Providing Opportunities

I have been blessed with the opportunity to teach a #digcit course this year.  It is a semester long course that is open to 9th - 12th grade students.  It is a new elective, so I had fewer students first semester (20) than I do second semester (31).  The mixture of students is very reflective of our student body.  We have students who are in the top 10 in their class and kids that are not as strong academically.

I've discovered that is the beauty of our class.  On the first day, I explained that this is a different type of class.  None of us is smarter than the collective room is.  We all have different abilities and that it is going to take the collective smarts of all of us to make all of us successful.  The old adage that the room is smarter than any of us.

This really hit home with many of my students who are not as academically strong as some of the other students.

Yesterday, I witnessed an amazing triumph for two of my academic strugglers.

I was going through Google Docs and Chromebooks with the class and a couple of my academically strong students were really struggling to grasp what I was explaining.  Without me saying anything, two of my academic strugglers got up, walked over and assisted the tech strugglers.

Not only did this provide an avenue for the academically weak students to share their knowledge, but the smile on their faces after they realized that they have a better handle on the skills an information than students who typically are successful was so heart warming!!!  The fist bump that both academic strugglers received for their assistance to the academically stronger students put a smile on their face that was literally priceless.

The other important part of that is that the academic strugglers got to witness the fact that the academically strong students struggle with things too!  All too often they think everything comes easy to the academically strong students and this proved that everyone has to work hard!

This course really does give all students an opportunity to be teachers, learners and support for one another!