Empowerment

We rise by lifting others ~ Robert Ingersoll

This quote is on my favorite camp t-shirt. As a mentor I have always empowered my girls to make good decisions. As a teacher my focus was engagment. Participating in IMMOOC is changing that paradigm.

My students participate in Genius Hour and my teaching team offers STEM Club twice a week after school, but now I ask myself – Can I do more?

My students begin Spring Break at the end of the week. My plan was to focus on math skills the students needed to review before testing. After the IMMOC chat I scrapped my lesson plans and ran to school.

When the students came in Monday morning, the chairs and tables were stacked and there was nothing but graph paper, poster board, pencils, and IPads to be found.

We created a Dream School brainstorm and the students went to work measuring, graphing, multiplying, dividing…

The best part was seeing how much they had already thought about what did and didn’t work in class. I can’t wait to see what the classroom looks like at the end of the week.

Engagment or empowerment? I’m not sure, but the students’ voices will be heard.