Cultivating Risk

To learn is to risk. This is the first ever work to investigate the impact on learning when risk-taking is explicitly taught in an elementary classroom. It is written for educators who wish to nurture the inherent potential in all their students, academically and beyond. Using an action-inquiry approach, children?s initial conceptions of risk are excavated, experiences of their risk-taking described, and a pedagogy of risk-taking illuminated. The importance of cultivating risk in classrooms is emphasized, and the ingredients necessary for doing so are revealed. Lesson ideas are included. The ultimate aim of education is to help children become more at home in the world through self-discovery in relation with others. Risk-taking is not a subject or unit of study but a way of being, and in schools a way of approaching curriculum that nurtures students in becoming their best selves. Using personal narrative, stories of classroom experiences, and student work samples and quotations, the notion of risk as a way to nurture one?s inherent potential is uncovered. It is through risk in everyday moments that we become who we are and build rich and meaningful roots in relationships with others.