Limitations on Student-Centered Learned

One of the biggest problems I have encountered in trying to implement student-centered learning is students’ unwillingness to think for themselves. Students have been programmed not to think. Often I have made the statement that I didn’t learn to think until I got to college. Students were told how to do a problem and expected to follow the procedure. (Again that’s what I liked math, right?) Those that could grasp the procedure were fine, the ones that couldn’t were left behind. By the time they get to middle grades they don’t even try. Our textbook has been so empowering though. Even for me, I’m learning things. I want to go back to my school and teach these basis operations again – the student centered way. We spend so much time in our curriculum re-teaching the same old way, and students still don’t understand it. When I see the strategies in the book, I am totally buying into it. The way I plan to engineer the shift from limitation to constraint is to first recognize that this is prevalent. Secondly, I plan to begin with something simple, like an addition problem where they can’t use traditional methods. By giving them something early that allows them to be successful, I believe this will empower them to continue to try.