Sunday, October 7, 2012

How do you develop student voice?

Yesterday was by far the deepest learning experience I have ever had.  I took part in an international symposium with a representatives from the United Kingdom, Canada and regional schools.  We capped off the day with a debate of Yong Zhao's book Catching Up or Leading the Way.  This symposium was interlinked with my doctoral curriculum class.  It was a great learning experience and allowed us to create.  We took ownership of our learning, and the freedom granted to us allowed for us to develop deeper understanding.

Our professor was hands off and allowed us to go in any direction that we wanted in preparing for the debate.  Driving home yesterday I began thinking about how we can embed this type of learning into our schools.  This type of deep learning is exhausting and leaves you wanting more.  Below is the setup of how the debate operated.  This could be easily setup with any class at any level.




I feel debates are great ways to develop deep understanding and a great way to develop student voice.  By the end of the debate many people in the audience changed their views on the topic.  As leaders and educators we need to be able to understand both sides of an issue and be able to draw conclusions from those.

How do you develop student voice?

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