Relationships, Relevance and Rigor

Back before I joined the school board, my first education conference was Bill Daggett’s Model Schools Conference.  He made an impression on me, as did his mantra - which he still uses: “rigor, relevance and relationships”.  A recent interview in Education Weekly gave me reason to think about it again.

It’s hard to find an education ‘reformer’ today who isn’t advocating for greater ‘rigor’ in our education curriculum - everyone seems to be calling for “higher standards”.  (It’s no surprise that not many people are calling for “lower standards”.)  The problem is that most of the rhetoric has it backwards.

As Daggett reminds us in the interview, ”relevance makes rigor possible – when students find their studies relevant, teachers can increase the rigor to meet the needs of students.”

For generations (at least) we’ve heard calls to make education more relevant. But in the decade since I first heard Daggett, a fair amount of research has been produced that backs up Daggett’s thesis.  As pointed out by John Medina in “Brain Rules”, human beings do not pay attention to boring stuff.  Allow me to repeat that:  human beings (including kids) do not learn that which is not interesting to them.

And how do we know what is interesting to kids?  Daggett’s third R, relationships.  “It’s important for educators to know their students. Educators need to know what is interesting to them… those are the ways to engage students.”

So let’s make sure we have the horse before the cart: relationships first, then relevance and rigor.  Let’s emphasize the importance of building supportive relationships throughout our school communities. (And not just student to teacher – in order to have a vibrant educational community, everyone needs to be engaged and constantly learning.)

Out of those relationships we’ll figure out how to make school relevant.  And then we’ll really be on to something.