The Power of Their Ideas

Deborah Meier was a principal at a New York City school who went on to start an elementary school in Harlem’s 4^th district, a predominantly African-American and Latino student population. She was able to create a school community that promoted autonomy and choice over teaching, involved input of parents, and allowed teachers to meet the learning needs of the students. Her modality of education was performance and project-based and allowed for real-world experiences for the students. She also promoted parent’s choice of where their children would attend school. Although there were a lot of issues touched upon in this book, I felt that the biggest take-away was her emphasis on project-based learning and real-world experiences. I am intrigued by this modality because I feel that by teaching this way it can make content more meaningful to students. When the content is meaningful students will likely be more motivated to learn and therefore will be successful in the classroom and beyond. I hope to be able to adopt a similar modality in the future when I begin teaching.