Empathy - getting to the bottom of our assumptions about student wants, needs....how do i give them a voice that isn't influenced by ME.....
This has been an interesting idea.....I usually feel that I am very 'in tune' with my students. Many of them have very limited verbal skills and I feel the need to 'interpret' for them in many situations and activities. During this process, I am seeing how important it is to get them to express themselves without my influence.....I provide the choices, I help drive their searches, I help guide their hands to 'choose'. How do we hear their voice in our answering these questions????
After viewing the furniture at the RESA, students were very excited and have begun to grasp the scope of what will be happening in our classroom. We are beginning to look at how we group and move for different activity and students are beginning to understand the 'choice' that they have in 'how' we learn. It has been a real shift for us as a classroom. Students are using the Smartboard to share their feelings about color and lighting, natural elements and seat arrangements. But we still struggle to get input without our guidance.
We had Oct 10-14 off from school (Woodland runs a 'balanced calendar'). When we returned on the 17th we held our annual IEP meetings - 10 meetings in 2 days! These meetings did afford me the opportunity to talk with parents directly and explain a bit about what was happening with this project. My students are used to 'Unit projects' that they work on at home at the end of each month to share learning with families. I explained to families that I needed input from students that did not have my personal influence - that we were looking to get personal ideas from each student. The families were assigned a "mood board'" project to complete at home. These boards were AMAZING! I am so pleased with what students were able to share about our work in class and how each of them brought their own feelings to print......below are some examples with explanations:
We had Oct 10-14 off from school (Woodland runs a 'balanced calendar'). When we returned on the 17th we held our annual IEP meetings - 10 meetings in 2 days! These meetings did afford me the opportunity to talk with parents directly and explain a bit about what was happening with this project. My students are used to 'Unit projects' that they work on at home at the end of each month to share learning with families. I explained to families that I needed input from students that did not have my personal influence - that we were looking to get personal ideas from each student. The families were assigned a "mood board'" project to complete at home. These boards were AMAZING! I am so pleased with what students were able to share about our work in class and how each of them brought their own feelings to print......below are some examples with explanations: