Chapter 4

After reading this chapter I had many questions, the main one being how could a results only work environment (ROWE) work in a classroom?  With No Child Left Behind and other laws or district/government input it would be very difficult to have a curriculum planned around only student interests, as often times important skills such as math or grammar aren’t often interesting to students but essential in life.  This immediately got me thinking about how I could use “freedoms” in my classroom yet still get the results needed to be successful in my classroom and in the future. 

As I thought about it more, I began to think about my own personal learning style and how when I have the opportunity to decide what type of project or paper to write that interests me that I tend to put forth more effort and remember more of what I learned.  Now I can see how allowing more freedoms in the classroom can improve motivation and morale.   As Laura mentioned giving students a choice board for homework can give the students the “freedom” yet they are still learning the content.  Along with choice boards I can see in my future English classroom allowing students to choose the topics they would like to write about in papers, let students decide what book to read in a Lit Circle (with the teacher supplying several that meet the requirements for the unit) or letting students decide what final project they would like to do.