If you’re like me, you’re currently doing a lot of beach reading, or at least a lot of summer reading. And, if you’re like me, you look at the table of contents before you either buy the book or check it out of the library to see if this is something you want to immerse yourself in. And, if you’re like some others who are not me, you read the last few pages first to see the outcome before you begin.

This is how bibliophiles maintain agency over their own reading. We all do it to one extent or another. And as we prepare our yearly vision and our units for the coming school year, I suggest that we do the same thing for our students.

Imagine, if you will, that at the beginning of each unit, we let the students explicitly know what our content and skills goals are and an overview of how we might accomplish them. Imagine if we begin our units with big ideas (BI) and essential questions (EQ): philosophical life statements and pertinent deep questions to frame the students’ learning. Then they would know where they’re starting, where they’re supposed to end up, and the concepts that they should be thinking deeply about. 

This process, when used routinely, can serve to give students more agency over their own learning. I’ll share a real-life example. 

Some years ago, when I was teaching the chapters surrounding the Esav-Yaakov friction to sixth graders, I presented the students with BIs and EQs that I had written, a routine they were quite used to. I wanted to explore the big idea that “the legacy of Judaism needs to be carefully developed and nurtured” and ask the essential question of “What interventions might it take to develop a strong and lasting culture?” The kids said to me, “G’veret Freundel, those are interesting points, but there are ideas here that are more relevant to our own lives.” When I asked them to suggest an alternative BI and EQ, they came up with: “Birth order is important to someone’s development throughout life,” and “Why is it that siblings always seem to fight so much?”

They were right and I was wrong. My concepts were on target for me, but quite esoteric for their young lives. Their BI and EQ addressed them right where they were with lessons that could prepare them for their more immediate lives in addition to further out in the future. So we changed the BI and EQ, and I created a slightly different focus than I had first planned. We even had some really interesting conversations, such as, “Who would we be if Esav had in fact maintained the birthright rather than Yaakov getting it?” Some suggested answers included one from the class gingi (redhead) who said, “Jews would look like me!” to the outdoorsy kid who mourned that if this were true, we’d all be outside learning archery rather than sitting in a stuffy classroom.

I, too, learned my lesson, and from that point on, the class developed the BIs and EQs together with me once the content and skills goals had been introduced. It made the learning richer and more meaningful for the end users, i.e., the students.

From this story, we can derive a micro- and a macro-message. The micro-message is that we can benefit from addressing topics that hit the students where they live rather than being pie in the sky for them. And the macro-message is that if we let students know our thinking before we even begin teaching a unit, they can improve it in ways that the adults cannot, and we will get more buy-in from them as they do. 

Just something to think about as we riffle through our cheap novels on a lazy summer’s day.