Students drive their own learning. Students are creators of knowledge, inspiring to become members of the disciplinary field. Learning is connected to students’ knowledge, to their experiences, to their communities. Students carry the cognitive load, add new questions for exploration, suggest ways to move the class forward, offer alternative means of demonstrating understanding, recognize what they need to learn next, exercise voice and choice.

Teachers facilitate ongoing inquiry rather than deliver static knowledge. Teachers make thinking and learning visible, to demystify, inform, and illuminate these processes. Teachers embody the stances and behaviors of learners and of the disciplinary fields they teach. Student-centered rarely looks like the teacher carrying the cognitive load, serving as the expert in the room, doing most of the talking, directing the same process for every student’s learning journey, reusing the same curriculum and pacing every class, every year.

Learning and thinking are as much a collective enterprise as they are an individual endeavor. Learning therefore occurs in productive communities of practice. For this to occur, students must feel known, valued, and respected by educators and peers and work in meaningful (rather than contrived), collaborative environments.

Site leaders engage teachers in continuous learning, centering teachers as professionals of their fields and practice. Site leaders model in staff meetings and professional learning spaces “teacher-centered” learning, applying the same practices and principles above to adult learning spaces. Site leaders highlight successful student-centered practices already occurring in classrooms, and support all staff to deepen their understanding and implementation of student-centered practice.