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24 January 2005: Who's in Charge Here? (2 of 4)
There’s two things to love about this kind of teaching by empowering. First, this kind of teaching is effective—really. Put simply, how much more do you learn when you choose what and how you study? What if your college professors had demanded that you make flashcards, even though you knew that re-reading the text would help you more? What if your college professors gave every person exactly the same amount of time at the same time of day to finish their work? Sounds insane, right? Especially to a nocturnal student like myself. The truth is, this is often what we do to our students. We tell them how to jump through our hoops without equipping them with strategies to help them learn. If we train our students in learning strategies that serve the multiple intelligences, they will then have the ability to choose for themselves how to learn the material. They key here is to make sure they know how to use the strategies, and to hold them responsible for their own learning. Talk about empowering.
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