Students Taking the Power Back (For 10/10/17)

Although I found the chapters from Gallagher and Christensen helpful, I am most inspired by Emdin's piece on co-teaching and student-led lessons. In addition to being inspired, the thoughts he expressed about learning from the students in this way push the boundaries of many of the things that make me nervous as an up-and-coming educator. 

Firstly, before I get into the nitty, gritty of the reading, I was shocked to read that the students in Emdin's college-level course responded so negatively to him pretending to be a student at the start of the first class. When I put myself in the shoes of the students, I can understand that it must be really embarrassing to have to sit through a class after bashing the professor to his face for being late. However, I wonder if this "stunt" (so to speak) could have been turned around to be a larger lesson maybe about stereotypes, attitudes, expectations, or even first impressions. I'm all for making larger points through experiments like this. So a question that I wish I could ask Emdin now is if he would ever do this again with a different class, but to serve a different purpose?

As for the student-driven lessons, the first thing I asked myself after finishing this reading was, "why didn't I think of that?!" I felt like a big weight for me as an educator just came off my shoulders. However, I am skeptical of two major things:

1. The details on how to structure and create this type of environment in the classroom

2. How long it would take to get to this point of mutual trust and learning among the teacher and learners together (all year??)

I like the Emdin when into some detail about how to frame what student lessons would look like and how all participants can learn from the experience. However, my pessimistic mind is envisioning a worst-case-scenario class with low efficacy and engagement in the classroom, and how the heck I could get them to be involved in a classroom environment of this nature. Maybe this is an area that I need to work/figure out on my own. But Emdin, if you're reading this, can you please write a sequel to this work you've written here. I'm going to do some further research myself, but I want to see more examples of educators doing this sorts of work in the classroom, and what steps are being made to developing a classroom environment that can work up to this level of work (because a student-driven lesson is certainly demanding).