Student Empowerment

Education Week describes research showing that creating a school environment of less stress and more empowerment for students spills over to create better academic achievement here.  My comment:

When reading this, it’s tempting to say “Duh!”  But my worry is that schools are not allowing the research on safe environments and student-empowerment to spill over to curriculum decisions.

In my 35 years of teaching high school English, I gradually came to understand that by allowing my students to choose most of their reading material, they read much more, did much better writing on it, and were even, surprisingly enough, much better behaved.

Student input on school climate decisions is vital, but no less vital than their input on curriculum decisions.