I have been involved with Education chats on Twitter from the beginning. I am a cofounder of #Edchat, so over the years I have gotten to know my way around chats. I delight in the fact that there is now a huge list of chats educators may participate in. The weekly chat list abounds with a variety of areas in education that would interest educators from almost any area of expertise. The best part about Chats is that if nothing is meeting your need, you may start your own chat to address it. Here is the current Schedule for the Weekly Chat List.
Every week #edchat offers up five education Topics to choose from on a poll open to all. The Top vote getter is the 7 PM topic, and the second top vote getter is the Noon Chat Topic. Each week however, I need to come up with five new topics that we have not yet discussed in the last six months. It is a chore. One method I use to come up with #Edchat Topics is to bounce into other education chats to see their topics of concern. Often times I just lurk, or I might interject a provocative question on the Topic to stir things up a bit. On occasion I find myself engaging in the discussion, pulled in by someone else’s provocative comment.
Yesterday, I found a chat that intrigued me, and a tweet from an educator that grabbed me, so I bounced in. The Topic was on student voice and students having more of a say in the decisions about their own learning. This is a very relevant topic in education today. What drew me in was an educator’s tweet:
I dont get overly excited about student control bc theyre still kids. They arent capable of knowing whats best. As a long time educator I recognize this to be partially true, and maybe someone needed to say it, but it is also a condition that we as educators have created in the system that may be in need of change. If we continue to say kids are incapable of knowing what’s best, and do not address it, does that condition immediately and completely change on its own when kids become 18? Although I attempted to engage this educator in a dialogue on this topic, the response was that it was a scary thought and barely a consideration because it was a ridiculous idea. With that response I knew I had nowhere to go, so I left the discussion. If it were an #Edchat I probably would have taken it on, but I am a believer in the idea that there is a 10 percent mark of people who do not change their minds regardless of the facts. This educator had all the symptoms.
This set me to thinking down two paths of thought. First, Why do educators, who are set in their ways, and unwilling to open up to a different perspective, engage in chats. It is good to have opposition to ideas. That opposition both tests and strengthens new ideas. It forces compromise or it debunks ideas that have no real foundation. The idea of the chats is to explore the options, and be open to alternatives. If everything worked, as everything should, there would be no need for chats. Let us recognize that change is inevitable in everything, and that it is better for us to control that change than to have that change control us.
The idea of these chats is to explore what we do, and see if we can do better. The idea of collaborative chats is that the participants are varied and many. This offers us a range of experiences gathered for a chat that could never before been done virtually. It is in the sharing of these varied experiences that we may glean the best of the best and root out that which is not working. For any of this to work however, we do need to come to the chat with an open mind willing to explore change.
Of course the more important take away for me from this engagement was that there are still educators out there who believe kids incapable of making decisions that affect their lives. Of course, if we program kids to believe only adults may determine what kids should learn and how they should learn it, we are not creating or even encouraging life long learning. We need to begin programming kids to make decisions from an early age. We as educators need to instruct, mentor, and guide decision-making in students until they can take it on fully on their own. Their decisions need to be real with all the rewards and all the consequences. The decisions need to be gradually upgraded and age appropriate, but by high school our students should be making academic decisions for overall courses as well as in class decisions. We as educators need to get from teacher centric lessons to student centric lessons giving weight to the decisions kids make.
Left to that educator that I encountered in that chat, kids would never make a decision because they are not mature enough to do so. The irony is that we demand mature behavior from kids every day, but we do not credit them capable of mature decision-making, because we rob them of that ability. Decision-making is a learned skill like any other and it is a life skill, yet we limit our children’s ability to make them even in the areas that affect them almost every day. We limit their decisions and turn them out into a society that demands decisions on a daily basis. Who benefits by this process?
My Island View 
Thanks Tom. A very thought provoking post. I appreciate your willingness to tackle the hard stuff and allow us to continue to learn from our reflections.
This educator is not recognizing that kids make choices all day that we are involved in especially where their behavior is concerned and including doing work and participating…what is the big deal to leap to having them be more engaged in their learning by having choice for them. Usually it comes down to a feeling of loss of control for teachers and helping them see the benefits…great post!
So true! Ironically they are making a lot of decisions in their private lives, at least in Norway. The more I trust my students and let them decide the more amazed I become’! So much potential and so many talents you fail to recognize if you as a teacher do all the planning and deciding. Like I wrote in this post! Keep up with the difficult chats Tom! http://annmic.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/our-school-needs-to-combine-new-technology-and-pedagogy/
Great piece Tom!
If they are not allowed to make choices, then we suffer the consequences of their actions as well. Thanks for writing this.
At first I assumed this was a “devil’s advocate” commentary……just someone trying to “stir the pot” of discussion in a chat. However, like you addressed in this blog, as the discussion continued it was obvious this educator was committed to the idea that kids aren’t an important part in their learning process; especially when it comes to decision making. As I commented in the chat, I find #stuvoice to be one of MANY important pieces to our education puzzle; I am sincere & steadfast in that.
If in fact I understood this correctly; I am sad & scared that we have educators that don’t value the voice of our students. I hope interactions like #edchats , blogs, etc., continue to open our eyes to others’ perspectives & HOPEFULLY change minds; my children are young, I want them & all students to have a true voice in their education. Passionate learners are what I hope to graduate from my school, not students who aren’t allowed to make decisions.
This post reminds me of a post from an experience in #edchat years ago: http://t.co/EpootjrMZi
It makes me think that while people will say things & stick to ideas that I may vehemently disagree with, when I argue the counter-example, how am I any different from them, from that person’s perspective?
What if instead we truly sought to understand the dissenter’s point of view? What if, in lieu of arguing the merits of our own agenda, we asked the dissenter to unpack their thinking instead? If their thinking is truly flawed in some way, it will come out during this unpacking, and the underlying “misconceptions” that brought this way of thinking to light would reveal themselves. And even then, the only person who can change those ideas is that individual, once he or she recognizes them.
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[…] "Yesterday, I found a chat that intrigued me, and a tweet from an educator that grabbed me, so I bounced in. The Topic was on student voice and students having more of a say in the decisions about their own learning. This is a very relevant topic in education today. What drew me in was an educator’s tweet . . ." […]
Tom,
As always thought provoking. I do agree that students make decisions all of the time and that they need to be included in the choices that are made regarding their education as much as any other area of their life. The counter that I hear to this argument at times is that students making the decision is fine but that in order to do so there needs to be a front loading of information and basic skill training at what it is to make meaningful decisions about their learning.
Teaching them things like how a truly inquiry based model of education works and how to go about setting criteria questions in place so that an educated choice about what it is that they are going to pursue or avenues of inquiry they are going to journey down are done so meaningfully and thoughtfully.
Perhaps this educator you were dealing with had not given consideration to the wider array of issues that surround student choice in learning.
Just my two cents worth. Thank you as always for giving us alternatives to think about when it comes to how we employ our practice.
I get frustrated when students are taught to rely on teachers for all decisions. These students are the ones on the playground who believe that the teacher must intervene in all disagreements, because they learn this: When you’re stuck, the teacher has all the answers.
Here is a Connected Principals article with a similar message: http://connectedprincipals.com/archives/9883
[…] "Yesterday, I found a chat that intrigued me, and a tweet from an educator that grabbed me, so I bounced in. The Topic was on student voice and students having more of a say in the decisions about their own learning. This is a very relevant topic in education today. What drew me in was an educator’s tweet . . ." […]