Agency- Latin agentia “ability,” and ag(ere) “to do, drive”
Over the Winter Break, I received several emails from parents sharing with me a New York Times opinion piece they felt described Saklan perfectly. The article “Giving Kids Some Autonomy Has Surprising Results” should not be a surprise to anyone familiar with our work at Saklan.
“Agency” is a core value at Saklan. Students having “voice and choice” in their learning is a central tenet of Project Based Learning and our approach to SEL. Student agency honors students’ experiences and curiosities while giving them a locus of control over their lives. In short, it creates “buy-in” to learning.
According to surveys by the Brooking Institution, very few students feel they have control over what they are learning. “The more time they spend in school, the less they feel like the author of their own lives, so why even try.”
In a majority of classrooms today, teachers introduce a topic and share with students what they will be learning. They have their standards to check off and material to cover. Just looking at those two sentences feels dispiriting.
Why not introduce a topic, ask students what they know about the topic (they know so much more than we often realize), and ask them what they want to investigate next? There are subtle differences between these two approaches, but student engagement is markedly different in the one that gives agency.
Giving agency raises academic standards by requiring students to invest in their own learning, reflect on their progress, and course-correct. If that sounds familiar, it is what we do as adults in our working lives.
Agency creates a love of learning and a love in learning- and as if that is not enough to convince society that this is the right approach to education then a look at our standardized testing data should convince the doubters.
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