Buffet learning: the future of education
In my last post (read it here), I talked about how I had transformed my English 12 class last year from an “English class” to a true community of writers. In this post, I’m going to talk about how I’m planning on expanding this experiment to my English 9 through 12 classes with the main focus being student-driven… well,everything.
We are all born with the desire to learn. Babies and small children are infinitely curious creatures, driven to experiment with their environments and push their bodies to master feats that at first seem impossible. As toddlers get older, they learn their first language not by being put inside a room and given a computer and a set of headphones, but by being immersed in the language. They learn how to ride a bike not by examining the principles of gravity, momentum, or balance, but by getting on, falling off, and repeating the process until they no longer fall off.
After five magical years of learning, playing, and experimenting, kids enter kindergarten, and their educational