Mark's Health and Technology Blog

I happened upon Royan Lee's blog during the weekend and was moved by his perspective on extra curriculars. I especially liked his list of extra curricular benefits to students and how it motivates them:

• Students and teachers can pursue personal passions.
• They tend to be growth-oriented.
• They are often project-based.
• Collaboration is valued highly.
• Losses and failure are celebrated as learning opportunities.
• There are often concrete goals to pursue.
• They tend to include mixed age/grade groups.
• There is much more movement, less sedentary work.
• Paper-pen tasks are rarely seen.
• There is very little rote memorization.
• The process is seen as more important than the destination.
• There are no standardized, high stakes evaluations.
• No one gets graded.
• Assessment is feedback and improvement based.
• The development of mastery is understood to be a long process.
• Students and teachers have autonomy for the direction of the activity.