Thoughts and...

Reflections on the great endeavor our Summer Language Partnership students, teachers, and other contributors experienced this pass week. It was an enriching experience for me to have participated in this innovating learning atmosphere. The most fulfilling aspect of this program for me is what I learned from the students. They brought so much insight to our invitations. We provided invitations that we hoped would spark their interest. We were glad they found invites which tapped into their intrinsic motivation to "attend". We were even more elated in the way their inquiries unfolded each day and the leading responsibility they adopted. As we invited our groups to choose which inquiry to explore, with the guidance of our mentors, we the teachers embraced our role as facilitators. Our students were able to demonstrate and teach others what they had learned... a higher order thinking skill. This I believe, reflected a meaningful learning opportunity for our multilingual and culturally diverse students. Furthermore, in respect to the invitations that were not accepted by the students, I consider that this also provided a valuable learning experience for them. The students were involved in a democratic educational practice, in which they took an active role in choosing what they wanted to learn. Consequently, the invitations they did not choose this time around may be the "seeds" that they can "plant" on a different occasion.