What Students Remember

In over twenty years in education, I’ve seen the impact of good teaching, not only in those exhilarating “light bulb” moments in the classroom, but also in the long term. As a tenth grade teacher, I have the benefit of watching students progress through the upper grades; additionally, it is not unusual for students to reach out from college or beyond to update me on their adventures and achievements. What I’ve learned through these “post-class” discussions—both about my own class and my colleagues’ classes—is what students remember the most. 

The moments that students seem to recall most profoundly, even after several years, are not the times that they got a high score on a test, or the times that they finished a difficult unit in the curriculum. Rather, the most meaningful moments are the times they created something that they were personally invested in, the times they incorporated the community outside the classroom, and the times they worked with peers to produce something larger than they could have done alone. What sticks with students the longest—what has had the biggest impact on their lives—is the work that involved personal choice, connection, and human interaction.

What sticks with students the longest—what has had the biggest impact on their lives—is the work that involved personal choice, connection, and human interaction.

Not coincidentally, the skills increasingly required of workers in our ever-advancing technological world are the same: the ability to think creatively, the ability to work together, and the ability to empathize in order to solve problems in our communities and around the globe. As educators, we must never lose sight of this. Amidst the pressure of test scores and school rankings, we must remember that the children who pass through our classrooms will very quickly become the next generation of thinkers, lawmakers, inventors, and parents.

Whatever their jobs, the most important future role each child will have is to be a humanitarian. We have long left an industrial-based economy, and have even moved beyond a knowledge-based economy; in our time of continued innovation, the most important skills are human ones—the ability to imagine, create, connect, listen, and empathize.

I remind myself of this constantly, and every year I ask myself how I can incorporate even more choice, collaboration, community involvement, and empathy-awareness into my curriculum. With each new idea, I brace slightly for pushback or outright rejection from the students, but amazingly, what happens is the opposite: Students are hungry for opportunities to choose their own projects, read their own books, and write in their own genres. They are eager to work together to solve real problems in their communities. They want to connect with each other and with the world in more compassionate and kinder ways.

As humans, we are wired to explore, learn, grow, connect, and help each other. Our changing world demands this. Our classrooms should reflect this.

**Note: This was first published in the NSTOY-PA winter newsletter. Visit their website here.