You Can’t Win in a Classroom: The Benefit of the Individualized Path
The wrong analogy at the wrong time Education tends to lend itself to the term “race” a lot, maybe the most influential the 2009 “Race to the Top” campaign to reward innovation in education. Education espouses acceptance and even encouragement of otherness with which this metaphor doesn’t align. Races are for sprinters or marathoners to win or lose. The classroom and education are places to experiment and fail and learn, where failure and coming in second shouldn’t be demonized. We wouldn’t punish the second student to finish an exam with less than 100% if they deserve their 100. They learned the lesson. The individualized path champions self-advocacy, perseverance, and, ultimately, understanding of knowledge for students. 30 Lesson Plans?! Not what we have in mind A better analogy than a race, would be a bowling alley where students are the bowling balls, each with their own path to knock all of the pins down. While some students roll themselves right through all 10 pins, ...