Getting Unstuck #115: Teaching Students Before Teaching Subjects
Today on Getting Unstuck
For the past few weeks, we’ve been focusing on answering a single question: How might we reimagine schools to better support our kids for the world today? To enrich that discussion, we welcome Chris Lehmann.
Chris is the founding principal of the Science Leadership Academy, a progressive science and technology high school in Philadelphia that is an inquiry-driven, project-based, 1:1 laptop school.
Chris has received numerous awards, has presented his work all over the world including TEDx, and is the internationally recognized co-author of Building School 2.0: Creating the Schools We Need. Chris is also the co-editor of What School Leaders Need to Know about Digital Technologies and Social Media and the author of the education blog Practical Theory.
What is an inquiry-based model? (From Building Schools 2.0 pp 126.)
“An inquiry-driven pedagogy, is, at heart, about asking questions to which we do not know the answers.
And while the overwhelming majority of teachers are very good at the “facts” of their discipline, we have to get better at using those facts to help students build meaning. We should be asking powerful questions that require students to apply knowledge, attack problems of their own design, and come up with their own “small a” answers.”
Chris’s transformation idea
School transformation can be informed by some basic premises, questions, and even a conceptual framing, but the actual shifts have to be driven and tailored to the needs of the local community.
“The biggest thing that schools need to do is know what their Northstar is. Know what you believe and subject everything to it – everything you do should be in service of that Northstar to the degree to which that is possible.”
“It seems like every year we try a ‘new’ educational initiative – something that somebody read about or experienced at a conference. We never seem to stay with it, though, because there’s always something new following on its heels. And our problems remain the same.” — A teacher
Tired of chasing the next shinny thing? Then you need to take a different approach to change.
