How Roeper Teachers Apply Innovative Teaching Methods
Textbooks, homework assignments, and exams have long been staples of education, but how well do they truly foster curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking?
Project-based learning starts with a problem to solve or a question to answer. This approach allows students to build relevant skills and knowledge through hands-on tasks. Evidence shows that students are more engaged and retain information better because what they learn is directly connected to the challenges they face.
Gifted students, with their natural curiosity and interest in complex problems, thrive in a PBL environment. They take ownership of their learning, exploring aspects of projects that align with their interests and demonstrating their knowledge in creative ways. This process not only enhances their understanding but also builds crucial skills like research, communication, and collaboration.
At Roeper, we empower our educators to innovate and create meaningful learning experiences. Here is an article published in Metro Parent magazine highlighting Roeper’s approach to PBL. Teacher Wendy Mayer and I had the opportunity to share insights into our dynamic learning methods with author Claire Charlton.
An innate communitywide culture of learning would lead to fewer quick fixes that seem to work at first and then backfire.1
Over my 30 years as a teacher (and my nearly 20 years as a student) in pre-K to 12 education, I have been exposed to “the latest thing” in education more times than I can remember.
As a teacher, I always approached parent-teacher conferences with a certain amount of trepidation: how was I, in the short span of 10 minutes that I was allotted (and in any given year, I would have been teaching around 120 students, so we had to be pretty ruthless about the timing) going to be able to discuss anything truly insightful with parents about their child’s experience in my class, far less their experience as a whole person?
Students and teachers need the skills to be successful in a fluid, rapidly changing, and ambiguous future.
For students and teachers to be prepared for that future, they need to become self-evolving learners with a growing individual and collective comfort and capacity for change.1