A.O.E'S

You may be asking yourself, "What the heck is an A.O.E?" Well, A.O.E. stands for "Area of Expertise" and what it is, is a special area or field that someone is exceptionally good at. It's important for a teacher to show off his/her student's A.O.E at within the classroom, school, and can even be shared throughout the community. Allowing students to share with their classmates what they're good at often brings to the student a sense of accomplishment/achievement and a drive to continue to work harder by boosting self-esteem. By students demonstrating their A.O.E, they can receive praise from teachers, role models, and other adult figures along with peers within the school community. A student's expertise may be some sort of talent, skill, their wealth of knowledge in a specific subject matter, etc.

After reading about A.O.E in Paula Kluth's, "A Land We Can Share", I tried reflecting back to when I was in school and if there was any time when a teacher encouraged my classmates and me to share with one another certain skills in order to aid each other as we learned. The sad thing, is that I can't recall any moment when that happened. Sure, we often worked in groups on assignments, but it was never anything that we learned from another student. We as students were never given the opportunity to take the role as teacher. Having students share their expertise's builds community within the classroom because it provides students with the assistance from other students.

Surely every student within a classroom will have some special skill, but how will the teacher and other students know what those skills are? Paula Kluth suggests creating a chart of some sort to hang in the classroom so it's visible for all to see. On the chart, each student's name and then a short description of what each has a special nich for will be written. When the occassion arises that somebody may need help with a certain topic, he/she can look on the chart posted to see if any of the students in the class may have some additional knowledge and insight of the topic and assistance can be provided by a peer rather than the teacher. The student takes on the role as a teacher, helping others and teaching about something that others may not be as knowledgable about.

Adapting and creating the A.O.E chart in my future classroom will be one of the initial tasks I will hold in the start of a new school year. Knowing what your students strong qualities and interests and also letting the class know that of each student is an important piece of building the foundation of the classroom community. The concept of A.O.E is a bright idea that I think every teacher should know about!