If we are not past the days of traditional teacher-to-student instruction, we are certainly pretty close to leaving it behind. These days, students of all backgrounds and abilities need the opportunity to engage in innovative learning with modern tools and clearly stated purposes. They are no longer able to be guaranteed success by sporting straight A’s on their report cards—they need authentic experiences with real-world projects, coding, and collaborating. They also need to take charge and lead their own learning—and that is why many school districts are ditching the old ways and focusing more on student-led learning.
How Student-led Projects Can Transform a School
Children are passionate about a lot of things, but it’s not all too often that they‘re able to incorporate their favorite things into learning. Whether it’s a trend, fad, or something they’ve always enjoyed, creative teachers can leverage student interests to create project-based learning that truly excites them. When students get to learn by participating in something they feel deeply connected to, they tend to move away from being withdrawn and start taking on leadership roles even in the early grades. This also gives teachers the chance to connect with their students, learn their interests, and creatively come up with ways to make learning more relevant to them. The goal of student-led learning is simple: create an educational experience that gives kids the chance to be the driver while they develop leadership skills.
Just about anything students are interested in can be connected to a concept or idea being covered in just about any subject. And, students get pretty excited when they see their everyday learning environment changed into something they really love. With students leading learning all over the place, classrooms become more like collaboration factories and school work becomes more like real-world problem solving, which is exactly what they need for at least part of the school year. Letting students stay in charge of their own learning definitely creates a shift in the atmosphere of the school and highlights important learning themes, such as creativity and cooperative problem solving. Without any curricular restrictions, student-led learning enables kids to explore concepts collaboratively and become more connected to their creations.
When students lead learning, they are able to create personal connections to their work much more fluidly. They also tend to start setting their own goals and challenging themselves to complete microtasks within their larger project, both of which have positive long term effects on their skills development. Students are also able to lead by example when they’re given the chance to be in control. Not only will they set the foundation for their own leadership skills, they can pass positive examples on to the rest of their classmates and create a culture of student-led leadership in the classroom. When leading their own learning, students are more likely to explore their curiosity and discover more about what they enjoy and how they can use it to unlock richer learning while they prepare for the future.
Building Leadership with a Student-led Tech Team
A lot of the time when teachers are reluctant to bring technology into their classrooms it’s because they did not grow up with it and are not completely comfortable using it. Students, on the other hand, have been using technology since they were very young and, as a result, are very comfortable with most forms of it. Plus, the tools they don’t know, they can usually pick up very quickly. In any case, technology has essentially become a must in modern day classrooms whether teachers like it or not. To get the most out of these experiences, many school leaders are calling on kids to help lead learning with technology. Not only does this help integrate tech in the classroom more effectively, it also gives students the chance to direct learning and practice for future leadership roles.
Many of today’s education experiences feature project-based learning in which students learn real-world skills and concepts by doing. The projects they complete usually help illuminate key STEM ideas or help diffuse a problem that’s present in their local community. What if these projects took a different direction, however? What if it was as simple as helping their teachers become technology literate? Now, we know this won’t work in every classroom since many teachers are already plenty familiar with technology, but, in classrooms where it is necessary, students can gain some valuable skills by collaborating with classmates and their teachers to help lead those who lead (and need) them to developing more robust technology skills. This instruction can be hands-on, digital, or lecture-style, though we recommend one of the first two (or both). With this chance to lead learning, students will also gain knowledge on the subjects they are teaching and refine what they already know.
In their teams, students can also create or modify resources for their classmates to have up-to-date materials they can use in class. This gives tech leaders the chance to work with their peers as well as helping out their teachers and can even be expanded for them to help children in younger grades get acquainted with the technology they have already mastered. This gives kids another chance to develop leadership skills and should help cast tech use in a positive light to school leaders. In terms of getting started, student tech teams could consist of three-to-six members, but, if more kids are interested and capable, multiple teams could be created. When the team gets too big, students could break themselves up into subcommittees, creating sub-groups of students who specialize in different areas of tech integration. Hmm, what does that remind you of? The real world?
Lesson Plan Ideas for Student-Led Projects
By the time they get to high school and even the tail end of middle school, there’s no reason students shouldn’t be leading their own projects and driving their own learning. Having students lead their own learning is more beneficial for them because, instead of teachers telling them what they should be doing, students can quickly start to recognize what needs to be done and use the skills they’ve already gained to act appropriately and efficiently. When utilizing student-led learning in the classroom, teachers should continue to make sure it is preparing their students for the future. There should be opportunities for assessment (both student- and teacher-led), chances for kids to adapt what they are doing based on what they have learned, plenty of chances for them to relate their projects to the content being covered in class, and challenges that are designed to get everybody involved. In student-led learning, the real-world lessons are learned during the course of completing the project—most of which are encountered before the project even nears completion.
Student-led learning, as we have already mentioned, is an opportunity for kids to bring their interests and passions into the classroom. Not everybody has clear interests, however, so teachers may use class time to let kids experiment with a bunch of different ideas so that they may learn more about what they like through trial and error (another real-world skill). Once students settle on a topic or area of interest, it’s time to start assessing problems or shortcomings with the current way things are working. Teachers can also highlight the differences between charity and change, guiding students more towards enacting change by partnering with a local business than simply engaging in charity and making a one-time donation. By doing this, students will start to see what they value and, working with like-minded classmates, can begin acting on what matters in their service learning initiatives.
Whether student-led learning is happening inside the classroom or out in the real world, teachers should try to get their students focusing on big picture results and becoming true researchers by teaching them how to use specific research methods. This helps kids look at the most important concepts they are learning from a different angle and gives them more opportunities for inquiry, which commonly leads to new ideas being born. Since there are a lot of technology resources available to students inside and out of the classroom, namely mobile tools, teachers should also set some clear parameters just to give students a start and then let their initiative skills take over. Soon, they will start to put it all together and support their own learning by calling and conducting group meetings, organizing efforts to share their work, and encouraging their classmates to reflect on what they have accomplished. This is what we want from student-led learning in the 21st century.
What Learning is Like at a Student-led School
Whether it’s blended learning, CTE, flipped learning, or something else, innovative school models are becoming the norm as educators try desperately to create learning environments that will prepare their students for an uncertain future. Now, we can add student-led learning to this list. When students lead their own learning, they are engaged in the entire educational process from start to finish. They’re able to develop skills like design thinking and leadership as their teachers truly empower them to build 21st century skills through experiential service learning, creative problem solving, and social entrepreneurship among others. Design thinking can be a useful approach in student-led learning because kids may try to design something 30 times and not be quite where they want to be, but all those failures will lead to a perfect outcome by attempt No. 31.
Creating a successful student-led school starts with building the right culture. Teachers can do a lot through leading by example and reinforcing the importance of being an effective leader. In no time at all, students tend to feed off of these examples and use what they see in their own ways of leading. Teachers must also give kids the chance to discover and incorporate their passions into their projects as tapping the things they love will help them explore important educational areas more deeply. Another reason student leaders are born is because of the environments in which they begin their leadership journey. If presented with a comfortable space to develop, students are much more likely to then become comfortable with taking charge and creating lasting learning, not to mention setting the bar pretty high for themselves.
By repeatedly acting in leadership roles, students become conditioned to taking charge, a characteristic that will serve them extremely well in the real world. Student-led experiential learning is excellent, especially when service learning helps provide them with a genuine connection to their community and gives them real-world problem-solving experience at the same time. Schools that throw out the old models and shift toward design thinking, collaboration, and building leadership are doing students a whole lot more good. The goal is to create classrooms in which students don’t even need any teachers because they are creating their own learning and, the way things are going in some schools, this seems to be working as it looks like there will be a lot of successful leaders ready to innovate at whatever endeavors they take on after college.
Student-led Learning Creates Future Ready Kids
You know those random Thursdays students have off in the first month or two of the school year? Teachers don’t usually get those off. In many school districts, these days are used for teacher professional development so educators can learn how to use the latest tech tools to help students become Future Ready. Teachers appreciate it when students recognize their hard work even if they don’t know what their day off meant for their teacher, but can you imagine if students had the same attitudes as teachers when it came to taking initiative and putting in the work to develop their own skills without being forced? Believe it or not, that actually does happen. With student-led learning, many kids are getting inspired by their class work and go out of their way to fine tune their skills before or after school, which is definitely not going unnoticed by teachers—and they love it!
There are not, however, any professional development days for students, so this extra work must be done during regular school hours. For however many students are excited about getting this chance to lead learning, there will be others who are not interested. That’s okay—actually, that’s perfect because the students need somebody to teach. Student-led teaching teams can teach their peers just about anything and provide teachers with more time during the school day to accomplish other tasks, like grading, for example. The other students in the class might even respond favorably as their friends teach them core skills, like coding, in a way that their teachers might not be able to accomplish.
By leading the teaching, students become empowered to direct their own learning and build other real-world skills, like presentation skills, at the same time. Many schools have taken this a step further and had their student leaders reinvent themselves into a portable genius bar staff, assisting with implementing devices in the school and solving connectivity issues for fellow students as well as teachers. This, too, gives kids the experience they need to solve complex problems in the real world and represents an extremely valuable form of practice. Plus, they can build communication, inquiry, and customer service skills, all of which will benefit them a great deal down the line. Remember—the goal of student-led learning isn’t to burn kids out. It’s about harnessing their skills and attitudes and giving them the leadership experience to thrive in the future. Plus, it will reinforce their knowledge of the subject at the same time.
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