Identity • Mastery • Creativity • Wayfinding
For many educators, defining and believing in Deeper Learning feels like the right thing to do, the professional obligation. But the “big idea” or concept of Deeper Learning comes with many definitions. Often, as teachers work to define Deeper Learning, they get into listing what it is not: it’s not straight memorization, it’s not listing off random dates from history; the list could go on. Listing what it is not can be helpful at first, but it does not help educators with the larger vision for learning represented by the two words, Deeper Learning.
Christian schools are excited about Deeper Learning. Christian educators from around the world want an education system that equips students well, that creates “spaces where students have opportunities to develop knowledge and skill (mastery). Where students can see their core selves as vitally connected to what they were learning and doing (identity), and they have opportunities to enact their learning by producing something rather than simply receiving knowledge (creativity).” It is easy to get excited about meaningful purpose. In the excitement, we sometimes forget that Deeper Learning is not our idea. As educators, we are not writing our own stories or those of our students, as Christians, we are invited into a story that is already being written. We are invited into God’s Story; we are people of God’s Story.
Read the full article in The Link Online, SCSBC’s quarterly newsletter:
