How Free Choice Fridays Disrupt Our Notions of Schooling

As education-related buzzwords go, choice and student ownership are pretty frequent flyers. They show up when we talk about giving students options in the literature they read. They manifest in conversations about allowing electives in high school curricula. They might impact how we write/design our assessments, projects, and papers assignments. In fact, the two words (and the spirit behind them) has surfaced again and again in the i2 blog during its six months of existence. But let’s address the elephant in the room. . . . a particularly large, intimidating elephant named “Rigor.” Often more project-based or student-interest-driven pursuits are relegated to the corner of our curriculum. They are for “the fun days,” when kids need a break and we’ve already done the hard part of learning. They help lift the grade curve, undoubtedly, because, after all, how can one grade creativity, projects, or students actually doing something?   Isn’t that subjective, anyway?

These ideas aren’t lies. They develop from real experiences with projects-gone-wrong, with approaches that weren’t organized well or with teachers who didn’t have training for how to develop long-term, student-led learning experiences.  But they also come from, what I think, is a fundamental misunderstanding of the definition of “rigor” and a simultaneous devaluing of what actually makes learning experiences persistent, powerful, and long-lasting.  I believe this viscerally because in my 17 years of teaching various levels of students, I have noticed again and again that students are often most challenged, enriched, and inspired by tasks that aren’t even figured into their grade.

*Josh (pseudonym) , a sixth grader I had in English class in 2004,  taught me this. I couldn’t get the kid to study for a spelling test, and I most certainly couldn’t inspire him to proofread his essays for me.  But the minute he was assigned a college student pen pal buddy to exchange notes back and forth with, he became obsessed with spelling and grammar.  The same kid who barely ever muttered a word in writing conferences suddenly ran to my desk again and again with questions . . . “Does this sound right?” “Does this make sense to you?” “Did I write that correctly?”  This same thing happened last Spring with my teacher education course when my teacher candidates and I spent an entire weekend together in the Mac Lab editing a video we had made alongside youth at Barr Elementary. There was no way I was going to grade the quality of the iMovie . . . after all, the course was all about learning how to teach, not how to create a movie. But these future teachers, one of whom had failed to turn in about half of the graded assignments for the class, were motivated by something far more intrinsic than a grade; they had developed real relationships with the fifth graders they had worked with throughout the semester and they wanted them to feel pride and ownership about the movie they had co-written and acted in when we screened it to parents and community members.  

I think Free Choice Fridays are revolutionary because they remind us of how education and schooling can look when it is untethered from traditional trappings. Here’s what I’ve learned from Free Choice Fridays that I think might inform what we do every day in every class.  

I don’t mean to suggest that we tear down the system and replace our entire day with Free Choice Friday. The system is here for a reason, and much of the joy of Free Choice Friday would be eliminated if it happened all the time. Nevertheless, I think there are nuggets of gold here that apply to all of us, whether we teach three year olds or eighteen year olds on the cusp of the wide, wide world. After all, any kid who has experienced Ann Marshall’s “Talkie Walkies” could tell you: it’s in the asking of the questions that a conversation starts. And it’s in the midst of that conversation that we are all enriched.