March 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 6

The Empowered Student

When Students Own Their Learning

Anthony Rebora

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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The Curse of "Helicopter Teaching"

Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher

Many students enter upper grades unprepared to make decisions and take charge of their work, especially with writing assignments and organizing their thinking in any written piece. With good intention, many teachers make lots of decisions for students on organization and development a piece of writing. Gallagher and Kittle share how they let students "struggle" more as they write (as is normal), mainly thru practice wresting with decisions about how to organize, revise, and present their thoughts in daily quick writes.

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Fishing for the Right Assessment Language

Myron Dueck

For students to feel empowered in their learning, they must understand the language, purpose, and goals of assessment. Dueck argues that students need to understand what they are supposed to be learning and determine whether they actually learned it. Clear objectives and cooperative assessments can help with these objectives.

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Seven Ways to Make High School "Suck" Less

Gabriel "Asheru" Benn

"The current school landscape sucks," writes educator and hip-hop artist Gabriel "Asheru" Benn. At least that would be the opinion of most teenagers when you ask them. The problem isn't that our schools aren't good or that our teachers aren't knowledgeable or even likeable. Rather, it's the "rote, transactional" ways that we choose to teach, socialize, and engage our students. So how can we make schools "suck" less?

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Raise Their Voices

Scott Seider and Daren Graves

What does the development of a young person's political agency look like, and what role can schools play in this process? The authors profile Blackstone Academy, where administrators integrate social activism, community service, and other service-learning projects into the curriculum to help students develop leadership skills and confidence. The authors also discuss how other schools might imitate these kinds of projects to help their own students feel empowered.

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Joining the Movement

Peter Levine

Many students feel empowered participating in social movements connected to key issues—and this participation can be a powerful setting for civic education. School-based civic education can complement the empowerment that come with participating in social movements—if young people gain a deeper appreciation of social movements and understanding about how they run (including that participation is more than coming to protests). Teachers should play a key role in building such understanding.

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Encouraging Student Dissent in the Classroom

Mike Miller

Dissent is vital to the intellectual life of a classroom, just as it is to the health of a school, a school system, or a democracy, explains high school teacher Mike Miller. Rather than being silenced, healthy dissidence should be taught. Miller draws from his classroom experience to illustrate how educators can cultivate a climate that welcomes dissent.

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Empowering Students by Demystifying Grading

Joe Feldman and Tanji Reed Marshall

To encourage student empowerment, teachers must recognize and discuss the tension between their own instructional power and students' power and agency—especially in the fraught area of grading. To truly invest students with power in learning, educators must ask the tricky question of whether they're willing to give kids more ownership over the evaluation of that learning. The authors suggest ways 5teachers can "lift the veil" to make their system of evaluation and grading more transparent to all students.

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Dispositions by Design

Arthur L. Costa, Bena Kallick, Jay McTighe and Allison Zmuda

Students need specific thinking—or Habits of Mind—to engage with problems and become self-directed learners, write Arthur L. Costa, Bena Kallick, Jay McTighe, and Allison Zmuda. A curricular approach based on enhancing students' understanding of conceptually significant, transferable ideas can help schools teach these dispositions.

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How Student Voice Transformed East High

Valerie L. Marsh and Shaun Nelms

On the world stage, youth are using their voices to effect change. Shouldn't we also listen to them in our schools? University of Rochester's Valerie Marsh and Superintendent Shaun Nelms describe what happened when a struggling urban high school, on the brink of closure, put student voice at the center of its turnaround.

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Project-Based Learning That Makes a Difference

Bob Lenz and John Larmer

The authors explain that the commonly held concept of project-based learning (PBL) as a student investigating a topic or creating something individually (a passion project) is only part of the PBL story. Projects in which students collaborate and do something to make a difference in their community are also a way to structure PBL and build agency. Teacher guidance and scaffolding are more part of the PBL experience than people often realize; Lenz and Larmer share suggestions for how teachers can set up student-centered projects in ways to foster empowerment and agency.

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The Secret Sauce for Successful Classroom-Tech Projects

Emily Barton, Dan Brown and Jennifer Chiu

Tech-enhanced projects can spark student agency and deeper learning—but new research suggests that success depends on teachers' sense of efficacy and control 7with the technology at hand, write Emily Barton, Dan Brown, and Jennifer Chiu.

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The High Schooler's Guide to Happiness

Sally Ventura

Ventura describes a "happiness unit" in her ELA class in which she asks students to examine what it means to be happy and how to increase one's mindfulness and confidence through self-reflection. The unit focuses on choice, engagement, and passion, as students research various positive psychology topics and create presentations, read articles, and write in journals.

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Listen Up!

Bryan Goodwin and Samantha E. Holquist

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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The Power of Practice Assessments

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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A Balance of Power

Jill Harrison Berg and Jordan Weymer

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Who Has the Privilege to Be Empowered?

Dena Simmons

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Working Toward the Whole Educator

David Griffith

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Whole Child Spotlight: On Student Empowerment

Sean Slade

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Readers React

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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ASCD Community in Action

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Empowerment Essentials

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Index to Advertisers

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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John Spencer on the Shift to Student Empowerment

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Strategies for Student-Centered Learning

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Hearing Survivors' Voices Two Years After Parkland

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Limited Choices

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Empowered Valedictorian

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Getting Active About Civics

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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Releasing the Reins

Rick Jetter and Rebecca Coda

What if teachers and students took equal ownership of the classroom? "Releasing the reins" to our students might feel risky and uncomfortable, but it has rewards far beyond what we can imagine. "Students hold the key that could unlock the mysteries that adults sometimes miss," write Rick Jetter and Rebecca Coda of the Let Them Speak! Project. Here they provide three action-oriented practices to give students agency—and gather good feedback.

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Let Them Lead

Sam Intrator, Don Siegel, Graeham Dodd and Jo Glading-DiLorenzo

Project Coach founder Sam Intrator and his coauthors describe this innovative out-of-school program in Massachusetts that empowers high school students to coach and mentor elementary students in sports, schoolwork, and confidence-building skills. They also offer suggestions on how to replicate the program in schools.

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Tell Us About

Part of a theme issue on "The Empowered Student."

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