As educators, we often feel like we aren’t doing our jobs if we don’t take people through the process and teach them every single thing they need to be successful. There is a tendency to model step by step and ensure we provide clear directions for how to do everything. It’s almost as if we often think as educators: How do I know they learned it if I didn’t teach it? But if you stop and think you realize how one-sided this perspective is. There are so many experiences and opportunities to learn that are not only happening in your classroom or professional development because you have taught it.  When we limit people to what we know or what we teach, we are limiting countless possibilities of what they know and can do without us.
Recently I led a workshop with 100 educators. The goal was to experience the power of project-based learning to inspire new and better ways of designing learning experiences. The task was to create a video pitch for something they wanted to do differently in education.
After teams worked together to narrow down their topic and key ideas, we learned about how to inspire people to action using different types of data and then teams had roughly 45 minutes to research, gather input from diverse stakeholders and create a video to convey their ideas.
Time was limited like it always is, and the most important points for me were that teams used data effectively and gathered input from diverse stakeholders to inform their presentations.  In my planning I contemplated two different options that I see on two ends of the spectrum, I could have scaffolded the how and created a template and asked them to fill in the information on the five slides and record it as a video.  This would have been very specific and most people would have likely done it and filled in the blanks without much creativity, but they would have completed the task.
The other option was to be very clear about the end goal and the expectations for the content of the final product but leave the how to the teams.  I opted for the latter because when I considered my goals, what wasn’t important was if they used iMovie or Screecastify or the many other apps that facilitate the creation of a multimedia project. My goal was that they owned the process and were empowered as learners to figure out how to use data to inspire others to action.
If you have read much of this blog or my book, you probably aren’t surprised that I choose the second option. It was amazing to watch the groups dive into this challenge and work together with new colleagues to figure it out. And at the end of the 45 minutes, each of the 25 different teams had created entirely different but equally moving and inspiring videos far beyond what I knew or would have been able to teach them. I walked around and answered questions, pushed thinking and learned a ton about different tools, data collecting methods, and the thoughtful insights of these amazing educators.
Because it was wide open, some groups reached out on social media to gather quotes and diverse perspectives, created polls on Facebook and conducted research.  They divided tasks by need, interests, and strengths- I did not assign timekeepers, presenters and supply managers. If I would have scaffolded the project the first way based on what I knew about creating a video and how I would have collected data, I would have missed out on so much! As I share in my book, Learner-Centered Innovation,  Too often our own inhibitions and lack of experience are projected on the learners we serve.
As we watched these videos and saw what was created, I was so thankful I didn’t limit them by what I didn’t know because this video and many more would not have been created. We had a contest March Madness-style brackets- because no matter how awesome they are- no one wants to watch 25 presentations- and this is the group that won:

When we reflected on all the steps and what they accomplished as a group and individually they were proud and empowered to keep learning and exploring new things…on their own. One of the provocations from the group was, “Are we over-scaffolding for kids?”  I often wonder the same thing. I just read this article, The single Best way to Support Kids’ Independence and it hit on the same point.

Stepping back is tricky for people at many, many levels. People I talk to offer so many reasons for why they don’t back off — they’re enjoying the interaction, or they don’t think the child will continue to be successful, or they don’t know how much the child can handle…

• Please notice — How many of those reasons are about what the child is doing in the moment? None.
• Now notice — How many are about how the adult feels, or what the adult is worried about? Yep.

Here is the plain, unspoken truth: Most adults do not actually trust kids to be successful without them. 

I would argue it’s not just adults, but often in an education setting, because we care and we take our responsibilities very seriously, sometimes we can over scaffold and as a result limit what is learned rather than facilitate opportunities for growth and creativity.
I’ll leave you with this question from John Spencer and AJ Juliani in Empower that pushes my thinking often, “What decisions am I making for students (or teachers or principals…) that they could make for themselves?”