Trust Kids as the Experts they are

As a student, I often asked my teachers, “When will I need to know this when I grow up?” Yep. I was that kid. 

One time I asked my 4th-grade teacher why I had to learn cursive and typing in the same school year. She told me I’d need typing for my resume and cursive to write letters. 

When I asked my 7th grade English teacher why I needed to memorize MLA format instead of using easybib.com she told me that the internet might not be around forever. 

I once asked my Algebra 1 teacher why I needed to learn Algebra. I mean, I was good with PEMDAS as the pinnacle of my math career but she said, “Mike you have to learn Algebra because you won’t have a calculator with you when you grow up. 

I hated school growing up for two primary reasons:

1. I didn’t believe my teachers were teaching me relevant information. 
2. I had no interest in what I was learning. I had no input or control over what I learned.

If we want to create schools that serve kids well we have to give kids control over their own learning. 

One of the biggest reasons school sucks is because schools are often designed completely by adults with no kid input. Pop into any school faculty meeting or planning meeting. You’ll often hear, “Oh the kids will love this.” And most of the time, they are DEAD WRONG.

As adults and educators, we should have enough humility to know that we don’t always have the right answers. And on the subject of school: Kids are the experts. 

One of the most difficult, yet rewarding moments of my career as an educator happened to me last year. I’d planned this trip for my students. I thought they would love it. We were going to see this giant telescope, play with some virtual reality and learn about augmented reality. 

After coming back from the trip I casually asked one of the students, “Hey, how was the trip.” She looked at me and said, “I’m going to be honest. This wasn’t fun. I really didn’t learn much. It was actually kind of lame. Really lame actually. I wouldn’t do that again.” And I felt like she was trying to let me down easy on that one. 

But I did the hard thing and asked, “how do we make it better?” Then the kids and the staff actually came together and planned a trip that they did love. 

Now don’t pat me on the back for this. I begrudgingly asked for feedback because I’ve learned to do this as a part of the culture of my workplace. One of the parts of Alpha I am most proud of is the fact that we ask kids to audit everything we do. If they don’t like it, we will often change it. 

It takes kid input to create schools that kids love. It takes kid input to create schools that serve kids well. Kids are not customers in school, they should be shareholders. 

Is this easy? No. It is a hard shift in mindset and action. But it is more than worth it. 

For many of us, seeing is believing. So I challenge you to go and see. School can be special and amazing. It does not have to be one-size-fits-all. There are amazing schools that are fighting to create phenomenal environments for kids. 

My challenge to you is to go visit them. Go and see the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. Go see High Tech High in San Diego. Go Check out Tacoma School of the Arts in Tacoma Washington. Come check out Alpha right here in Austin, Texas. 

I believe deeply that conversations like this can be the catalyst for real, impactful change in education. We have to push ourselves to think differently and act differently if we want to create schools that serve kids well. 

If kids really are the future, we should make sure they aren’t learning in schools of the past. 

School sucks. But it doesn’t have to. 

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I recently gave a TEDx talk at TEDx South Congress. Because this message is important to me, I wanted to make sure to share it in as many mediums as I can. I will be doing a four-part article series on Linkedin to share the written version of the talk!

This is the final part of the series.

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed this discussion and new ideas. Please leave a comment with your thoughts. I'd love to hear what you think.