Our ultimate goal is to create empowered children.
That doesn’t come unless we allow our students to have a voice in their learning process as well as their daily lives.
You’ll see it everywhere at Indi-ED. Our students get to design their classrooms, they get to give input into the curriculum, and they get to choose the long term inquiry projects they work on.
What value does having choice provide children you may ask?
Well other, than exactly the same as it would for adults in terms of motivation when you’re working on things that you care about; another is that it allows trust to form between teachers and students. If their ideas are not just shot down, students are more apt to open up and receive feedback because they feel seen and heard.
Having the ability to choose for themselves, also leaves room for mistakes. Sure we as adults may see an error coming down the pipes, but by simply avoiding them and not teaching our kids how to get back up, we’re missing the opportunity to really grow. (*We encourage smart risks. We never allow our students to intentionally harm themselves.)
Beyond the mistakes, being able to choose also leaves a whole lot of room for big successes and moments of pride.
Like when Mrs. Pethe’s cohort showed their finished videography project to a room full of their family and friends.
The laughs were loud, the characters were typecast perfectly, they put in the work. And what resulted were a group of kids who can now add this project to their list of accomplishments and will be able to build off of it in the future.
Please enjoy, “Da Race” by Mrs. Pethe’s cohort…grammatical error encouraged here.