What does student-centered learning look like in real-life classrooms? In this collection, educator Bill Nave and nine award-winning K–12 teachers tell the story of how and why they changed their teaching and redesigned their classrooms in order to “reach every child.”
They reflect on their successes and struggles to put students in charge of their own learning and reveal strategies that make this possible. These teachers, who mostly work in schools with a high percentage of students living in poverty:
- prioritize relationships with students and their families;
- build supportive classroom cultures at the start of each year;
- tailor assignments to individual student interests, strengths, and challenges;
- create opportunities for students to choose how they will demonstrate their learning; and
- seek regular opportunities to connect students to learning outside the classroom.
Ultimately, Nave argues, student-centered learning is not just something for special teachers or special schools. On the contrary, it is possible for all teachers—no matter what setting they teach in—to become extraordinary and for students to develop and realize their own unique personal goals.
