Taking Ownership

     Recently, I spoke with one of my teachers about lessening his lecture and increasing student collaboration in the classroom.  This very successful teacher told me he never did group work in the first semester because he didn't feel students would focus on the task at hand.
     About two months after this conversation, I happen to be presenting a PD on best teaching practices. The PD was mostly group orientated while I spoke only to set up what the groups needed to discuss and eventually share out.  Later that day, I heard the teacher sharing with others in his subject area how he enjoyed the PD because there was so little lecture, and he was able to share and hear others' thoughts on the topics at hand.
     These same subject area teachers are tasked with getting outside the "typical" teaching box in Saturday school when they identify students by specific standards to come to a four hour tutoring session.  These students are those who didn't master the standard(s) from the previous unit.  We have discussed how the "typical" classroom teaching didn't work for them, so how do we get them involved in learning in another way.  We use video excerpts to engage students in the standard, and then lead them into a text with the same standard.  We use authentic assignments to engage students such as asking them to evaluate the logical errors or appeals used in commercials to convince people to buy things.  From there, we move into a text where we have students use the same ideas they discussed in commercials to evaluate the argument written in the text.
     However, my question is why do we save these more engaging lessons for Saturday school?  Why don't we teach like this all the time?  Why are teachers doing most of the work by finding texts, lecturing about the standard to be identified within the text, and then asking students to show what they know in some assessment?  Why are the students not choosing a text, why are the students not identifying the standard within the text, and why are the students not writing higher level DoK questions for their peers to identify within the text they chose or presenting their findings to the class?

     As we move closer to our testing window, we need our students to take ownership of their learning.  One big way we can get them to do so, is to turn it over to them.  This is a scary proposition for many teachers.  We often feel students don't want to know anything; however, how many students really just sit there and do nothing?  How many, if given the choice to decide what they read might become more engaged in their learning?  How many might be able to identify the standard(s) within a text of their choice?  How many might be willing to debate and support their arguments if they were more interested in what they were studying?  Why do we fear allowing students more ownership over their learning, when by contrast, we - just like my teacher - prefer to be a part of a discussion rather then be lectured to.