We know that it’s important to move from compliance to student engagement. But what happens when you take it another step and empower your students to own their learning?

Here are seven ideas:

#1: They fall in love with learning by finding joy in pursuing their passions and geeky interests. In the process, they learn how to research and curate and communicate.

#2: They embrace a maker mindset as they work through a design process and launch their work to the world.

#3: They develop iterative thinking, viewing mistakes as a chance to learn. This leads to a shift from a fixed to a growth mindset.

#4: They become self-starters, exploring new frontiers, asking hard questions, and trying new things.

#5: They become problem-solvers and systems thinkers

#6: They also challenge the system as hackers who think divergently and rewrite the rules.

#7: They become architects of their own learning, engaging in project management and collaboration.


A.J. Juliani puts it this way:

Our job is not to prepare students for something. Our job is to help students prepare
themselves for anything.

In other words, when we empower our students, they are able to own their learning forever.