Innovation Circles are virtual opportunities for Fund for Teachers Fellows to deepen learning around a chosen topic in order to refine and reimagine teaching and learning in their schools. To learn more about this exclusive grant opportunity for Fund for Teachers Fellows, click here.
As an experienced teacher, centering students is probably not new to you; however, making it happen at a time of intense pressure and mandated curriculum is big work! To be student centered is to organize the curriculum, teaching practices, and classroom structures in ways that affirm students’ interests, assets, abilities, and needs. With this grant, you don’t need to innovate in all these areas; choose something focused and strategic that you think might help you change students’ experience in affirming ways.
Need help envisioning what this might look like?
To get started, reflect on one or two of the following questions regarding your classroom & school community?
• Are students struggling to see how learning is relevant to their lives/lived experience?
• Do students seem unmotivated or less motivated than you want them to be?
• Are you struggling to build relationships with students or parents? Are students struggling to build relationships with each other?
• How are students performing academically? What kind of growth are students making? Does it vary across demographic groups?
• What does student engagement look like?
Then, be strategic! Identify one teacher learning topic that you think might help you shift the patterns you just named. We trust you to develop the just-right learning experience that will help you design solutions.
Possible Learning Topics:
We trust you to develop the just-right learning experience that will help you design solutions. If you are feeling stuck, below are some topics that we think we might see in your applications, but don’t feel constrained by this list.
• Culturally sustaining curriculum or pedagogy
• Project- or problem-based learning
• Student discourse (e.g. Socratic seminar, debate)
• Family partnership and engagement
• Making curriculum relevant
• Mastery/competency-based learning
• Self-directed learning
• Subject, art or technology integration
• Developing students’ habits of mind
• Social-emotional development
• Differentiation
• Student leadership
Complete your 2023 Innovation Circle grant by April 20, 2023 at fft.fundforteachers.org. Questions? Email [email protected].