Would you recognize his potential?

Matthew Needleman writes one of my favorite blogs….Creating Lifelong Learners.

Check out this post:

The True Case for Independent Work Time

He defines IWT as simply a time of day when teachers allow students to work independently.  An intrepid group of teachers in our school tried out independent learning a few years ago – and provided an amazing opportunity to allow select students to solve  a problem together.  We freed up their time and provided the resources they needed to explore the problem on their own and present their solutions to the whole school. It was a wonderful experience – but we were disappointed.  We had wanted this type of learning to spread.  It never did.  Between time constraints, demands to reach AYP (adequate yearly progress) goals, the bullying nature of standardized testing, institutional inertia and on and on –  it was an experiment that did not catch on. If only everyone had seen the kids gobble down their lunches so they could get back to work, or the “poor performing” students who brought their hidden talents to bear on the projects staying after school to get everything just right…..

Matthew writes in his post:

The … travesty of not providing any independent work time is what happens for the majority of students who need a time to apply what they’ve been learning through independent exploration, writing, researching, and working with peers.

He also is intrigued by an article written about Steve Jobs.  Where will the next Steve Jobs come from?  (Green print indicates my own commentary)

So how do we grow more people like Steve Jobs? The mad thinkers who can sense subtle shifts in people’s attitudes and aspirations?

Jobs leaves us a template we can follow if we are willing to throw out the old rules of conventional education, where adding incremental knowledge becomes a mind-numbing, year-upon-year march toward a normative notion of intelligence.

Jobs was after something much more challenging: leading society to a place yet unimagined. This doesn’t have to be happenstance — we can provide the structure that nurtures ideas and path-breaking technologies. At Southern Methodist University, we have established an “innovation gym” where young minds liberated from convention tackle the most challenging of problems under ridiculously short deadlines — but all in a spirit of serious play. It’s a style Jobs would have embraced.  [This sounds much like my school’s ACE project which I described above]

Next, we need to step onto that pedagogical “third rail” and embrace the idea that collecting vast amounts of knowledge is best left to the Internet, rather than human memory. Tap that resource, free the brain, and we’ll see lightning-fast movement toward the next big idea.

Let’s also face up to a concept educators struggle with in a tough economy: Lighting a fire under genius may not be a matter of “What will you earn?” but “Why should you care?” We need to connect the best research on our campuses to our undergraduate students  [all our students]— bring them into the adventure early….

One day, and I hope soon, we will see many new Steve Jobses reshaping public education, or health care, or looking at solving deep problems in global poverty. The problems always change, but cool never goes out of style.

I hope we can acknowledge the fire in our students, rather than dousing it with the “learning via fire hose” approach.  I have hope for the Common Core Standards.  If teachers will only get to the “core of the core” they will recognize that true learning is the ability to research deeply, and DO SOMETHING with that research.  Publish it, share it with the world, change something that needs changing.

Make learning real for kids.  Now that we are required to use the Common Core Standards, teachers must get to the essence of them.  Realize that they are what libraries are all about, and enlist the librarian’s help.  He or she will be a teacher’s best ally in this journey.

Lets find out what individual kids are passionate about and let them pursue that passion.  If they can’t identify what they are passionate about – help them to discover their “Mission from God.”  It will change their lives – and maybe change the world.