Enrichment is not just something you to with just the “smart” kids. For this post I’ll make a special shout-out for Eric Jensen who wrote this book: Enriching the Brain. He starts his book with the thesis:

“the human brain is a dynamic and changing organ – and the way we teach, parent, or run our schools can and does dramatically change the brains of over 90 percent of all learners.”

https://youtu.be/3SpQdGD2z0Q

Here’s the thing, the science is in. The brain does not finish learning and growing… ever. Neuroplasticity is now unanimously accepted by science. Learning happens when the brain is challenged to work at and practice something new, novel, and complex. The challenge for educators is that a major enemy of learning is stress. Being asked to do something you can not do causes stress; add a time limit and an evaluation at the end and you have compounded the problem. I am not suggesting that deadlines and tests are bad, but asking students to be evaluated on a skill or knowledge they do not have isn’t going to help learning.

So, you have to push, but not too hard or too fast; it’s a delicate balance. It becomes the job of the educator to create opportunities for students to engage in difficult tasks and practice new skills, that are just outside the range of their current ability. You have to be pushed in order to learn. Everyone needs ‘enrichment’ in order to grow their cognitive ability and knowledge. We must stop thinking about difficult learning as something only the ‘bright’ kids are going to engage in. What we do have to be aware of is that the mental reach of student 1 is going to be different than that of student 2.

I like to think of it this way. You have to push kids… however, pushing them off a cliff without any grounding isn’t fair. What you must do is push them up a mountain. Against their will sometimes (particularly with the teenage crowd) but the push has to come one step at a time for learning to happen.

This is not easy task, I understand that. It requires knowing your students and also really understanding the task that you are putting in front of them. I’ll talk about scaffolding in another post – and ways that you can provide stepping stones within your assignments. For today I’d like to suggest that one solution is choice. In my experience, children are pretty good at choosing learning opportunities that are right for them. Rarely, when I provide choice, do my students choose the ‘easy’ task. When they do – if I am paying attention – I can coach them along the way to push themselves more.

What choice does do is that it allows students to self-differentiate. We talk about this word a lot in education – differentiation. Modifying assignments and learning opportunities for individual learners. This is a GREAT idea for learning and pretty well totally impractical in day to day practice. So – why not let students do it for themselves.

One of my favorite ways of doing this is with ShowWhatYouKnow. In this assessment I ask students to show me what they have learned in any format they choose.

I found this image a bunch of years ago and I always use it when introducing this assignment. This process will be a little wild and wonderful but I have never done it with students and not gotten some pretty great learning and production. The trick here is documentation. When I’m organized I have a blank table like this one ready to go. When I’m not it ends up being a piece of recycle paper I write on the back of. It doesn’t really matter. Either way the result ends up looking a bit like this:

It helps me keep track of where students are at in the process, I can easily scan and see if I haven’t checked in with a particular student that day. It also provides golden evidence when it comes time to evaluate or self-reflect.

For the less courageous – choice can have more structure than that. Even an assignment like the one below has many entry points for students. Your job is to keep track of the process – and make sure that you are having the conversations with students about pushing themselves out of their comfort zone – just a bit.

Eric Jensen talks about this sweet spot a lot in his book.

“The ideal learning environment for the brain is a “middle ground” – not to sleep all day and not to be in a state of constant panic. This is very different for each person and unpredictable.”

You are not going to get it right every time or even the majority of the time. I will say that just communicating your goal to your students – explaining how learning works and telling all of them that they are smart and capable of learning and growing is more than half the battle.

…try new things, fix stuff, get your hands dirty, read about everything and live life the most that you possibly can while still being as kind as possible – to people and to the world around you.