Less "I'm Done" and "Is This Good?": What Students Need to Own Their Learning

Oct 3

Are you an expert learner? Have you ever thought about what qualities make you a strong learner, and which traits you could grow to become an even better one?

Most of us didn't have those kinds of metacognitive moments in school. At a recent PD with teachers from several schools, one teacher named this beautifully. Before she could cultivate expert learner traits in her students, she said she needed time to reflect on them in herself. No one had ever asked her to do that as a student. This was new.

I think she's onto something. It's hard to help students understand themselves as learners when we've rarely had the chance to consider how we learn.

That gap shows up in my workshops, too. When I share the expert learner traits, teachers light up. They want posters for their hallways and time with colleagues to talk about what these traits look like in their students.

And then, almost every time, the conversation hits the same wall.

Teachers understand the ideal of the expert learner. What they struggle with is letting go of control.

To be clear, this isn’t a complete release of control. Just enough for students to consider their own learning needs and choose the tool or scaffold that best supports them in that moment, rather than having the teacher decide for them.

Given what school has looked like for the past hundred years, that's not surprising. Most of us were trained to diagnose and prescribe. Deciding what each student needs feels like good teaching.

But if we always decide for students, they never get to practice deciding for themselves.

What Is an Expert Learner?

The idea comes from Universal Design for Learning, a framework developed by CAST and championed in classrooms by Katie Novak, author of UDL Now! It's also at the heart of most of the schoolwide PD I'm leading this year. An expert learner doesn't need to be good at everything. They keep working toward a goal even when the work is hard, slow, or frustrating, and they need less adult prompting as they grow.

Expert learners are:

Purposeful & Motivated: working toward a goal that matters to them, and sticking with it when it isn't easy.
Resourceful & Knowledgeable: knowing their own learning needs and asking for what they need rather than struggling in silence.
Strategic & Goal-Directed: choosing a strategy, noticing when it isn't working, and trying another instead of giving up.

Every one of those traits depends on students making choices about their own learning. That means each one depends on adults making room for those choices.

Know Where the Scissors Are

One school I am working with has empowered its instructional coaches and division leaders to meet with teachers and name what the expert learner traits look and sound like in students at each grade level. Two moments from those conversations have stuck with me.

The first came from a coach who noticed something hiding in plain sight in the primary classrooms: the go-gurt scissors. They exist for exactly one purpose: snipping open yogurt tubes at snack time. Every child knows where they are. Every child knows how to use them. And no one waits for a teacher to decide whether they need them today.

That coach is using those scissors as her bridge with teachers: What if our academic scaffolds worked the same way? Students know where they are, how to use them, and when they need them.

Older students need their own version of the scissors. At another school working on student ownership, a middle school teacher created a "ready to learn" rubric and taped it to every desk. When students sit down, it's right there: pencil and homework out, questions ready about what they didn't understand. The expectation lives where students can see it, so they don't wait for a teacher to tell them they're ready.

Back at the first school, another coach starts with teachers' pain points. She asks: What drives you most crazy? Is it when kids say "I'm done," or when they ask "Is this good?"

Both are moments when students hand ownership of their learning back to the teacher.

From there, the conversation turns to a better question: What would these students need in order to own more of their learning?

Start With Two

When teachers tell me they're stuck here, I remind them: You already use scaffolds and supports. You don't need new ones. You just need to start sharing the decision about who uses them, and when.

Here's the sequence I suggest:

Talk with students about why. Tell them you want them to become learners who know what helps them.
Offer limited choices. Start with two, and go from there.
Reflect together afterward. Ask students what it was like to choose their own supports, and what they learned about themselves as learners. Make it a class discussion, so kids hear one another naming it.
Repeat it, often. This is a culture change, and culture changes very slowly... one conversation at a time.

I often share this Arthur Ashe quote with teachers: "Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can." Most teachers already have the scaffolds. What they need is the nudge to start the conversation.

For School Leaders: Host the Conversation

If you lead a division, a department, or a coaching program, try this structure at your next team meeting:

Start with the pain point. Ask, "What drives you most crazy: 'I'm done' or 'Is this good?'" Let teachers name it before you name anything.
Pick one trait. Ask, "What does this look like and sound like in our students, at our grade level?" Push for real student words, like "That didn't work, so I tried..."
Find your go-gurt scissors. Ask, "Where do students already choose their own tools well? What makes that work?"
Name one scaffold to share. Each teacher picks one support they already use and plans to offer it as one of two choices.
Schedule the follow-up. Meet again in a few weeks to share what students said.

As you facilitate, listen more than you tell. You're doing for your teachers exactly what you're asking them to do for students: sharing control of the learning.

For Teachers: A First Step to Pass Along

Share this with your faculty:

Choose one scaffold you already offer: a sentence-stem card, a graphic organizer, a worked example, a word bank. This week, instead of deciding who gets it, make it available to everyone as one of two choices.

Before the task, say: "Today you can use the word bank or the sentence stems. Think about which one will help you most."

After the task, ask: "Which did you choose? How did it help? What did you learn about yourself as a learner?"

Give students language to use: "I need ___ to do my best work."

Then do it again next week.