Day 31

In yesterday’s post, Victoria wrote a few struggles she is having with her own line of inquiry. Here is a brief summary of the project. Students developed a topic they wished to know more about and researched as much as they could find about it. Then, they added different people’s perspectives on the topic. Finally, they wove these perspectives together and developed their own stance on the topic. That is where her struggle arrived. And, I couldn’t be happier.

She stated

I’ve been struggling to gather a specific claim. This is because each day I learn something, I shift my opinion in a different direction. My claim was originally based off of what I had learned about before this week. And as I keep learning more, my eyes are opened to a different perspective.

I feel she summed up why I love teaching. It’s not that I want her to struggle. But, she is learning so much that she is realizing that is so much more to learn. One of my concerns about school is that when the finish a course and take a final, it can seem that they have nothing else to learn. Almost, that their learning journey is over when the course is completed.

Another highlight from reading her post is that rarely there are “right or wrong” answers. As we learn more, our perspective evolves. At least, I hope it evolves. For Victoria, she is already learning this early in her life. She is seeing nuance to situations and finding that the story matters more than the perceived facts. For a class that is sometimes criticized as an inch deep and a mile wide, I’m finally figuring out how to go deeper to cover topics in a variety of ways. When students want to learn more. They naturally read more because their curiosity is driving the learning.