The old adage about how everyone can be knowledgable of schools because they attended one is quipped quite often in the comments from parents at Parent-Teacher Conferences about "how school was when they were students". Such comments are funny because if we always did things the way it was once done, there would be no innovation with students sitting in rows, hands neatly folded.
Breaking down walls of the traditional classroom environment at the high school level doesn't come with resistance from other adults both in and out of the education field, but includes the students that consume the learning. As @schneidermf and I have found with the redirection of our classroom, many students are pretty good at playing "the game of school" in that they have always come in, absorbed the information, drilled the information on worksheets, then took a quiz and a test to demonstrate that they could regurgitate said info/skills.
Talking to parents about the game that school is/has been for many of their students is eye opening. Many are bewildered by the idea that the students are actively pursuing their learning, that we don't have spelling tests for vocabulary and offer many opportunities to collaborate even on exams! When the connection is made to making school more applicable to real world conditions is when the light bulb switches on and the chaos that we have described to them begins to make sense.
Emphasizing the process of learning has been one of the paramount topics in class this year and continues to be an uphill battle. Trying to stop the obsession with grades is like any habit that has been formed it is hard to break and taking our students outside of those comfortable settings has made them uneasy, but as they begin to find their bearings the demonstration of skills and knowledge has been rewarding to see.
The next step in the process is building upon the conversations with colleagues about how they too can/need to rethink how they are delivering their instruction to students.
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