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We have all seen youth who can spend hours perfecting complicated skateboarding feats, learning new computer games or mastering animation techniques – it is impossible to stop them from learning. Yet these same teens may struggle with learning in a classroom setting. Part of the problem is that classroom learning is often abstract, disconnected from any real-life application or the natural context for using new information.
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Although many people have begun to understand the importance of the [[early years]] to human development, achievement and lifelong success, we have been slow to recognize the elephant in our midst—the adolescent learner. Dropout statistics, plummeting rates of school connectedness, declining academic performance and an increased dislike of school are [[signs of trouble]] underlining a disturbing pattern of disengagement as youth enter their teens. It seems that we may be [[getting it wrong]] for adolescents learners more than anyone in our schools.
Read more Education includes schooling, but it is by no means restricted to it. John Dewey
If we want our children to become responsible life-long learners then we need to be as concerned about their time outside the classroom as we are about their time in it. Terence Ryan
Those neurological changes in the young brain as it transforms itself mean that adolescents have evolved to be apprentice-like learners, not pupils sitting at desks and waiting instruction. Youngsters who are empowered as adolescents to take charge of their own futures will make better citizens for the future. John Abbott
Robert Epstein, former editor in chief of Psychology Today, shows that teen turmoil is caused by outmoded systems put in place a century ago which destroyed the continuum between childhood and adulthood. Where this continuum still exists in other countries, there is no adolescence.
Isolated from adults, American teens learn everything they know from their media-dominated peers the last people on earth they should be learning from, says Epstein. Epstein explains that our teens are highly capable in some ways more capable than adults and argues strongly against infantilizing young people. We must rediscover the adult in every teen, he says, by giving young people adult authority and responsibility as soon as they can demonstrate readiness. This landmark book will change the thinking about teens for decades to come. Read more Laurie Chancey spent her childhood immersing herself in topics of her own choosing. She was never forced to learn something simply because tradition and/or society said it was necessary. No one was looking over her shoulder to make sure she was learning the “proper” subjects.
She enrolled in college when she was eighteen, and graduated summa cum laude three and a half years later. Laurie is a bright adult, but her IQ is not why she did so well. She spent her life learning to learn and it’s something that now comes easily to her. The Unprocessed Child was written by her mother and is full of examples of raising a child with respect and dignity. It is the first book written about a radically unschooled child who has now reached adulthood and is a responsible member of society. Read more Whether the students are struggling or proficient, the program is designed to nurture their natural passion for learning and mastery, challenging them to go beyond the easy and familiar so they can truly excel. The program can be introduced in stages in any middle or high school classroom and enables students of diverse abilities to design and pursue independent course work, special projects, or even artistic presentations, community field work or apprenticeships.
Using this approach, the students take on an increasingly autonomous, self-directed role as they progress. The heart of the program is the action contract (or learning agreement) whereby the student sets challenging yet attainable goals, commits to a path for achieving them, and evaluates the results. Special emphasis is placed on developing skills and competencies that can serve the student well in his or her academic and career endeavors. Read more |
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