“You can’t discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – André Gide

I have three children, and we like to go out to dinner once in a while. Most of the restaurants that we go to are kid-friendly and provide a paper children’s menu accompanied by a few crayons. My kids like to complete the various tasks on the menu as they patiently, and sometimes impatiently, wait for their food. The menus are mostly the same and usually contain some pictures to color, a word find, a crossword puzzle, and some brain teasers.

From Kids’ Menus to Classrooms

While I was watching my children work their menus the other night, it struck me that the restaurant menu is really similar to the tasks that students are given at school all the time. School often seems like an extended opportunity to complete packets of children’s menus. Is it any wonder then why our students become frustrated, crumple the menus up, throw silverware, and lie down in the booths and cry? I’ve seen all of these things at my table and in classrooms.

It’s Time to Let Go

It’s time to move away from the children’s menu style of education. We must let go of the control that comes with completing prescribed activities and let them create.

Atomic Habit #6: Let Them Go and Let Them Create

Atomic Habit #6 is to let them go and let them create. Stop giving students prepackaged tasks and instead let them solve real problems that we don’t yet have the answers to. We must stop asking questions that we already know the answers to and instead provide opportunities for students to create. The key to this habit is to let go of much of the control that teachers often think they need. It’s really very simple to let go and let them create.

How to Let Go

So, how do you adopt this habit of letting go and moving away from the low-grade clerical work that often fills classrooms? You let go by providing an opportunity for students to create, and then watch them go. I talk to so many teachers who are reluctant or afraid to let go of the control that they have and see what happens. My best advice is to just let go because you will be amazed at what your students are able to create.

Our Mission: Creativity

Our mission should be to allow students to create all the time. Creativity and the act of creating something new that has never existed prior is where education needs to go, and where you can take your classroom experience today.

Birdhouses Aren’t the Answer

I’m picturing a counter full of birdhouses. Building a birdhouse seems to be a creative act and in line with what I’m talking about, but it’s not. A project like a birdhouse tells students exactly what they have to do. There’s a plan that students must follow. The teacher then just assesses how close students got to the goal. This is not the way.

The Flip: Problem-Based Birdhouse Design

Here’s how I would apply the Atomic Habit of Letting Them Go to the classic birdhouse project:

Define a problem:

Nesting birds in our area need a space to safely build a nest away from predators and bad weather.

Present a challenge:

Design and build a structure that supports local bird populations in our community.

This quick flip of the classic birdhouse project completely flips the script. Students are no longer forced into the box of doing something that has been done a million times before. Instead, they are challenged to think, create, and do. They will still meet the measuring, design, and building standards that the teacher wants to fulfill. But they will also get to the skills of thinking and creativity that are often missed and are of critical importance.

Algebra Too? Yes.

So, if you’ve made it this far, you might be saying, “That’s great for your fictitious birdhouse project, but that doesn’t work in my Algebra I class.” I jumped right to Algebra I because that seems to be a subject that many people have difficulty applying this type of idea to. So let’s give it a try and let go with Algebra.

I’m going back to the birdhouse of this because I’m also attached to the idea of integrated curricular areas (I’ll get to that in this series soon). Here’s the extension of the birdhouse problem that gets to Algebra I. I’ve started with linear equations because that’s a common item from that content.

Connecting Algebra to Birdhouses

You are designing birdhouses to support local bird populations around your school. You need to model and plan their placement using linear equations to optimize sun exposure, spacing, or maintenance access.

And I think it’s that easy. I’ve let go of the restaurant menu linear equations from my math book and allowed my students the opportunity to apply their knowledge to the birdhouse project. I could let go of this in a much more extreme way and allow for full creativity, but my goal here is to illustrate this point in a concrete way.

Final Thought: Let Go

The Atomic Habit to adopt here is to let go. Letting go will be much harder for some than for others. If you won’t grade a student’s work unless their paper heading is written in the exact way that you require, I’m thinking you’ll have a little more difficulty adopting this habit than I have. However, that doesn’t mean that this isn’t the way and that our students need you to let go if they are to get the experience from your class that they need. They need you to let go. So please, let go and let them!