Learning is hard. As a middle school English teacher, I would often tell students that learning is the space between knowing and not knowing. At any age, but especially in middle school, that liminal space is a challenging place to be. Inevitably, there would come a point where we were all stuck, and no pithy statement would help.

So, I changed tact. Enter Skateboarding.

Skateparks & Learning Progressions

There are few better examples of whole-learner outcomes than skateboarding. Check out any skatepark and you’ll see persistence in the face of failure. You’ll see two hours of work for two seconds of payoff. Some of those tricks are intricate, and some are the most basic. You’ll see individual learners working on individual skills, all rooting for each other. It’s a differentiated learning community buzzing with the sound of intrinsic motivation. It is an epicenter of productive struggle and real-world learning experiences. 

In the classroom, when I would encounter a sticking point with learners, I turned to skateboarding as an example of what we were aiming for. (In truth, I was also trying to show them that I was, in fact, cool.) We were trying to land intellectual tricks not just for the fun of it (I find critical analysis fun) but because it unlocked more complex learning thereafter. Some learners were practicing literary Ollies (simple) and others were practicing a backside kickflip (complex), but we were all practicing together. More importantly, in the process, we were building the knowledge, skills, and mindsets necessary to thrive in and out of the classroom.

Knowing that I wasn’t only talking to a room full of skaters, I also pulled in different learner interests based on conversations I’d had with them in Advisory, interest surveys from the beginning of the year, or hallway conversations. I’d talk about similar learning progressions in guitar lessons, soccer, pencil sketching, and chess—all of which reflected the same whole-learner outcomes, just differently.

I aimed to connect what we were doing in school to who they were outside of school. In doing so, I wanted learners to understand that learning is a continuum. It is an infinite line rather than a segment where failure is an endpoint. That line extends throughout their time after school and on the weekends, and the activities they engaged in during those times were the best examples of what we were aiming for in the classroom. In reflecting on why sometimes the analogy stuck and sometimes it didn’t, it was a lesson I also applied to my teaching. Trying to make learning relevant was an authentic learning experience for me as much as it was for the students.  

Redesigning an Outdated Model

The industrial model of education is at odds with those goals. Dr. Tae’s TEDx Talk “Can Skateboarding Save Our Schools?” illustrates this concept perfectly. In short, the schools of yesterday do our learners of today a disservice when it comes to teaching them how to grapple with concepts, how to move through mistakes, and how to build a positive sense of self in the process. 

Therefore, we need to design schools differently. And, at Learner-Centered Collaborative we are collaborating with schools and districts to do just that. As more schools shift to a learner-centered approach, we have more examples of what this looks like. It looks like collaboration among teachers as well as learners. It looks like real-world learning experiences that provide engaging opportunities for productive struggle. Learning is the great in-between of knowing and not knowing. It’s messy. When we provide authentic experiences, much like this skateboarding project from High Tech High, we allow students to grapple, to make mistakes, and to persevere within a context that is meaningful to them and that applies to their life outside of the classroom, setting them up for success once they leave.

Learn More: Curious what learner-centered environments look like? Explore Learner-Centered Collaborative’s Ecosystem Framework.

Real-World Learning

Toward the end of the year, I applied what I had learned and changed our final 8th-grade assignment. Instead of another essay on the last novel we read, I asked students to create a presentation linking the novel’s theme of self-discovery to one of their passions. It still required evidence and analysis, but it connected more broadly to who they were as people. I gave them a list of ways they could present, ranging from Google Slides to a hand-drawn picture book to a more traditional paper. If there was something not on the list, they could ask me if it was okay.Those presentations took the analogy of learning to skateboard a step further and as a learning community, we were able to understand each other more deeply. Students addressed learning targets while also demonstrating who they were outside of school and relating the productive struggle they experience in school to ones they have experienced in their real life. Presentations ranged from a slideshow on learning the piano to a Lego creation to a guitar performance. They spoke about the excitement, frustration, and confidence they experienced in the process of learning, and we all learned about each other.

The analogy of skateboarding was helpful. More helpful, though, was creating a space for learners to share about the authentic learning experiences they opt into everyday. Integrating their personal interests and the activities they engage in outside of school is integral to helping students thrive in the classroom and in their communities.

Want to incorporate authentic learning strategies in your classroom? Explore more resources on our strategies pages or take an online, self-paced course on Designing Real-World Experiences.