It Must Be Meaningful and Relevant
My latest book is headed toward the final stages. This book is titled, Meaningful & Relevant: How to Engage Learners in an Age of Distraction.
I'm looking to share a few more vignettes throughout the book from current schools, classrooms, or organizations. They would highlight the importance of "facilitating meaningful and relevant learning" - if that is YOU or someone you know (and you'd be ok with being featured in the book) you can reply to this email or send me an email at ajjuliani@gmail.com!
Here is the Meaningful & Relevant: How to Engage Learners in an Age of Distraction overview in a nutshell:
Guiding Belief: In an age of distraction, we need to look at learning consistently through the lens of meaningful and relevant practices.
Biggest Hill: Merely “eliminating” distractions will not solve our engagement issues.
Differentiator: New research from the last three years supports a meaningful and relevant focus like never before.
Something I've been reminded of over and over again the last few weeks as I talk with educators around the country working in K-12 classrooms and schools about AI and ChatGPT: Kids still love learning, when learning is meaningful and relevant.
They don't always like the TYPE of learning we do in school, and therein lies the paradox, as school is supposed to be a place where we enjoy learning new things.
It reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes comic I share often that Tim Smyth posted on his @historycomics Instagram page:
What's so fascinating about this sentiment is that we all KNOW this intrinsically.
I wonder what would happen if we stopped asking the question at school: Will this activity/lesson/assessment/content PREPARE kids for ________?
And, if instead, we asked the question: Will this activity/lesson/assessment/content keep kids loving learning?
Chances are, if the learning is meaningful and relevant, they'll not only love the learning experience but also get something out of it in terms of transfer to their life (present or future).
We know a few things to be true:
1. Standardized assessments do NOT predict student success.
2. Many decisions around curriculum and what/how we are teaching are tied to success on those assessments (ex: Common Core standards correlation to state tests, AP curriculum connected to AP assessments, etc)
4. Many teachers are forced into a tough spot between doing what they know works in learning (giving choice, inquiry, designing for creativity, project-based learning) and doing what they believe they have to do in order to "cover" the curriculum, meet standards, and prepare kids for tests.
In short, most of what we are doing in an "assessment-centric" education system is not working, has been proven to have no correlation to student success, and leads to disengaged students, and teacher burnout.
On top of all of this, in rolls artificial intelligence with the ability to absolutely crush these archaic practices.
But, our system remains unchanged in many places.
And, the burden falls on school administrators, teachers, and support staff to try and make learning meaningful and relevant under these circumstances.
Here's the real kicker: In the midst of it all, kids are still here in our schools every single day. They are with us in school for over 14,000 hours between Kindergarten and 12th Grade.
And, they still love learning, when the learning is meaningful.
There are too many people that want school to stay the same, even as many of us educators are shouting from the rooftops that things have to change.
Not for us (although that would be nice), but really for the kids. Isn't that why we are doing this work in the first place?!?
There is so much we don't have control over or influence over. But, if you get the chance to make a decision for the kids in your school or classroom, I hope we can ask the question: Will this activity/lesson/assessment/content keep kids loving learning? And design based on that answer.
Thank you for all the work each and every one of you does on daily basis. It has always made a difference, and now more than ever.
