School shouldn’t just be a place to learn academic skills, but a place for students to practice making meaningful decisions about their learning and lives. I personally never faced a weighty decision about my learning until I had to declare a college major. In grade school, I was a confident student who knew how to ace tests and please my teachers. Once I got to college, however, my A-student record failed me. I had no idea what major I was passionate about, nor any of the steps to figure it out. I considered majoring in English since I loved reading, or maybe pre-med for financial stability. My practical immigrant parents talked me out of the first, and a terrible grade on a chemistry midterm out of the second.
It seems like luck that I eventually found my way to a lifelong profession as a K-8 educator, which has kept me eager to grow within it, unlike the spin-the-wheel decision-making I had during college. But it didn’t have to be this way. What if grade school were designed to teach students how to make decisions and know themselves deeply as much as it taught them math and literacy? What if school had helped me figure out early, often and intentionally what I wanted to learn or accomplish, and how I would do it?
My experiences as a student and later as a teacher in traditional K-8 schools convinced me that the entire purpose of school needed to be different. So, in 2019, when I found out that a former manager of mine was starting a school that answered the same questions that plagued me, I knew I wanted in. She brought me on board to help launch the school, and Red Bridge, a private, K-8 school, opened its doors in September 2020.
As a founding school leader, I’ve helped design systems and a student-initiated promotion process that gives students a voice in their education. While students don’t make every decision and still participate in teacher-driven parts of the day, what’s different in our design is that the school curriculum pushes them to explore three questions: “What do I want to learn?”; “When and how will I learn it?”; and “Is my learning the right level of challenge?” By asking these questions, we instill the importance of decision-making skills in students and a sense of responsibility for their learning that traditional school models otherwise lack.
What Do You Want to Learn?
Asking students what they want to learn shows them that their questions about the world are valuable, and hopefully gets them fired up to learn.
When I taught fifth grade at a school in Nevada, I had to follow the curriculum in the provided textbooks, and there was no room to deviate. One time, I planned a novel study around a book my students selected, but I was forced by an administrator to trade it in for standardized test prep. In contrast, at Red Bridge, we spend two weeks of each term immersed in a “deep dive”: a project-based learning unit designed around a question of students’ interest instead of regular instruction.
Two years ago, as we approached our last deep dive of the year, my team noticed students launching entrepreneurial endeavors during recess. Some were crafting bracelets and setting up bartering systems with them, and others expressed an interest in bake sales. To harness that curiosity, we designed the deep dive around the question, “How do you build a small business?” In week one, we created lessons for students on everything from organizational structure and ethical decision-making to budgeting; we then took students to visit local businesses to interview the owners. In week two, students collaborated with peers to pitch their own small business ideas; once their pitches were approved, they wrote business plans.
Walking around the culminating marketplace experience, I could see students brimming with pride as they presented their inventory, budgets and logos. We had taken their interests seriously and made room in the school experience to study a topic of their choice. The results were joyful, a little messy, but entirely theirs. If I had experiences in grade school that supported me in pursuing topics of my own interest, I would have known how to navigate the sudden responsibility I had over my learning when I got to college.
When and How Will You Learn It?
As a classroom teacher in traditional schools that focused heavily on compliance, I frequently wondered if my students could succeed in the future without me telling them what to do constantly. At one school, I was trained to have all 33 of my students place their pencils on their desks in the same spot at the same time, drill sergeant-style. I couldn’t foster ownership if the system itself required passivity, and I was convinced there had to be another way.
When it came time to design Red Bridge, our founder told me we would balance teacher-led time with student-led time by implementing a self-directed learning block. We designed the block so that, for an hour each day, students make their own learning plans, keep track of time, mark what they accomplish and transition between activities with relative independence. Our teachers explicitly teach students how to make time- and goal-management decisions during daily morning meetings.
A few years ago, three second graders at my school approached me after school, excited to show me their plan to launch an environmental club. The paper had a list of tasks: make signs, start a protest, pick up trash and write a book about the environment. They labeled each task “done,” “in progress,” or “not yet” — similar to the type of learning plan they made in self-directed time during the day. These young students took what they learned about setting goals, worked toward them and applied that sense of ownership to their personal lives. Their initiative gave me confidence they could navigate future goals, and that our school’s design was actually working.
Is Your Learning the Right Level of Challenge?
Perhaps the most powerful decision-making opportunity we’ve created at my school is a space for students to assess whether their learning is appropriately challenging and if they’re ready for the next step. Students’ primary cohorts are determined by their level of independence and self-directedness. When a student believes they are ready to move up, they complete a series of tasks and gather evidence of their readiness for greater responsibility.
Repeatedly, I’ve seen previously unmotivated students rise to the challenge. A parent once shared with me, “I was so worried the first few times about how disappointed he’d be if he failed. But when he finally succeeded, his pride in accomplishing something himself was amazing.”
Recently, a teacher reflected on a student who went through the process successfully and said, “Her whole attitude changed when she realized that her goals were in her own hands. She just started showing up differently for her learning.” Tackling this big decision lets students experience success and failure in a safe environment and develops self-reliant individuals who can handle any obstacle — whether it be academic, professional or personal — that comes their way in the future.
Building Student Confidence in Their Lives
Being a founding leader of this school has given me the opportunity to build the school of my dreams. These moments of student growth, fueled by ownership over their learning, are the reason I believe this kind of educational design matters for students of all backgrounds. School shouldn’t be a place where students listen passively to adults for the majority of their days. Schools should be designed to give students meaningful opportunities to make big decisions — that is how we set kids up for lifelong success. By emphasizing the what, how and challenge our students seek in their learning in the framework of our school design, we give students space to determine the pathway of their education.
I hope the students I once taught don’t have to stumble into their passions like I did, and I sincerely hope school helps them know themselves sooner and trust themselves more.
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