Making Students Masters of Their Own Curriculum

bairli1 / Pixabay

When children had to be taught in small, one-room, school houses across the nation it was typical for everyone from kindergarten to 8th grade to be in the same room.  My mother-in-law remembered how the older students would often help out the younger kids with their school work in between receiving lessons from the teacher.  Little did they realize that teaching others was helping to solidify the skills and processes they had previously learned.

With the advent of larger public schools this tradition of older students helping the younger ones almost completely went away.  The focus became heavily on homework, studying for the test and just passing the grade.  There was no pride in learning something new, no incentive to pass it on.  Thankfully, it seems anyway, that education is starting to circle back to students taking ownership of their education and becoming teachers in the way they learn their craft.  One such example of this is the Cornell School District of Coraopolis, Pennsylvania

and their high school broadcasting program.

niekverlaan / Pixabay

 

 

The following press release is courtesy of PR Newswire –

Kriss Hupp and Patricia Dahmen are educators at the Cornell School District who created an extracurricular live broadcast journalism program for students. Students produce a daily news program for other students, faculty, and staff in the community called “TheCornellCHSTV”. The show is entirely developed and produced by the students. The curriculum teaches students how to operate and construct their own broadcasts “in the doing”. Students learn a broad range of skills including presentation, camera angles, lighting and communication. Through the program, students become masters of their own education. “The students who join CHSTV are looking to learn more about broadcast journalism, and some of them have become “experts” in their job positions. This enables them to become teachers,” says Dahmen.

Hupp and Dahmen believe technology is a powerful tool that should be used to enable students to create and collaborate with their peers around the world. “As technology evolves, so does our student experiences,” says Dahmen.

Read the full article here

Kris Hupp is the 21st Century Teaching and Learning Coach at the Cornell School District. Patricia Dahmen is an English and Journalism Teacher at the Cornell School District. Kris and Tricia are CHS-TV sponsors.

CMRubinWorld’s award-winning series, The Global Search for Education, brings together distinguished thought leaders in education and innovation from around the world to explore the key learning issues faced by most nations. The series has become a highly visible platform for global discourse on 21st century learning, offering a diverse range of innovative ideas which are presented by the series founder, C. M. Rubin, together with the world’s leading thinkers.

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Contact Information:

David Wine

David(at)cmrubinworld(dot)com

 

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