How Teachers Can Control Student-Led Projects in Modern Schools - Essay Sample

Introduction

Learning has become so efficient in the schools today, with the current inclusion of the practical lessons or classes that have come in place. As a teacher, controlling a student-led project is not an easy task if you are not equipped with the current trends and ways of training. This has come as a result of many changes in the methods of getting information in the contemporary world. In the ancient days, when education was introduced, a student was forced to attend school for the maximum time possible to acquire the knowledge to use in developing a particular project. However, this is no longer the case, the modern technological advancements have also led to the introduction of web services, where students can always consult and see clear clarifications for their questions without necessarily attending to classes physically. Television shows, music, and movies are also among other sources of information that may help students advance in their general knowledge.

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Besides, adolescents have several problems and challenges that they usually go through not as the little beginners. As a teacher guiding adolescents through a particular project, it is a requirement that you consider these challenges and have the best possible alternative solutions to help solve the problems. By introducing new academic concepts to the ten students and helping them by making various connections that can help them in advancing their project is also essential. The students have their knowledge which they have obtained from different sources; it is, therefore, the duty of an instructor to discover these potentials and help the students build on them (Wendy, 2010). For instance, coming up with new ideas to better up the project of the students and making it more meaningful. By employing the use of these concepts and knowledge it, would be easy to take the students through project successfully using a series of a well-defined development level.

Steps Involved in Student-Led Project

Proper choice and implementation of ways of teaching and guiding determine the future of the class. For the students to have come with the project, I took some strategy in my teaching modes. The first being to test for the capabilities of the students. Offering a random piece of questions that their responses highlight some of the significant things that are to be addressed in the course is very important. The students can either chose to answer them at an individual or group level, but the main aim of doing this is to make them get some knowledge on what is to be done. By researching themselves using various sources, it can be easy to predict for the areas that are not well understood and stress on them during teaching.

The next step is to choose a leader among the ten students. The leader can help in facilitating some activities that the teacher could others not have thought of. For example, the leader of the group can always pose questions concerning the topic of study. Adolescents are people who can control themselves in the group and come out with different concrete conclusions and decisions (Wendy, 2010).

As a leader or a teacher, it is necessary to brainstorm various solutions to the students in the group formed. By cooperating with the group leader appointed, the ideas of the rest of the individuals can be got, and offer any form of assistance if in case it is needed. This stage allowed me to know of the potentials of my students and indeed offered the relevant tools and materials to help them build their ideas towards a project.

Teaching students by telling stories of other successful people on the similar project of interest proposed by the students is also a major student-led assessment project that can help in building up the confidence of the students while performing their research, or increasing the student's morale on doing their project. The biographies may not be for persons who specialized in specific similar projects, but at least some concepts and form of assurance can always be borrowed from whatever they had done.

Another crucial stage is to encourage student-led conferences. This will help to expand the kinds of students beyond their confine level of thinking in class. They will learn to address various issues and even apply the concepts of what they have been taught in class, done in research, discussed in groups and whatever is in the project to test for their workability, efficiency and acceptability by the people. This may make it easy for the project to be approved by the school because of the several tests and corrections done in it. A presentation is also a significant option that I used to enable my students to produce a well stated and planned project.

Generally, adolescent students need some special kind of teaching means and methods, like involving them with more of practical work and giving them more time to learn by themselves, because, they are capable of coming up with new ideas as well and detailed information on top of the little content that is given in class. Learner-based system of education can help in promoting student-project assessments. By setting up clear, consistent and reasonable limits or goals, and being available at all times to be accessed by the students whenever they have questions or need further illustrations that they cannot handle at their group level.

Adolescents in The Student-Led Projects

Dealing with a group of 10 students who have gone through the fifth grade for about 11 years, and are currently in adolescents' stages, requires relatively more skills in the profession. To deal with them, and end up making them feel like they are part and parcel of the environment regardless of the occurrences of physical changes in their body. Puberty and sexual development are two elements that must be entangled together during their interpretation. Although the majority think that, the adolescent's bodies get subjected to changes in a single night, it Is not a pure imagination, adolescents is an evolving change or behaviours that occur gradually over time, the time duration or the rate of transformation in an individual/s body may vary due to a number of factors and considerations, thus it is not a constant value or valuable in everyone (American Psychological Association, 2002).

Studies reveal some of the tips that can always be taken in consideration while addressing the growing group. As an instructor, I would avoid non-threatening questions, avoid why questions, ask open-ended questions, models, up to the decision-making strategies used casually to make them feel absorbed and many other issues that satisfies the law of ethics. This will, in turn, give the students a pleasant working environment to develop their projects and make them more successful.

Extensionally, to enable many students in future to attend to this classes to increase the number, it is necessary to collaborate with the relevant authorities that can ensure that children are well mentored in their early child brain development, so that their brains can be set ready to listen and interpret correctly the information that they receive in the adolescent periods. The studies from research state that the ability of children to be active while in the adolescent directly depends on their childhood brain management. Stress has been the worldwide known significant cause of inactivity of children (Center on the Developing Child, 2007). If children can be kept safe, without any stress then, studies indicate that this is one who can be a great innovator and inventor. Toxic stress has got the effect of creating damage to the architecture of the brain thus alters the functioning of the brain. For my ten students to have come with such a project, they must have been so psychologically smart, and there were no possible interferences.

Besides, studies also reveal that other than the brain torture and the possible effects of brain damage, general maltreatment is also a significant factor to consider. As a result, a developmental milestone chart is drawn, the charts give proper illustrations on the life cycle of children from birth, through adolescence and other stages of life. By interpreting the chart, it can tell or approximate the number of children that can quickly advance and form part of learned society (Institute for Human Services for the Ohio Child Welfare Training Program, 2007). There are most chances that, in any class of ten students, they must have been brought up with strict moral values that enabled them to become morally upright and hence adopt the correct values that helped them in achieving their dreams of coming up with a project. The table also has got various divisions that make it easy for the different professionals to interpret. The divisions contain the physical, Cognitive and social characters of children both for the younger ones and those in the immature stages.

The technicality and the increasing level of skills that are required from the leader of the students has led to some advanced research to determine who exactly should be a teacher, and how they should be to prepare, for the adolescent based challenges that youths usually undergo, to ensure that at the end of everything, many students manage to grasp the required knowhow that can assist them in driving their projects. Research studies state that teachers should always consult when necessary in cases where they are not sure with answers to give to their students whenever they are approached (Vilson, 2013, August 7).

It is, therefore, necessary for a teacher to be creative and innovative enough beyond the student's level so that the teacher may help the students in creating more ideas and evaluate them properly as a leader who is contented sufficient. Also, a good teacher should be able to structure his/ her roles appropriately as highlighted in one of the steps during student-led project assessment (American Psychological Association & National Association for the Education of Young Children. ACT Raising Safe Kids Program (2007). The roles should first be defined to the management of that particular institution so that you are assigned with the task that you have specialized in and able to deliver the required knowledge. I was appointed to handle the project in this case because I was a specialist in that given area and could quickly solve the problem of the students without difficulties.

Conclusion

In conclusion, children should be mentored correctly form their childhood life, with the required ethical values to help them grow up with responsibly. The proper mentoring as depicted in the developmental milestones of 2007, ca help in youths to easily overcome the adolescent stage that, studies identify with having a lot of problems. Socialism is also a significant ethic that must be taken into consideration, the environments that these children interact with influence their character. The teachers that handle the adolescents in schools should also be equipped with the knowledge, and skills of handling them accordingly.

References

American Psychological Association & National Association for the Education of Young Children. ACT Raising Safe Kids Program (2007). Retrieved from http://actagainstviolence.apa.org/resources/index.html

American Psychological Association. (2002). Developing adolescents: A reference for professionals. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/develop.pdf

Bongolan, Rain & Moir, Ellen & Baron, Wendy. (2010). Keys to the Secondary Classroom: A Teacher's Guide to the First Months of School. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin p. 5-16

Center on the Developing Child. (2007). The science of early childhood development: Closing the gap between what we know and what we do. Retrieved from https://developi...