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Teach Me and Me Only

So, I have a confession.

Several years ago, I watched this movie The Internship only because Dylan O'Brien was in it.

I know, that's pretty, well, I would call it shallow of me. I mean, I consider myself a movie snob, and The Internship has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 35%. Yikes. I do have to admit I had one other motive for watching the film*: It centers around two older men trying to get an elusive internship at Google, and I have this idea that Google is this secretive organization that houses geniuses who are laughing at our search history. I've been interested in Google for years, especially as I see them owning more and more platforms and basically having a hand, and eye, in everything on the internet. Google also has an interesting philosophy about work hours that I read about years ago.

In short, Google allows their employees a large portion of autonomy. Employees are encouraged to take time to work on projects of their own outside of their normal job responsibilities, and are even given work time to do it. A lot of times their work has resulted in larger and successful projects (i.e., Gmail), whether they thought of them individually or with other employees. In short, allowing employees to work on what they wanted to work on has greatly benefit Google by keeping their employees happier and the company as a whole more productive.**

Why can't we do this in schools? In a word (or four): Give students more autonomy.

Autonomy is simple to define: "Independence or freedom, as of the will or one's actions, or self-government, or the right to self-government."

In school terms, autonomy is the practice of allowing students to have a say in what and how they learn.

I did a lot of research on autonomy time for students in college because--and this probably stems from my career as a home schooler--I really believe most students can learn more when they have control over what and how they are learning. And last week, as I had a wonderful talk with my 9th grade class of 18 vastly different individuals about how they learn best as individuals, I came back to this idea.

But, of course, being the realist/pessimist that I am, I came across a roadblock. Autonomy time for students sounds great and all, but how in the world could I make that work? I believe there are two main mindsets that students must have before they can use autonomy time effectively. And these are two mindsets that, honestly, few people have between the ages of 14-18.

1. My priority in school is to learn.

2. In order to learn, I must focus on my work and not distract others.

You see, if everyone had this mindset, everyone would work and no one would distract others. I am not saying I want to look out at a bunch of mindless robots slaving away (though I do love quiet and order), but just imagine how much faster and better you could do your work if you concentrated and didn't distract yourself with speaking or bothering anyone else. One reason I loved homeschooling is that I had no one around to distract or bother me--I worked at my own pace, but that pace was usually fast so that I could get done and then do what I wanted. Why can't this same concept be applied to schools? Maybe we'd have less of this:

Sure, students would still have to stay until the whole day is done, but if work is assigned and work gets done, what's stopping us as teachers from rewarding those students with time to do what they want, as long as it follows the same two mindsets as above?

1. My priority in school is to learn.

2. In order to learn, I must focus on my work and not distract others.

These two mindsets mean that the student understands the teacher is still in charge and is the guide for the student's learning. But what's stopping us as teachers from also learning from our students? But that's a topic for another day.

I don't have all the answers yet, in short, but I am always ready to be an advocate for my students' learning, so I look forward to pursuing these ideas alongside them.

*They also play Quidditch, sooooo, three motives.

**Google abandoned what it called its 20% rule in 2013/2015. Why? Because employees had too many responsibilities and could not put them aside (or felt that they couldn't) to work on anything else. Also, not enough employees were taking advantage of the opportunity. Hmm, that sounds familiar.

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