Can Students See Their Own Progress?
Every September, a teacher in a primary classroom asks her pupils to draw a self-portrait. She does it again in October. Then November. Then December.
By January, she pulls out all four drawings and sits down with each child to talk about what's changed.
One little girl looked at her drawings and said: "My arms don't come out of my head anymore."
She wasn't the best artist in the class. She knew that. But for the first time, she could see something else — she was getting better.
That's the whole idea behind this course in one moment. Students are surrounded by evidence of their own progress every day, but most of them never actually see it. Without something to compare against, "getting better" is invisible. A drawing from today looks a lot like a drawing from last week — unless you hold it up next to the one from four months ago.
The techniques in this course are all about giving students that same moment the little girl had: a way to actually see their own growth, understand what's driving it, and take ownership of what happens next.
