"All I do is make holes for others so they can reach greatness."We all know that offensive lineman are the most unselfish athletes, but what a great quote. As I was watching the show, all I could think about was the connection to education. How appropriate is it to teachers?!
The last project that I did (here) just finished up today. I haven't done a project like this with these students yet this year. I was inspired after reading #PureGeniusBook by Don Wettrick to do a little more innovation in my room. I have done #GeniusHour before (I called it Passion Projects), but I wanted to try and do a little innovation within my social studies class. I let them really be in charge of their learning. They were responsible for coming up with questions to guide their research. They started with some basic understanding of the Renaissance questions and then found those answers. Then, they needed to come up with an "UnGoogle-Able" question. I determined if it was UnGoogle-Able if you could find the answer in under a couple of minutes.
Some students really struggled with coming up with these questions. I tried to steer them a little with my words and actions. I also gave them some flipbooks that really lay out what type of question they needed. , think Evaluation and Creation levels of Bloom's.
I was pleased with most of their efforts on this. Of course, some students didn't take things as serious as they should and waited around until the last minute, or they didn't put forth as much effort as needed to do well, or they didn't really take my advice when they asked, or they told me they were confused after their presentation was given (even though I checked in with them regularly and gave them suggestions that they didn't really take or listen to), or because they don't usually have to "think" as hard as this, they gave up.
What blew me away were the types of things that the students created because of the freedom available to them to be creative. Yes, of course, not all the students liked having to actually create things, but the ones that "grew" as learners loved it. They had complete autonomy to dive in. Fail. Get back up. Try again.
You have to be willing to fail, in order to be willing to be successful.
Some of the things that the students used were - here
All of this leads back to the original quote from Will Shields - "All I do is make holes for others so they can reach greatness."
Every facilitator of student learning experiences should have this as their motto. It's about opening up the learning so our students can reach their greatness. It's about designing learning experiences with an element of creation involved and having our students showcase their talents. It's about being prepared with lessons that motivate learners. It's about guiding students to look beyond their potential ceiling and then breaking through.
It's about opening up holes for others to achieve greatness.
Go out and help others achieve greatness.
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