EDTS 555 - Students are not Customers

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, business models have trickled into education-and not always for the better. The current business trend that’s permeating the education world is to view students as customers, which leads to a damaging dynamic in which teachers feel pressured to appease students rather than challenge them. This trend in turn hinders teachers’ ability to individualize and personalize the education experience to promote curiosity and a sense of ownership in students.

In this course, you will learn how to transform your classroom into a learning environment where you partner with students to help them reach their highest potential. You will develop techniques to build rapport with your students and their parents and create a differentiated curriculum focused on relevance, creativity, and rigor. In addition, you’ll learn how to integrate strategies such as Habits of Mind and the design thinking process to help students take ownership of their learning. Finally, you’ll create a plan to arrange your physical classroom space to align with your students’ learning preferences.

Using the techniques from this course, you will be able to shift away from a customer service mentality and instead build relationships with your students to design personalized and differentiated learning experiences.