Collaborating With Students in Instruction and Decision Making

The Untapped Resource

Richard A. Villa, Jacqueline S. Thousand, Ann I. Nevin, Richard A. Villa, Jacqueline S. Thousand, Ann I. Nevin

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781412972178
• eBook ISBN: 9781452271439
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

"This book reveals how powerful learning could be if students and educators shared more of the teaching responsibilities! Involving students in the teaching experience helps them learn more academically and do more socially."
—Peggy King-Sears, Professor
George Mason University

"In this easy-to-read resource, the authors help educators understand that inclusion isn?t something that we do to and for students, but rather, something we must do with students. The powerful anecdotes of educators and students planning, tutoring, and teaching side by side give us new hope and further direction for the creation of inclusive schools."
—Cathy L. Taschner, Assistant Superintendent
Oxford Area School District, PA

Take advantage of a resource that?s right in your classroom—your students!

How can you meet the needs of a diverse student population in mixed-ability classrooms and maintain a cooperative, caring, and active learning environment? Students are the perfect resource!

Research shows that when students collaborate with teachers, they take responsibility for what happens in the classroom, care about their classmates, and become more engaged in learning. This comprehensive book offers practical strategies for empowering students as co-teachers, decision makers, and advocates in the classroom. Ideal for K–12 general and special education teachers, this guide describes how to

• Involve students in instruction through collaborative learning groups, co-teaching, and peer tutoring that foster self-discipline and responsible behavior
• Make students a part of decision making by utilizing personal learning plans, peer mediation, and other methods
• Put collaboration with students into practice using the assessment tools, user-friendly lesson plans, case studies, and checklists included

Collaborating With Students in Instruction and Decision Making is packed with all the information, strategies, and tools teachers need to tap their students? potential as a resource for making a difference in the classroom.

Part I

Introduction

There are three components to Part I: Introduction. The Foreword features Professor Paula Kluth, a researcher and advocate for augmented communication techniques that allows students to express themselves, and Peyton Goddard, a student and recent college graduate who has had the experience of advocating for augmented communication to allow her own thoughts and wishes to be heard. This is followed by the authors’ letter to the reader, which outlines the reasons why they wrote this book. In Chapter 1, the authors address several questions: Why are students not motivated or involved in their own education today? Why are teachers not collaborating more with students in teaching and decision making? How does student collaboration fit with 21st-century goals of education and the Circle of Courage? How does student collaboration interface with or support notions of democratic schooling? How does student collaboration enhance student self-determination? How does student collaboration enhance achievement of academic and social goals? How does student collaboration fit in with the limited fiscal and human resources now facing public schools?

In addressing these questions, the authors suggest there are several rationales for student collaboration. Specifically, student collaboration (a) facilitates 21st-century goals of education, (b) is an example of democratic schooling, (c) increases self-determination of students, (d) increases academic and social competence of students, (e) facilitates school reform efforts, and (e) represents an untapped resource in times of limited fiscal and human resources. We hope you’ll add your own voice to support these reasons for embracing student collaboration.

Foreword

The Importance of Students’ Voices

Paula Kluth and Peyton Goddard

In 2003, fifth graders from Room 405 at Richard E. Byrd Community Academy, a Chicago public school, decided they needed a new school. Byrd was located near Cabrini Green, a large housing project in Chicago, and most of the students at the school lived right in the neighborhood. Working with their teacher, Brian Schulz, the students decided they could and should create a better place to learn for themselves. Following is an excerpt from the mission statement they wrote at the outset of their journey:

Our school building, Richard E. Byrd Community Academy, has so many problems we do not think it can be fixed. We created a web graphic organizer to put down all the ideas we had about what was wrong with our school. Here is a list of all the major problems about our school: the restrooms, office, windows, water fountains, classrooms, temperature, library, outside all need a lot of help. In addition our school does not even have a gym, lunchroom, or auditorium/stage. Based on all these problems we think we need a whole new school.
The issue of our building being messed up is a serious problem. Our school is not safe, comfortable, or a good place to learn because of all these things wrong with it. We think kids deserve to have a safe, comfortable, and nice place to learn. (Room 405 Website, 2005)

The story is a bit astounding, not only because they took on this serious problem themselves but because they were so successful. The students wrote an 11-point action plan. It included photographing the school’s problems, surveying the student body, and researching the construction funding plans for public schools. They also launched an aggressive letter and e-mail campaign targeting elected officials, journalists, and decision makers within the school system.

Though the district eventually closed Byrd and sent the students to a neighboring school instead of building a new one, the students did more than create a stir. They attracted reporters not only from local news outlets but from National Public Radio. They created their own documentary film. They had visitors ranging from state politicians to Ralph Nader. They received over a hundred letters of support from professors, lawmakers, teachers, and citizens and even got one from the vice president of the United States.

This story is one of many in which student voices were valued, heard, and, in many ways, honored. It is powerful because it not only causes us to celebrate the potential of our youth but may help us see how children and teens can have a real impact on the world and change not only educational outcomes but the act of teaching itself.

Unfortunately, student voices have not always been at the center of teaching and learning in this country despite the many stories we have all heard about student creativity, leadership, and innovation. Many obstacles, of course, hold teachers back from empowering learners to take control of their educational experiences and from working collaboratively with students. One obstacle is certainly the norms and traditions of schooling itself. It is common to see students being taught but not common to see students co-teaching with their instructors, and it is even less common to see them teaching without the support of a teacher. It is common to see students working in groups but uncommon to see them forming groups and leading them. It is common to see students completing work assigned by teachers but uncommon to see students addressing real problems that they see in the world and developing solutions to them.

Another barrier has been teacher education. Few collaboration courses for preservice teachers feature students as a resource for problem solving, curriculum planning, or teaching. New teachers, therefore, may be coming out of their preparation programs without an understanding of all that is possible for the learners in their care. Even at the college level, students are seldom seen as problem solvers or creators of authentic products or solutions. I remember the reactions I received from my first class of preservice teachers when I asked them to create products not for me but for their community, their school, or themselves. Instead of asking them to take tests or compose essays, I asked them to write papers for possible publication, to create children’s literature, to assemble a presentation for fellow teachers, to propose a program, or to craft a solution to a problem they saw in their school or community. Some were excited, but many others seemed initially stumped or confused by the invitation to create and think out of the box.

Finally, teachers may encounter the barrier of having few resources to support this work of creativity and collaboration. Thanks to Rich Villa, Jacque Thousand, and Ann Nevin and this fantastic resource you hold in your hands, however, this final barrier is getting easier and easier to traverse. This book will help all of those educators who have felt that they didn’t have a resource with tips on how to create student collaboration or those who were unsure of the research behind this work. It will also help any teacher who feels alone. As you read this book, you will meet other educators who took risks, proposed solutions, navigated difficult questions, and found new excitement in their teaching by collaborating with their students.

To date, this is the most comprehensive guide to working alongside students in our diverse schools. In reading this very important text, even the most savvy and teaming-oriented teacher will gain new ideas for designing lessons, providing instruction, meeting individual student needs, motivating learners, and creating safer and more peaceful schools. The primary reason, however, for celebrating this text is that it is the only one of its kind to consider the needs of and, of course, the voices of students who are the most marginalized in our schools. In addition to providing ideas relevant across ethnicity, race, region, and learning profiles, the book also feature the stories of students with disabilities. The authors make it quite clear that we can “listen” to all student voices, even when the individuals of concern communicate in alternative ways, do not have the language or experience of having agency or creating change, or need support from others to express themselves.

Instead of attempting to expand on how important this work is, I will hand this part of the Foreword over to my colleague, Peyton Goddard, who has more than a few things to express about power, collaboration, and voice.

In 1977 at the age of three, a joy-filled girl named Peyton Goddard was segregated into special education. She spent the following two decades in restricted placements, where she lost her joy and gained multiple labels, including severely mentally retarded and autistic. Since she was nonverbal and unable to point dependably or replicate sign language, educators assumed she had nothing to say and, thus, denied her the support she required to learn and communicate in alternative ways. Living in despair, she saw a life she’d never want anyone to teach as being acceptable for any human being.

In 1997, after years of silent pleas, hope arrived in the form of augmentative alternative communication, and she gained a dependable way to communicate. The strategy she uses to communicate, called facilitated communication, involves a trained support person offering a combination of physical and emotional support so she can type with one finger on a keyboard. In 2002, she graduated valedictorian from Cuyamaca Community College with nearly a 4.0 average. Today, she is living near her parents in her own apartment with 24-hour support, and she is writing a memoir of her life.

Here in Peyton’s own words are answers to three questions we asked of her.

Why is it important for school personnel to listen to the voice of students in determining placement, instruction, accommodations, and support?

I’m wasted 22 years in no education. Puny, I wept, desiring death. Young, eased I was to news that I’m revered nothing, esteemed nothing. Treed like an animal, I was led tugged to red hot anger, to rest never. Red anger in devalued peoples, trees us all red in this warring, wasted-joy, worrisome world. Each destiny-errored, festered-sad, differently-wired but “cares to learn” child, needs assurance they are not weeds but fragrant flowers of vast points to be greeted as valuable. Support all voices in determining their destiny and these points of opportunity, I point out:

1. Kids will not simmer or explode in anger, coping with pity of no one esteeming them.
2. Kids’ wars over feeling no worth, will epitome end.
3. World will move in joy, not in wars.

What can school personnel do to help students discover their voice?

There, in either the tested room or the class room, best tell each cherub that they can lead. Say that they are the guiders to test the best ways to heat their versed, vested, vastly valuable, vellum varied, esteemed equated equal, red news never viewed, volumed voices. Tease these cherubs never with fears you will try only one way to help them access speech. When they know their differences will be supported by you saying you will never stop trying ways to help them find their very best voice, their fears rest. There, they are not awed by pity. There, esteem is greeted. I’m in peace because someone saw all people are real and deserve being supported to communicate their truths.

In your K–12 experience, what has happened when your voice has been heard and also when it has NOT been heard?

I’m heard zero, I point out. I’m gyred up, I’m gyred down, whipped into sweared want death, my meal opted over. Queer modes of my actions festered. In wasp by eddy of never being in unity with creation, I was upped insane. There pouts melted me.
Now you greet me as a writer who is stretching your imaginings to pity me not, but to cope with kissing the news that “I’m real, ain’t that a sweet saw surprise!” And I am possessed of voice, as you are too.

Letter to the Reader

Have you ever wondered how you could personalize and individualize instruction for every student in your classroom? In spite of budget cuts and scarcity of resources, do you want your students to experience collaborative and creative roles in advocacy, instruction, conflict resolution, and decision making? Do you want your students to value each other’s intellectual, cultural, and linguistic differences and experience an increased sense of well-being and belonging? Do you want your students to thrive academically, socially, and emotionally? Do you wonder how to encourage your students to express their opinions, their voices, and become more responsible for their own learning?

Teachers and administrators face many competing priorities, such as meeting state and national mandates for higher school achievement, individualizing instruction to meet the steady increase in the diversity of the student population, and implementing new systems for early identification and the prevention of school failure (i.e., Response to Intervention or RTI). These priorities do not diminish even in times of scarcity, when budget constraints bring about reductions in force. We have heard many teachers ask for extra help in the classroom to differentiate instruction so that goals like these can be achieved by their diverse student populations. We suggest that they turn to an untapped resource—the students themselves! We wrote this book so that you could tap into the most valuable resource we have in our schools—the students themselves.

As a 21st-century educator, you are well aware that a critical challenge in today’s schools involves society’s responses to diversity, from segregating or shunning (marginalizing) to consciously valuing and including those who are different. When teachers help their students learn to value their own and others’ differences, everyone becomes enriched. Edvard Befring (2000), a Norwegian educator who has pioneered inclusive strategies in Scandinavia, believes that when a classroom community adopts an enrichment perspective, all students gain an opportunity to be respected for their cultural and learning differences. He wrote,

The Enrichment Perspective holds promise for status to be given to differences and for diversity to be celebrated rather than lamented; it holds promise for the elimination of isolation and disenfranchisement of children with disabilities and other differentiating characteristics such as learners...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• PART I: Introduction
• PART II: Teaching With Students
• PART III: Decision Making With Students
• Epilogue: Beyond Benevolence to Befriending and Advocacy
• Glossary
• Resources
• References
• Index