Let Students Lead When the Year Feels Anything But Over

It’s that strange time of year when everyone reminds me that summer is almost here and the school year is winding down… and yet, when I sit down to plan, the end doesn’t feel close at all. The class periods feel long and my mind feels scattered. I am simultaneously wrapping up and pushing forward.

That is usually my signal that something needs to shift. It’s time to let students do the heavy lifting. No matter the age you teach, this is their moment to step into the role of “profe.”

(I'm asking this same question over on Edutopia's Teacher2Teacher, and would honestly love for you to jump into that conversation too. The end of the year is one of those moments when we all need a few fresh ideas, a little encouragement, and maybe a reminder that we are not the only ones trying to keep the energy alive while joining the students in counting down the days.)

Comfort Can Trick Us

Spring teaching is both the hardest and most rewarding part of the year because the classroom has a very different feel by now. Students know the routines, the rhythm of activities, the expectations, and even the weird little things that have become part of our classroom culture, like my goofy drawings or the fact that I say “shootskie” when I drop something. More importantly, we know each other and there is a beautiful comfort in that.

But comfort can also trick us.

It can tempt us to loosen too much, to let the structure fade, or to assume that because students know the routines, they no longer need the routines. While we can relax into the flow, we can’t let go of our expectations or the structures that make learning meaningful.

The good news is that students already know how to learn in our rooms by this point. They have practiced retrieval, movement activities, reflection routines, mini-quizzes, partner tasks, stations, feedback protocols, and all the other little structures modeled all year long. So instead of continuing to lead, I can start handing pieces of the classroom back to them.

Not all at once and not in a “good luck, everyone, I am going to sit over here and answer emails” kind of way. But with a little supportive design.

What This Looked Like This Week

This past month, we have leaned into Free Voluntary Reading. My high schoolers chose a book and used class time to become experts in their stories. From there, they began designing mini-lessons to teach their classmates. Each student chose a date from the days left in the school year that works for them, and I am having about two students present per class, with each one leading for about 10 to 15 minutes.

Today, one of my students led the class with a game, and I decided that if I was going to be a student, I was going to fully commit. I answered questions with a dramatic “yo no sé,” asked to go to the bathroom, and brought out just enough silly to crack a smile from the new "profe".

While I was playing the role of student, I noticed things I might have missed otherwise: how naturally the student connected with peers, made the class laugh, and how thoughtfully he wove in group work. And when it came to managing points, keeping the game moving, and distributing Fruit by the Foot prizes, my teaching skills were far surpassed.

And I basked in it.

When I watched my student, I reflected on my own practice - how quickly I move about the classroom (ugh I need to work on not being frantic), how I group students, and how I facilitate engagement. But more than that, it reminded me how powerful it is to trust students with the space to lead.

More than anything, it reminded me that classroom “control” is not weaker when it is shared with students. In many ways, it becomes more powerful.

Sure, it makes me feel super vulnerable. Would I feel a tiny bit nervous if an administrator walked in during one of these student-led moments? Probably, especially since I used to be one. But if I have modeled the heck out of everything up to this point, why not give them a chance to show off, demonstrate they were paying attention, and step into this role with confidence and creativity?

The Core Idea Works at Every Grade Level

The best part is that this is not just a high school strategy.

At this point, I have taught across grade levels K-12, and while the activities have to change depending on the age, the developmental stage, and the needs in front of you, the core idea works everywhere. Students can lead when we design the conditions that make leadership possible.

That is where Universal Design for Learning and blended learning become such a powerful pair. UDL reminds us to offer multiple ways for students to engage, access content, and show what they know. Blended learning gives us the structures to make that possible without turning the classroom into chaos.

Grades K through 5: Start Small, Make It Familiar, Build Confidence

With younger students, leadership can begin in small, familiar ways. It does not need to be a full lesson. It can be a routine, a question, a game, or a moment where a student gets to be the expert. Blended structures help keep everyone engaged while students take small turns at the front.

Some practical ideas:

• Let students lead Total Physical Response (connecting movements with vocabulary), or Simon Says with the class. Honestly, this works at EVERY level. I do this with my seniors because movement, play, and repetition are not just for little kids!
• Have a student lead the “word of the day” or question of the day, while classmates respond using visuals, gestures, drawings, whiteboards, or a simple digital tool.
• Rotate a “teacher helper” who runs familiar routines like calendar, weather, attendance questions, greetings, or classroom jobs.
• Set up simple station rotations: one teacher-led station, one student-led station, and one independent station with listening, drawing and labeling, matching, or sorting.
• Use short recorded videos (yours or student-created) so students can revisit instructions independently, freeing you to confer or observe. Have a student record themselves on vocaroo.com explain directions, retell a short story, or summarize the lesson. The best is when it can be used the following day to help others retrieve and celebrate with the whole class.

The key at the elementary level is not to make leadership complicated. It is to make it visible and repeatable. These small moves are not small at all. They are the beginning of student agency.

Grades 6 through 8: Let Student Experts Take the Lead

Middle school is where blended learning can really amplify student ownership.

Students at this age want independence, but they still need structure. They want choice, but they also need clarity. They want to lead, but they need a path that keeps them from spiraling into “Wait, what are we doing?” territory.

This is where station rotation, jigsaws, and student-created resources work.

Some ideas:

• Use a station rotation model: one station led by a student “expert,” one collaborative task, and one independent/digital station (reading, EdPuzzle, or interactive practice).
• Let students become experts on one part of a topic using curated resources such as videos, readings, slides, images, or audio.
• Run jigsaw activities: groups of students work to become experts on a specific aspect of a topic by engaging with resources, media, and materials to develop deep understanding. Then groups mix up so there is an expert on each aspect in every group, and they teach each other. This builds critical thinking, communication, and collaboration skills.
• Have students create short instructional videos, slideshows, visuals, or mini-games to teach a concept.
• Build a class library of student-made resources that others can revisit.
• Use Google Classroom or another learning platform to organize materials so students can move at their own pace and return to resources when they need them.

Blended learning allows you to step back without losing structure. Students are supported even when you are not at the center of the room.

Why these work: Everyone is not leading in the exact same way, but everyone has access to the role of learner, creator, and teacher (UDL!).

Grades 9 through 12: Make Student Leadership Real

At the high school level, student leadership can become much more sophisticated. Students can design mini-lessons, lead discussions, build review materials, create formative assessments and grade them, and make real instructional choices.

This year, I redesigned my “Be the Profe” project with a clearer focus. Students became experts on the books they chose and planned how to teach their ideas in ways their classmates could understand and engage with. They selected activities to draw their peers in, built in checks for understanding, and created supports for anyone who needed another way into the content. There are so many other ways to give blended learning a go. It is what makes sustained student leadership possible since it gives students access to resources before, during, and after class. It gives them options for how to prepare and participate and provides them multiple ways to show what they know.

Some ideas:

• Design and lead mini-lessons using slides, video, games, discussion prompts, visuals, or movement.
• Use a flipped or partially flipped model where classmates preview content before class, then participate in student-led discussions or activities.
• Create review materials such as videos, study guides, quiz questions, practice tasks, or anchor charts.
• Build a full “Be the Profe” lesson with objectives, an interactive activity that puts it all into play, a check for understanding, and reflection.
• Use discussion boards, collaborative docs, or digital exit tickets so quieter students have more than one way to participate and lead.

Across all levels, we’re designing classrooms where students can run parts of the learning. And in this last stretch of the year, phew.

Peer Feedback: Another Way to Let Students Be the Profe

Another place where I have been handing over more ownership is feedback.

I strongly dislike grading this time of year...err its a bear for me all year.

In our most recent unit, students wrote movie critiques and connected their own lives to one of the major themes we had explored, such as good versus evil, obeying just for the sake of obeying, or whether humans need fantasy and imagination to survive, and more.

Their ideas were genuinely interesting. Their writing had depth. Their connections were thoughtful, but I also had a stack of about over 50 multiple-page essays staring at me.

So this time, I gave students a peer-feedback rubric choice board inspired by Katie Novak’s UDL work. They had to give feedback in English while also finding supporting evidence in the student’s Spanish writing. That combination mattered because it made the feedback accessible while still keeping students grounded in the target-language work.

It empowered them to be the profe in a different way.

They had to read carefully, notice specific strengths, identify places for growth, support their comments with evidence, and give feedback that was fair, thoughtful, and kind. Some of their comments were so specific and encouraging that I wanted to frame them.

Even better, they did not wait for me to tell them how they did. Many of them got up from their desks to explain their encouraging feedback to their peers' writing as readers, writers, classmates, and educators. They were learning how to notice, respond, revise, and support each other.

It cut my grading time by about three quarters.

Instead of a passive wait for June, we are using what we have built together.

The Profe Shift

Across every grade level, the shift is really the same. We are designing classrooms where students can run meaningful parts of the learning. It means we trust the routines we have built. We get a little vulnerable to let our students lead the game, teach the word, design the station, give the feedback. We let them step into the role of profe.

And in this last stretch of the school year, when everyone feels bogged down and the calendar feels both too short and way too long, that shift can bring exactly what the classroom needs: fresh energy, deeper engagement, and a sense of ownership that lasts past June.

How are you closing out the year with your students?  Head over to the Teacher2Teacher question on Edutopia and share what you're doing. I'd love to hear how you're handing the classroom back to your students!