Achieving a student-centered instructional model may be challenging. Miriam Plotinsky, author of the book Hover-Free Teaching, offers ways that teachers can foster a culture of shared responsibility for learning.

Today, here, alone in my classroom, empty of kids, my anxiety creeps into the void.

Empowering our students isn’t easy and doesn’t happen overnight. It requires the teacher to clarify their beliefs that students are capable of much more than they’ve traditionally been expected to do. It requires “front-loading” expectations and providing students with permission to make mistakes and take risks in the classroom.

New shoes. New markers and pre-sharpened, long pencils with perfect, nubby erasers. This school year would be better.

Students, simply put, don’t care about school. In their eyes, it’s a place to go, do what they’re told, and memorize as much as they can, then go home and finish their homework before doing something that actually interests them.

Eric is a principal at Hall Middle School in Larkspur, CA. Eric is the co-founder of Global School Play Day which is dedicated to promoting the idea that kids learn more when they play.

For an authentic PBL experience, students must be free to experiment, experience failure, and learn from their mistakes. Otherwise, I’m just teaching them to look to me for answers, which is the opposite of what I want to accomplish.

As a teacher/activist, Julia Torres's work is grounded in empowering students to use the Language Arts to fuel resistance and positive social transformation.

Taking away grades signals a fundamental change in the power dynamics of a classroom, and students need to be supported in order to thrive.

I am a teacher. I am a room. I am a space to fill. I am a culture to create. I am a world to shape.We are teachers. We are rooms. We are spaces to fill. We are cultures to create. We are worlds to shape.

This episode features an interview with Bennette Jester, high school student, author of the website My Grading Story and advocate for student voice in learning.

We should be focusing on “better” practices, as what is “best” today may not be best for the children we teach in the future. With that in mind, we need to continue to be on the lookout for teaching practices that we feel are right and good for the children we have in front of us.