The Power of Student Discovery

This may be the most important thing I have learned in more than 20 years teaching and working with young people: NEVER UNDERESTIMATE YOUR STUDENTS.

Once upon a time, I dared to read Shakespeare with seventh graders, and remember somebody telling me that Middle Schoolers couldn’t possibly understand Shakespeare. That was before these same students produced, costumed and performed Macbeth before a live audience in our Amphitheatre sans microphones, fancy sets or lighting. It was just a group of highly curious, creative, and intelligent tweens enjoying the language, wit, and human connection of the Bard.  

Likewise, I’ve encountered adults who consider significant research projects inappropriate for students in the Lower School.  The attention span just isn’t there yet. Not so – parents know that an elementary school student with an obsession is an irresistible force. Children LOVE knowing a lot about something, from dinosaurs to construction vehicles to the solar system to Mae Jemison. They will research their passions tirelessly.

This enthusiasm is where innovation comes from. It always has been, throughout human history. This world is fascinating, and the human brain is wired to ask questions. Inquiry is human nature. Children want first to know about things as they are. Then, if our people encourage us in finding out about the way things are, some of us move naturally into imagining how things could be different. Every human invention, from the hammer and the inclined plane to the cyclotron and the microprocessor, springs from this question: How might I do something I can’t do now?  

Children of all ages also love telling other people about what they are discovering. Most people don’t think of high school students when they think of those whose work is published in academic journals, yet students in our advanced genetics lab courses have published original scholarship. Some have worked in partnership with professors at Princeton University and have received publishing credit for their contributions. 

The expectation that such research should be original is an important part of a young scholar’s development. To have engaged in groundbreaking work before entering college is a great boost to a career that might include new discoveries and developments in a vast array of fields.

Nowhere is the evidence of sophisticated research by students more evident than in our very own Capstone Research Journal, a yearly publication of student work that is digitally archived.        

I will never underestimate our WardlaLAartridge students. I will always respect what they know.  They may be young, but they are not too young to push the frontier of human knowledge.