Aargh! Pedagogical ambush!

Are your learners pedagogical partners, or do you ambush them?

By that I mean, have they been part of a discussion about ‘how things are around here?’

One of the ways a classroom can go awry is when kids don’t get a say in how they’ll learn. This is amplified if you’re doing something new or different from how learning ‘happens’ in the rest of the school.

By all means, go ahead and have your practice be guided by something big and ambitious with plenty of room for kids to do stuff - play, inquiry, maker, etc. But tell them about it and why you’ve decided it’s good, and then talk — If this is how we’re going to learn here and why it’s a good way to learn, what does that mean for you as a learner and me as a teacher? What can we expect of each other?

Just don’t ambush them with your inspiring pedagogy and think it’ll all work out.