Advice

“Personal Stories”

I took some advice from the Personal Story of Danielle Filipiak. She mentioned making sure to put yourself in the students lives through listening. I think as teachers we get caught up in making sure we get everything across that we are told will be on exams and test that we rarely get to hear what the students have to say. We rarely get the time to set and listen what the world looks likes through their eyes, but it is almost needed to make something like this work. I like that she added the piece of giving them a sense of guidelines, something I learned through the Teacher as a Writer Badge. When there is too much freedom the students almost take advantage of that freedom and take the project too far away from the realm of education. She mentions the same rule of “showing your work” as a tool that should still be included. I think on a project like this with that freedom there still has to be some tangible way to see what they students are doing. This is what I would take away into my own classroom. Always having a sense of a tangible means to make sure the students are on task. This is hard though because this is the tie back to the school feeling which is what I feel this project does so well to eliminate.