Monday night Mark Barnes held a Results Only Learning Environment or ROLE Twitter chat based on his book, ROLE Reversal. I read his book earlier this summer and I’m totally going to transform my classroom into a ROLE classroom. I’m actually quite close to having a ROLE classroom. For years I’ve been trying different things to engage my students and help them take advantage of their education to learn. ROLE Reversal has put my efforts into perspective. I’ve been wondering why the things I’ve tried, like doing away with HW, using fewer and fewer worksheets, getting away from tests, abolishing grades, and gamifying my classes has only worked somewhat effectively. By somewhat effectively I mean that I haven’t been getting the results I was after. I wanted to see ALL my students empowered to take control of their education and use school for learning much as they do outside of school.
I think ROLE Reversal has put everything I’ve done into perspective. The way Mark explains it you need all the components I’ve already tried and add to that more student-centered choice and control. To get the results that Mark has gotten I need to use all the elements together. I’m hoping that the ideas in his book will help me get the results I’ve been going after and truly make my classroom a place of learning. I’m close and I’m looking forward to bringing it all together. As a matter of fact I turned on my colleague, the second Science teacher at my school, to ROLE Reversal and we’re both going to make our classrooms ROLE this Fall. This is really cool.
Here’s a transcript of our first chat using the hashtag #RoleTalk:
