I have one of the best jobs in the world, because I get to work with

people who are fun, funny, energetic, creative and insightful. They
happen to be 14 to 18 years of age. I really do think kids keep a person
young and I think that’s probably why when I’m in the presence of
adults, I sometimes don’t know how to act, so you’ll forgive me.

So inspiring the students of the future. What really works? 37 years

of teaching experience have taught me that two things are needed.
Research-based teaching techniques and relationship. Relationship is
huge, but we’ll talk more about that later. What I’d like to look at first
are the techniques.

I think probably most of us remember the teacher-centered classroom.

This is probably what we’re familiar with from our youth. You
remember the teacher was up front in the center. The students were in
nice neat rows, not allowed to talk to each other. And the teacher, the
source of authority, downloaded information to the kids who
regurgitated it back up on a test designed to measure how much
content they could remember.

Now I have to admit I love lecturing but my students don’t always love
it. It does not always inspire. So I was thinking: what really
inspires? Years ago, I was doing lunch duty at school, standing in the
lunchroom, being visible, watching kids go through the cafeteria line.
And as I watched the kids going through the line, it occurred to me
they loved having choices. And so I said to myself: maybe that would
work in the classroom. Let the kids have choices and so that’s what I
did. I converted my classroom to a situation where student choice was
a big part of the room along with four other Cs: Collaboration,
Communication, Critical thinking, and Creativity.

Actually over 10 years ago, the National Education

Association identified those last four Cs on the list as essential 21st
century skills that kids should learn. And I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve
added choice to the top of the list, not as a skill for kids to learn but
rather as a characteristic of the classroom. By choice, I mean a
situation where many learning activities are available to students
designed to meet the many diverse learning styles that they have. And
the kids love it as much as they love choices in the cafeteria.

Now I think we’re made for learning this way. Imagine our early
hominid ancestors out looking for food, don’t you know that finding
and tracking that woolly mammoth required critical thinking and
problem solving. It definitely required collaboration, teamwork. I
mean, you wouldn’t want to do this by yourself. No way. And
collaboration required communication.

And then I imagine those people sitting around the campfire at night,
reliving the adventures of the day’s hunt, they must have had smiles
on their faces when they were retelling the story of the hunt. And I
know they smiled when they put those cave paintings up on the wall,
because creativity is a uniquely human pleasurable satisfying activity.
So I believe our brains are wired for the 5 Cs. And since they’re wired
for the 5 Cs that authentic learning will happen when kids are allowed
to engage in the 5 Cs. And not just learning but I think kids will enjoy a
classroom setup like this and even be inspired in this way.

Now this requires — a classroom set up based on the 5 Cs requires a

shift: from a teacher-centered classroom to a student-centered
classroom. And this requires a teacher to remove him or herself from
front and center becoming more of a guide on the side rather than a
sage on the stage. But this opens up opportunities to not merely teach
but to coach, to mentor, to nurture and inspire. And that’s why I love it
so much.

Now timeout, it’s important for me to mention these are not my

original ideas. I stand on the shoulders of giants. Remember Plutarch.
He said it a long time ago: ‘the mind is not a vessel that needs filling
but wood that needs igniting’. And more recently, Albert
Einstein: ‘education is not the learning of facts but the training of the
mind to think.’
All right. You’re going to have to bear with me. I’m going to get real
goosebumply for a minute. One of the absolute most exciting moments
of my life, my professional life, was meeting Albert Einstein just a few
years ago, changed my life bumping into him in that Wax Museum.
What a moment it was!

So I stand on the shoulders of giants — giants like Montessori and

Piaget and Dr. Sam Postlethwait who was doing a lot of these things in
his biology classes at Purdue University back in the 1960s. I’m a
product of the Purdue Biology Department. That’s where I fell in love
with biology.

I stand on the shoulders of giants like Tom Watson, Steve Rendek who
were doing this back in the 1970s in their high school biology classes. I
stand on the shoulders of many giants called elementary school
teachers and special ed teachers. So I’m a product of all of those
mentors.

So collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity and

student choice – what does it look like? If I could just share with
you briefly the experiences that I’ve tried with this. I’ve taken my
ninth-grade biology classes and divided the school year up into two to
three-week units. At the beginning of each unit, the students are given
a menu of all the smorgasbord activities that are available on the
menu. Now this has been challenging because I’ve had to write all of
these activities so that no matter what combination of activities a
student chooses to do based on their learning styles, and no matter
what order they choose to do them in, they’ll still achieve the required
objectives for the unit. It’s been fun, it’s been a challenge. But the kids
love it. They love having the choice and there are many times when
they forget that I’m even in the room. And that’s okay.

One of the things that is not required — there are two activities
normally in every unit that are not required. One is the test at the end
of the unit and the other one is the computer tutorial. I’ve taken
several summers and written these self-paced interactive computer
tutorials that the kids work through. They are designed to take the
place of the stuff that I used to lecture on. Kids have told me in private
Mr. Ruhl, we like the tutorial. It’s better than your lectures. And that’s
okay. That’s perfectly okay, because it’s all about them.

And so if you came to visit my class on a typical day you would see
some kids working through the computer tutorials. You would very
likely see some kids working on some website activities online. It’s
very possible you would see some kids in a corner of the room with
headphones on watching a video related to the unit, writing out
answers to questions that accompany the video. I’m sure you’d see
students doing laboratory activities.

You would probably notice some kids tending to their ongoing science
fair projects. And I know for sure you would probably find a group of
kids off in another corner around an educational game designed to
teach them about some biological concept related to the unit. And you
would likely see some kids doing some hands-on, minds-on
simulations learning about some other biological phenomena.

I know you would see some kids off in a corner filling out what are
called reflection sheets that are designed to get them to think about
their learning, self evaluate their efforts, take past knowledge and
connect it to new knowledge.

And there’s one other activity on the menu that a lot of kids really
enjoy. It’s called arts and entertainment. It’s on the menu in every
unit and this is where the students take any concept they’ve learned in
the unit and at home, develop some kind of a project presentation and
then present it to the rest of the class on the last day of the unit. Arts
and entertainment has to be non-traditional, it’s only limited by their
imagination.

So they can come in and perform a song, a skit, present a movie,

present a model that they’ve built, poetry, any non-traditional way of
demonstrating their knowledge of something they’ve learned in the
unit. For example, these two young ladies in our biochemistry unit
took it upon themselves to build a model of a chlorophyll molecule
using gum drops to represent the atoms. These two young ladies, their
sisters – they happened to decide to demonstrate in a very creative
way the fact that they each inherited half of their genes from mom and
half of their genes from dad. Got to love them.

This method of teaching for me, I have found in 37 years experience, is

not only effective but it’s fun, because it allows me to sit down with
small groups of students. While I’m team teaching with that fleet of 10
computers, it gives me the opportunity to sit down with a group of
two, three or four or five kids and respond to questions that they
initiate. It allows me the opportunity to listen to their thinking.

And teachers, when you do this, if you do this, the whole situation
creates somewhat of a teacher paradox because by removing yourself
from front and center you seem to become less important. But
paradoxically, in reality, you become more important, because when
working as a guide on the side you’re freed up to use the most
powerful teaching techniques I have ever run across in 37 years.
They’re as old as the hills. It doesn’t matter what techniques are used.
These two always work. I’m talking about two loves. First, the
teachers’ love for the subject and passion for the subject. And
secondly, the teachers’ genuine love for the kids.

First, let’s talk about the passion. You know what I remember about
third grade, remember Jenny on the bus. I’m not kidding, third grade.
No, the thing I remember most about the classroom in third grade is I
remember our teacher every day after lunch would read to us for 10 to
15 minutes. She would read to us Tom Sawyer. What an adventure!
Oh, we had black and white TV. We had cartoons on TV but this was
different.

It was obvious to us that Ms. Hershey loved reading and she was
passionate about reading to us Tom Sawyer. What an adventure! At
the end of the 10 minute reading period I couldn’t wait until the next
day to find out what would happen to Tom and his friends. I don’t
know if Ms. Hershey realized it or not. I should have written her a
letter a long time ago. She inspired me to be a reader. But you see she
wasn’t saddled with state-mandated standards and state mandated
high-stakes standardized testing. And so she was free to teach and
inspire. I’ll never forget her. She means the world to me. I should have
written her a long time ago.

Then for that other love. Teachers’ love for the kids. If there are any
teachers in the audience don’t get nervous. I’m not talking about warm
fuzzy emotional love. I’m talking about genuine decisional put-the-
other-person-first-kind-of-love. It motivates, it inspires in a powerful
way. I’m talking about the kind of love that C. S. Lewis wrote about it
in his book The Four Loves. He described it as agape love, the
highest level of love known, a self sacrificial kind of love, a love that’s
passionately committed to the well-being of the other. This kind of
love is not always emotional but it is always decisional.

So teachers, great news, this means you can love your kids even
when they’re not likeable. Does that ever happen? Because this
kind of love is not emotional, it’s decisional and it motivates and
inspires in a powerful way. And it’s as old as the hills.

So teachers, an airtight lesson plan is important. A well-organized

consistent discipline plan is important. Effective use of technology is
important. The standards are important but please don’t let them stifle
your creativity. All these things are important but what the kids are
going to remember most of all is you. Don’t forget that 6th C: Caring.
That is the most effective, most powerful, most inspiring way of
teaching, getting their attention, motivating them, inspiring them.

What they’re going to remember most is that you look them in the eye
and ask them about their extracurricular activities and their part time
jobs. What they’re going to remember most is that you just ask him in
the hall how they were doing. What they’re going to remember most is
that you worked really hard in the first couple weeks of school to learn
their names in the first couple days.

What they’re going to remember most is that you went to their athletic
events, in their concerts. What they’re going to remember most is that
you led the class and loud off-key choruses of happy birthday. What
they’re going to remember most is that when they made the
newspaper you put their newspaper clippings up on the wall in the
classroom and you told them to autograph them. And you told them to
do that so that someday when their autographs were worth lots of
money it would fund your retirement. What they’re going to remember
is that you were transparent and that you were real and that you had
the ability to laugh at yourself and laugh with them.

So what’s really important: how do we motivate, how do we inspire,

allow kids to involve themselves in the classroom in student choice,
collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity. But
don’t forget that 6th C. It’s probably the most important one because
the greatest of these is love.

Thank you.