Where do relevance, autonomy, choices, and self-efficacy intersect? At empowerment. Stephen Ritz, a teacher at a high school in the South Bronx has an inspiring TED talk on his classroom project-cum-movement to grow food in the classroom and the community. I created a Prezi to highlight the big ideas, which can be found here: http://prezi.com/xmurpwxnzeez/stephen-ritz-the-green-bronx-machine/. I saw the big theme in this talk as one of empowerment. The attendance rate went from 40% to 93% (Ritz, 2012). The community was a food desert, but the students took charge and altered their landscape to include beautiful and productive gardens. It becomes apparent in this talk that these students became empowered through this project, taking charge and making change in the areas of health, social-emotional learning, community geography and landscape, and their own learning. Not only are students given choice and an active role in this instance, they relevance of the work is clear. The students earn real money doing this work, doing this learning. They make a difference. They are engaged in real, hands-on learning of life skills. They get heard: politicians and media come to meet them and listen to them. This kind of empowerment is truly the intersection between relevance, autonomy, and self-efficacy, and it is clear that this is also one of the main ways in which self-regulated learning and social-emotional learning share common ground.

It is becoming clear to me that this multitude of factors is required to keep students engaged in self-regulated learning. I wondered though, when I watched this TED talk, how on Earth this was possible. I can see many opportunities to make this type of project cross-curricular, but surely it would cost some time that would otherwise be dedicated to teaching the mandatory curriculum. It would be foolish to say that what Ritz appears to be doing would be not worth some sort of trade-off, whatever it might be, as there has clearly been vast benefit to the attendance, engagement and learning-attitudes of his students. However, I wonder where the line is? When is it worth it to put the PLO’s on the backburner (for a moment or a month) in order to run with the emergent curriculum? I wonder if any of us new teachers will take a risk and launch a project when we have classrooms of our own. Will we give our students those choices, even though it may be more difficult for us as teachers?