Learner Agency Living in the Deep

Learner Agency: A Field Guide for Taking Flight is a boots-on-the-ground resource for those who wish to foster greater agency for students and adults alike within their classroom, school, or school system. Written by practitioners who have experienced the triumphs and struggles first-hand, the book offers a framework for moving from building knowledge to making meaning and applying the understanding of practices and systems that support agency. 

 

-Aspired to write this book based on our common work within a district where the three authors came together. Our hope with agency is for students to understand themselves as learners, build their identity as a learner, and learn what to do when they don't know what to do, as well as learn what to do with a bit of independence and understanding they need to  move it forward. Kids need time and practice! Fail, learn, and get up and try again! That was the fuel of this project.

-Building a recipe to accelerate learning. We wanted to share the experience and spread the word about what we found that worked. Every time we shared it worked for them too. We wanted to bring that food for thought, and how do we reframe what learning should look like, when we have the opportunity..

-COVID has taught us to think more about our learners. To think about who is in the seat and their means they need to learn anything. How to learn and the dispositions they need in this ever-changing world. 

- Push learners to the deep! We have to be ok with that. We need dialogue and discourse.

-We need clarity about what success is. What does it look and sound like?

-When kids have clarity about what is expected of them they are much more likely to take on a challenge and their anxiety goes down.

-Let us know what good learners do.

-What will this look and sound like in my classroom?

-Secret Sauce: Accountability with students and what they were learning. Where are you, where are you going, what do you do when you are stuck?

-The heart of the student agency is building efficiency at every level.

-Mindset shift - get stuck and unstuck all the time.

-Honor the learning process = the more successful the learning is.

-Sharing your story is so important.

-Does a learner know where they are and speak to this?

-Mastery moments with upward spirals.

-Tell your story to build capacity.

-Does it align with your graduate profile?

-Celebrate every step of progress!

-Dialogue and discourse.

-Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Permission to ask questions that are hard. wE have permission to try another way. We have permission to give ourselves time to learn something, before we have to do it.

-Mastery Moments

-We are doing so much right, and we need to fixate on that, not the small errors along the way

-If we shift our focus, everything shifts!

-Celebrate the wins.

-Permission needs to be granted. What are you learning? And what does that look like? Does the learner know what that looks like?

-You are changing outputs not inputs.

Connect with the authors:

@TheSocialCore @MimiToddPress

-Affirm, push, inspire to make a difference in the life of learners - Katie Martin!

-Be the learner, you want all to be!

-Mastery moments happen, celebrate!

-Still, I am learning.

-Listen authentically and give authentic feedback.

-Listen. Ask questions to get to listen.