A School Where Your Day Is About Feeling Your Presence in the World

Of all the interesting innovations I read about in Chapter 3, the encouraging parents and mentors, and the bright minds, what struck a chord in me most was David Sengeh's desire to create a school that was designed around feeling your presence in the world (p.87). I think more often than we would like to believe our students feel exactly the opposite during their school day -- that what is happening in the classroom is disconnected from their worlds and does not acknowledge their presence as individuals who are capable and creative. I believe this is less about teachers than it is about the state of education. The reforms of the last twenty years have put unnecessary restrictions on teachers and limited student experiences to those justified by the standardized test of the year. But I do feel an end  is in sight, or at least a relaxing of some of these measures. Recent calls by President Obama to limit the amount of testing in classrooms  are one indication that some of the rigid educational framework of recent years may be loosening. The refocusing on project based learning in many districts across the country is yet another ray of hope.
Sengeh's comment leads me to think about how this can be a primary goal in my classroom -- that children in my class feel their presence in the world. What does this mean in a math classroom? How does this guide my lesson planning, my project development, and my collaboration with other subject areas and teachers? How does it shape the daily activity in my room? Certainly student voice and choice is a strong element in their feeling their own presence in the world. How do my lessons provide for voice and choice? for making visible the aspirations and dreams of students? How can I continue to increase these elements in my classroom? All of this points again to the teacher as facilitator, who has the freedom to listen to student interests, to follow unconventional pathways and to build classroom time around collaborative exploration toward student interests and goals. A teacher who is willing to grow, to listen. I do see this idea, of feeling our presence in the world, as an important principle in the process of owning and developing project-based learning as a way of teaching and learning.