I have learned that there are times I have underestimated students. And for every time I realize that I underestimated them, I am fairly certain there are two more I haven’t caught on to yet.
When I worked as a Librarian in a kindergarten through fifth grade school, I always started teaching students to use the online catalog in grade 3. It seemed like a good fit. Their spelling and typing were coming along, which seemed critical for our antiquated and less than intuitive cataloging system (there I go making excuses). They had started to develop real opinions of what they were looking for in the library, and their teachers were more apt to present them with information needs that they had to fulfill (adding a little blame to my excuses). When we upgraded to a newer, more user friendly catalog system I started offering instruction at the end of grade two but I wasn’t trusting that they were really ready. Boy was I doing things wrong (honesty at last).
Three years ago I moved to a kindergarten through grade two school. I lost all of my older students that I’d spent time teaching these skills to. Out of some combination of curiosity and a desire to not throw away instructional skills I’d worked to develop, I decided to try teaching second graders to use the same system. I quickly realized they were more than up to the challenge. So why not first graders? Sure enough a fair number of them were more than capable of achieving positive results conducting their own searches. Sure most needed help, some more than others, but I realized I had been underestimating many of them. First graders have clear information needs and wants and should be able to act on them. And as for that spelling concern I used as an excuse, that’s been resolved by a new set of Chromebooks that flip into tablets and offer a one click microphone for speech to text. If they can clearly state what they want, I don’t see why the ability to type the word should take up time they could spend with the book in their hands or in any way slow them down. Isn’t seeing that word in the book one of the best ways for them to learn it anyway?
What I’m learning when it comes to things we do out of tradition or habit is that every year, these are new kids. Yes, some aspects will remain constant but when it comes to their learning, interests, and skills, each new group of students should have all opportunities to learn at their own pace. So often I’ve done the “let me answer your questions before you ask because I know what they’ll be since I’ve done this before and you haven’t” routine when it comes to certain activities. If I do that, I’m not saving any of us time, I’m stealing part of the learning process away from my students. And as for saving time, half of them will ask me the question again anyway because when I answered it, they weren’t thinking about it yet.
This week in our #LCInnovation reflections we were asked to consider traditions we felt needed change. I thought about how we’ve broken down the standard Dewey Decimal System to group by genre and intermix Fiction with related Nonfiction. Each change like that comes from me wanting to prioritize getting students to the books and the reading and the learning faster. But, at the same time, I’m recognizing the less obvious traditions of teaching habits that are based on assumptions of what learners are capable of. Traditions that have little regard for individuals learning at their own pace. I can say things like, “well the librarian before me did it that way” but that’s the problem with following any path that isn’t based on the learners in front of me right now. If I truly want to move towards being “Learner Centered” evaluating these traditions is something that needs a lot of attention.