Students need room to be themselves

I am the high school English teacher at an alternative school. In the alternative program that I teach in, I have started to utilize an individualized lesson plan for each student. I see that students need room to be themselves, especially when it comes to the way that they learn. The lessons that I utilize for my classroom are altered to meet the specific needs of each student. If a student works better reading out loud, then we give them an environment where they can read aloud. If a student needs help with reading, then it is given to them. When you sit down and consider that each person learns in a different form and fashion, then we will quickly realize that students could benefit from just doing things in a non-traditional fashion.

A lot of teachers, and more specifically teachers of teachers, are stuck in ruts. They use text books and teach methods that where thought of many years ago. They may see that change is inevitable and they may see the change around them, but most are not willing to face the fact that this world is changing. And with the world changing, we as educators must realize that learning must also change. The curriculum that we as an educational system are using is based on what some group of people considers to be the basis for an education. I thusly have to build my lesson plans around them. After three years of writing lesson plans I was soon to realize that as long as you follow the extremely meticulous set of rules for writing them that the actual incorporation of the specific elements is not that hard. The hardest part is merely getting each student to understand all the different aspects on their educational level.

Even when I was in school I realized that some of the stuff was just impossible for me to understand because of the way that the teacher was teaching it. So soon after my initial employment in the school system I began writing lesson plans to tailor to the individual problems that the students had. This was leading me to the conclusion that some students learn better when they learn things in their own way.

Based on my experience as a teacher, and as a student, I know that the American high school system needs to revamp the way that some of the extremely complicated concepts are taught. If we were only given more freedom to teach students in different ways, then students would be learning easier. If students could be taught in the way that they learn the best, wouldn’t that benefit us all? If we look into the specifics of how a student actually learns, we may find the key that will open the door to a lost generation of learners.