work independently, in small groups, or with my help, they would tend to either just sit and wait for one-on-one assistance or not complete much work.

This project also requires a tremendous amount of time and effort on the teacher’s part as it is not possible to just make a format for it that you could use year-in, year-out. The aspect of choice is integral to the project and as such a personalized course of study related to the topics would be impossible (because not only with the interests change, so will the needs).

Grading was another aspect of the project which took a tremendous amount of time and effort on my part because an individual plan had to be created for each student as to what they were planning to be learning. As a result it wasn’t just sixty-eight sets of directions for how to potentially go about learning something, it was one hundred thirty six sets of directions, one half about a language arts skill or skill set, and the other half about a topic of interest the student chose. Their writing component though was graded using our schools determined writing rubric which made at least that aspect of grading easier.

For all of the hard work, considerable amounts of time used to prepare for it, and for the organized chaos it occasionally created in the classroom, the end results were more than enough as payoff. Almost every student completed and presented a project that they were proud of. Almost every student shared their feeling of being empowered by being given an opportunity to control at least a part of their education. And every student wrote intelligent and insightful reflections about the project and many gave terrific advice on how to make it run more smoothly in another year.

The students’ projects were the topic of conversation on our team. Other teachers and administrators would drop by and ask the students about their progress. The Dean of Students challenged one of the students who was learning to play poker. The principal helped a students thread the sewing machine and watched her create three new outfits. Both were able to attend several of the student presentations.

If, in fact, the goal of organized education is to create lifelong learners, maybe Derek, who chose fly fishing, summed up the project best; “Now that I think about it, I shouldn’t need school to do this. I could have…I should have tried to learn it at home.”

With the projects completed there are more than sixty proof-positive examples that if you give young people an opportunity to have a real say in what they are learning, they are capable of accomplishing amazing things.