In response to what he sees as a flawed system, Wiggins makes suggestions of how to improve these takeaways. For instance, he suggests things such as “mandatory stretch” breaks, “hands-on” activities, small “mini-lessons” with group work, students’ choice on “Essential Questions,” stand by a “no-sarcasm” approach, and alter his testing, to be more broken up (Wiggins, 2014). After reading his blog I realized that I could stand to learn a bit from it. For one, I could definitely try and find a way to break up the class a little more often to allow students some breathing time, and I could try and find ways to provide them more autonomy. I am not too far removed from being a student myself, thus when reading this I envisioned myself in some of these scenarios and it brought back some negative memories. There is validity to Wiggins claims, and his piece just further validates to me that it is imperative that we as educators start to shift to a more student-centered dynamic.
References:
Wiggins, Grant. (2014, October 10). A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/a-veteran-teacher-turned-coach-shadows-2-students-for-2-days-a-sobering-lesson-learned/