Empowerment

Today was better.  I spent 10 minutes talking to each of my classes about power.  They have the power to do what they want.  It's the choices that they make.  Positive choices lead to positive consequences.  Negative choices lead to negative consequences.  Positive choices build your power to do more.  Negative choices give away your power to others.

I told them that I don't want their power.  Living in a community means that we need to follow some general rules and expectations.  Keeping your power means following these expectations.  The more you do this, the power you get.  If you get more power, you can do more things.

I think many of my students got it. The tutorials went better.  More students were engaged.  More got the gist of what the day was about.  One group just didn't get it.  They've lost some power during the next tutorial.

How do you get your students to be in charge of what they are doing?

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