Students Take Ownership of Their Learning

Samantha Topps-Brown
Math teacher, North High School, Des Moines, Iowa

This work took everything that I knew about teaching, everything I’ve ever learned in teacher prep programs, and it really changed my perspective. I see a big shift from a lot of teacher responsibility and teacher ownership to student responsibility and student ownership. Now we have a classroom environment where students feel comfortable learning from each other, and my role is more of a coach or facilitator. I put the structures in place, but they’re doing the work.