Making the Extra in Extracurricular the Norm

Scott McLeod’s TED Talk about extracurricular opportunities got me thinking about the actual term “extracurricular.” The implication of the word is that the standard curriculum is providing our students with all the knowledge, information, and engagement they need, and that anything beyond that curriculum, like music, art, sports, audio/visual, and drama is “extra,” meaning it’s not required, it’s just a cherry on top of the academic sundae.

This concept is not only outdated, it’s dangerous. It’s apparent from the kinds of examples McLeod shows of students creating blogs, filming their own videos and creating their own YouTube channels that the content that they’re getting in school simply isn’t enough, and that our current education is not marrying the tools students use in their personal lives with the tools they use in their academic lives.

The example of Martha, the Scottish student who began posting pictures of her sub-par school lunches, could have offered a wonderful opportunity for the clever teacher. Consider that students from ALL OVER THE WORLD started tweeting back pictures of their own school lunches. Martha has just started a virtual pen pal program. Did the Czech student take a photo of a food item that someone didn’t recognize? This could lead to a project on what Czech people eat, or for that matter, a whole project on the Czech Republic. Where did all the ingredients for the lunches comes from? You can now have a dialogue about farming and agriculture.

Instead of being so restrictive on the kinds of tools and resources students can use, we as teachers need to cultivate the tools ourselves, and find things that we think could be of great benefit to students. Our kids are already scouring the Web for content that speaks to them…why shouldn’t we follow suit?