Chapter 4: Letting Students Take the Lead: Inviting and Facilitating Student-Initiated Projects

“Student-initiated projects” were never mentioned in my teacher education program. It was taken for granted that teachers would be given a curriculum to implement, or they would create the curriculum, and that a progressive teacher invites her students to make choices, share questions, and express interests that might have some effect on the specific direction a lesson or project could take. But the idea of a project that the students themselves thought of and ignited the implementation of—a project that a teacher merely helps to facilitate—that concept did not come up. Yet, such projects have become an important part of my teaching. As I learned to trust the ideas of my third- and fourth-grade students, and to trust my own ability to help shape these ideas into educationally viable and indeed crucial activities, I’ve come to appreciate the incalculable value of student-initiated projects. In this chapter, I will share several examples from my own classroom, as well as more general suggestions for capitalizing on students’ ideas.