Ellen Williams is a consultant in gifted education and coauthor of Removing the Mask: Identifying Giftedness in Children from Poverty. In a recent post on the site I Love to Teach 101, she discusses the benefits of empowering students.
Beginning with a brief overview of collaboration and the work of John Dewey, the post goes on to cover these topics:
- Communication
- Critical thinking
- Social and emotional well-being
- Empowering students to take risks
From the article:
Empowering students enables excellent learning. I once heard a principal say, “Teaching is what teachers do TO students. Learning is what students do with teachers and for themselves.” When education becomes a collaborative effort in a climate that promotes communication, critical thinking, and social and emotional well-being, students develop the confidence to think, question, and learn new information. An empowered student believes he or she is capable of learning anything. There is nothing they cannot achieve.
