Centering Student Stories
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Instead, these teachers want students to have ownership over their learning and to get excited about topics, ask questions, find meaning in their work, apply one concept to another area, and even challenge concepts and curriculum. What a mountainous series of tasks! How do you both effectively communicate learning objectives and foster critical thinking? The answer is (you guessed it) through connection. And making these connections requires storytelling—although not the type of storytelling you might be thinking of (as you’ll discover as you read on).
Essential Question How can educators cultivate connection through story sharing in online and blended classrooms? Chapter Learning Objectives y Revisit your educator origin story and connect it to your current hopes and goals. y Build opportunities for empathy with students. y Incorporate music and poetry into content-based learning and student reflection. y Support diversity, equity, and inclusion through class conversations and activities.
This chapter features narratives from five practitioners who have found their way to the online classroom. Jill Clingan, Lou Jobst, Megan Lilien,
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©️2022 by Solution Tree Press
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efore anything else, teachers must consider the perspectives of their students to situate them right at the center of their own learning. That means educators, as excited and knowledgeable as they are about the content they teach, need to protect space for student voices as they plan and carry out their lessons. Teachers in connected classrooms are not mere dispensers of knowledge, spouting out wisdom and hoping their students catch it. They don’t want their students to, as some educators say, sit and get (that is, sit in their chairs, hear information, and regurgitate it for the sole purpose of a test grade).
