What If? A Vision for Learner Leadership (EdCamp Student Leader)
One of the things that I am most passionate about in education is leveraging learner voice and finding opportunities for learners to lead in the classroom and throughout our building, in an effort to positively impact school culture. This year I had the greatest opportunity in my career as an educator to seek opportunities for that in classrooms as an instructional coach, facilitator of KMIT our student innovation/tech team, and through advising Media Club which creates our Friday video announcements.
When you leverage learner voice and allow learners to lead, you shift from
Compliant --> Engaged --> Empowered learners.
Empowered learners should be our Moonshot goal as educators. A recent blog entry by +George Couros inspired my thinking around this topic. Where I was inspired was to seek to provide greater opportunities for student voice and leadership within our building. We already have a handful of leadership opportunities for our learners through: Student Senate, WEB, KMIT (student tech/innovation team), Media Club, Best Buddies, athletic teams, and other extracurricular groups. What's missing is learner presence at the table for some of the other important decisions that we make within our building.
We can resolve this quite easily by inviting learners to the table to provide feedback and input around some very important topics within our building. I was intending to introduce this as a possible innovation project in a future Google Innovator Academy application, but because of the timing and being in the middle of a grad school program, instead I thought I'd share my idea to hopefully secure some feedback before seeking support and proposing this to our learners.
One of my favorite methods of learning is the #edcamp model. It was at #edcamp59 in which this idea was initially inspired. What if we had an edcamp for learners planned by learners that focused on leadership and brought together student groups across our building? What if these groups then could communicate and create a plan for how they could support the efforts of one another. For example, how can Media Club support the efforts of Student Senate? That's just one example.
Check out the video below for my vision for EdCamp Student Leader:
When you leverage learner voice and allow learners to lead, you shift from
Compliant --> Engaged --> Empowered learners.
Empowered learners should be our Moonshot goal as educators. A recent blog entry by +George Couros inspired my thinking around this topic. Where I was inspired was to seek to provide greater opportunities for student voice and leadership within our building. We already have a handful of leadership opportunities for our learners through: Student Senate, WEB, KMIT (student tech/innovation team), Media Club, Best Buddies, athletic teams, and other extracurricular groups. What's missing is learner presence at the table for some of the other important decisions that we make within our building.
We can resolve this quite easily by inviting learners to the table to provide feedback and input around some very important topics within our building. I was intending to introduce this as a possible innovation project in a future Google Innovator Academy application, but because of the timing and being in the middle of a grad school program, instead I thought I'd share my idea to hopefully secure some feedback before seeking support and proposing this to our learners.
One of my favorite methods of learning is the #edcamp model. It was at #edcamp59 in which this idea was initially inspired. What if we had an edcamp for learners planned by learners that focused on leadership and brought together student groups across our building? What if these groups then could communicate and create a plan for how they could support the efforts of one another. For example, how can Media Club support the efforts of Student Senate? That's just one example.
Check out the video below for my vision for EdCamp Student Leader:
Andrea, this is truly amazing! You are an inspiration!
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