Towards More Learner-Centered Classrooms: One Educator’s First Steps

The title of teacher or educator is deceptively simple and often misunderstood. Even years into the profession, my own definition was rigid and held both myself and my learners back behind artificial barriers. Teachers are role models and mentors, trail guides and cheerleaders, we are counselors and experts, we inspire, and we are artists of the human mind. It is only by embracing this broader and evolving definition that educators can continue to grow, enhancing their practice to be more learner-centered to truly meet the needs of today’s students. Rigid definitions and constructs that were designed to support a system from 150 years ago are failing today’s learners. Instead of forcing our learners to contort to a system, what if we built a system around our learners starting with a reimagined and evolving definition of what it means to be an educator? 

Over the past year, with 2Revolutions I’ve had the privilege to work with educators all across the country. In every conversation, in every classroom, building, and district educators have shared that what today’s learners need to know and be able to do includes critical thinking, collaboration and solving real world problems, communication, and how to apply content not simply memorize it for an upcoming test. When we then asked these educators what they needed to know and be able to do, the answers they gave were far from a simple rigid definition. They recognize that they need to model and cultivate learner-centered mindsets, relationships, and cultures, design and implement learner-centered instruction and assessment, design and support equitable and inclusive learning environments, champion their systems and communities, and sustain and cultivate wellness. In these classrooms, educators are working to rethink the rigid traditional definition of teacher and working to place learners at the center of the system, rather than confine learners to a system. Their paths and practices look different, and each is working to take the next step forward to better meet the needs of their learners. Educators who are embracing their next steps are passionate about opening doors and filling the toolboxes of students so that they can pursue their passions in a rapidly changing world. They are passionate about accompanying their students on the path of understanding, about taking part in that journey; sometimes leading, sometimes walking alongside, and sometimes following but always continuously journeying with their students. This is the heart of what it means to be student-centered.

My classroom has changed over the past two decades as my journey has led me from Biology Teacher to Middle School Principal to Leader-in-Residence and now Senior Consultant with 2Revolutions. Even though my classroom has changed and my students look different, at heart I will always be a teacher. The students I have been privileged to share my journey with have profoundly impacted who I am and who I am still becoming as an educator. Let me introduce you to one whose impact on me has lasted far beyond the time we spent together in the classroom… Sam, Sam carries more weight on her shoulders than a 15-year-old should. When I first began teaching, I didn’t view myself as a teacher.  I was a scientist who taught. The content was primary and the most important part of what I did each day was share my knowledge with learners. It took a few years perhaps before this perception of myself shifted and I began to understand both the art and science of teaching. My view changed to that of an instructor of science. I say instructor because while my lens started to shift to students, I still saw my ultimate purpose was to share science knowledge. Then finally, a profound transformation happened for me when I began teaching at Windham High School and its catalyst was a student named Sam. I realized that I wasn’t just a scientist, and I wasn’t just a science instructor, but I was a teacher… and I taught students. I taught students about themselves and the world around them, I was there to help them on their own journey of discovery and growth as they stepped out of adolescence and into the next phases of their young adult life. I taught compassion, empathy, wonder, and what it means to be part of a community all through my passion and excitement for science. I taught students, not a subject. I expect I am not alone in the journey I traveled and perhaps this resonates with you wherever you are in your own journey. The revelation came to me through my students, through understanding that their unique gifts, talents, and opportunities for growth were being stifled in a traditional classroom. That there was so much more they were capable of if I could let go of my own self-perceptions of my role as teacher, my own constricted outdated definition, broaden my understanding of my role and truly move to more learner-centered practices. 

We teach students, not subjects. Sam is the student I carry with me whenever I think about this simple but powerful phrase. Sam was a student in my Honors Biology class who struggled on our traditional assessments. Assessments that I deemed rigorous because they were complex multiple choice responses. In reflection, I realize that the language of those assessments, their overall “tricky” wording, and focus on memorization didn’t equate to true rigor or relevance, rather created unnecessary roadblocks to learners to truly show what they knew and were able to do! Sam struggled on these assessments and refused to stay for extra help. One day I decided that a good teacher would call home and let her parents know what I was seeing in class and offer my support. After all, parent -teacher partnership is a hallmark of good teaching… but I left someone out. I neglected to realize that Sam was an important part of the conversation, that she should be the center of it, that I should talk with her first, better understand her as a person before a learner. Sam's parents were supportive and Sam came into class the next day furious with me. Any relationship I had nurtured seemed to go up in smoke in front of my eyes. You see, Sam didn’t stay after school for extra help because she didn’t want to. She didn’t stay, because she went home to take care of her younger siblings and both of her parents had health challenges. I didn’t know. I didn’t ask. I failed the learner in front of me by not knowing her. So I apologized and we talked about her. Sam and I talked about her hopes and dreams, about where she was thriving in school and where she struggled. Turns out Sam was an amazing artist. So I broadened my definition and began to think of all the ways students might express what they know and are able to do… for Sam, that was art. While I wasn’t quite ready to totally take dynamite to my definition, my identity, just yet, Sam started a fire in me to begin to lean back so my students could lean in. Throughout the rest of the year, Sam and her classmates created. They decided how they would prove their learning and mastery through mediums that were their own. Assessments became works of art, music compositions, computer programs, magazines, lab experiments, plays, and yes some research papers too. As the teacher, I still set the learning objectives they needed to demonstrate but it was up to the learners to decide the how. They became more engaged, spent far more hours getting lost in their demonstrations than they ever spent studying, and applied their learning so deeply that years later I’ve received messages from them about their work.  

This one small change in my teaching practice, would turn into an avalanche of new ideas, experiments, and instructional choices to combat the narrative of student disengagement that felt all too loud. It has meant letting go of old definitions of teacher and shifting to one where I provide the frame and scaffolding for the house, but my learners get to imagine, design, decorate, make choices and exercise their growing hunger for greater agency. While I am no longer in a science classroom, their ideas have evolved and traveled with me from the classroom to school leadership and now to coach. I am a perpetual student and I won’t profess to have all the answers but I am willing to be curious and vulnerable in order to continue to grow. There are many paths forward to a common destination of deeper student engagement through student-centered practices. If you are ready to take the next step down such a path, follow and check back often as I’ll share some ideas on how we might begin to conquer such a challenge and unpack what student-centered really means.