Below is a snippet from A.J. Juliani’s blog post, The relevancy problem: What can we do to make learning meaningful? I encourage you to read the entire post, which is an excerpt from his upcoming book, Meaningful and Relevant: Engaging Learners In An Era of Distraction. I already can tell that the book is going to be amazing.
We already know what works and doesn’t work.
Kids are not normally engaged in lectures, textbooks, homework, and traditional assessments.Â
Our best learning experiences as adults didn’t happen when compliance was the focus either.
We know what happens when kids can tap into relevancy, and curiosity, and solve problems.
We know what happens when students get to work on challenges that are meaningful.
We know what happens when learners dive into an authentic curriculum and project-based learning experiences.
We know what happens when kids CARE about their learning. Because we know what happens when WE care about our learning.
I think that A.J. says this really nicely, particularly those last couple of sentences. I encourage all of us to lean into this angle when talking with parents, policymakers, and others who think that grades, test scores, and compliance are more important than children’s interest and engagement.
We are living in a sad society when the importance of a quality education is not valued. Students are conditioned to believe that if they make a decent grade, they are meeting graduation standards. The curriculum content was not written with students learning objectives in mind, instead it they are all about mastery of a given subject.
As educators we are mandated by the state to teach students things they have not previously learned. Students are being passed along from grade to grade without doing the work required. They are relying heavily on AI to do the work for them. Educators are at a loss due to students not being engaged as they traditionally were in lectures, homework, and classwork. Until parents and policymakers help promote engagement in the classroom, educators are drowning in education.