Professional Learning for Busy Educators

Power and Agency is a crucial practice in our new ELA curriculum, as it gives the “why” for the work in our ELA classroom.  Power and Agency empowers students to advocate for themselves, our local and global communities and our environment.  It also encourages students to think critically about perspective, bias, and consider the equity of who’s voice is being represented, honoured or missing and neglected.  For an alway evolving Goodreads list of texts I recommend for Power and Agency- click here.

For much of the past half-century, children, adolescents and young adults in the U.S. have been saying they feel as though their lives are increasingly out of their control. At the same time, rates of anxiety and depression have risen steadily.

What's the fix? Feeling in control of your own destiny. Let's call it "agency."

"Agency may be the one most important factor in human happiness and well-being."

So write William Stixrud and Ned Johnson in their new book, The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives. Feeling out of control can cause debilitating stress and destroy self-motivation.

Building agency begins with parents, because it has to be cultivated and nurtured in childhood, write Stixrud and Johnson. But many parents find that difficult, since giving kids more control requires parents to give up some of their own.