Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
What’s the plan? Here’s a quick reminder of my focus question for this year’s Learning Lab: How can social justice be a lens for personalized, student-designed curriculum? Here’s how — at this moment anyway — I would adjust the wording of my focus question: How can students use social justice as a lens for designing …
Without question a big #highfive goes out to the opening of classroom and school doors through visiting other schools and having other schools visit Crossett Brook and Team Quest. Professional isolation in the education profession is real and is really limiting, and having a system in place to visit and be visited is great. Another …
Students in Courtney Elliott’s class work on a Mystery Skype with a class in Wisconsin to demonstrate communication skills and content knowledge of the U.S regions. Inquiry question about personalized learning: How might personalization through self-reflection, self-assessment, and flexible grouping and scheduling across grades 3 and 4 at Proctor Elementary School positively impact student …
Continue reading “Courtney Elliott’s Bright Spots and Belly Flops”
To be honest, there has been an even split of successes and failures to date. Let’s take a look shall we? So, reflection time. Trying to avoid the TLDR (too long, didn’t read) moment, sooooo, to change it up a little, I’ll let the images set the stage. Bright spots: I tend to be pretty …
Inquiry Question: How might personalization through self-reflection, self-assessment, and flexible grouping and scheduling across grades 3 and 4 at Proctor Elementary School positively impact student engagement and achievement? After our overnight retreat with my Learning Lab colleagues and some discussion about the fear of sharing our work when it doesn’t produce the results we …
Equity is the moral imperative behind all of the work we do here at the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education. In this new toolkit, we have collected many of our favorite posts about equity, including analyses and syntheses about equity in general, how to support equity in professional learning and in classrooms, and examples of …
The moral imperative behind our work at TIIE has always been equity. It is also the basis of the middle school movement that we hold dear, which originated as a challenge to the status quo of junior high schools. As progressive educators, we promote shifts in education to bring more equitable outcomes, more humane learning …
Dear Readers, We are rolling into that time of year when we hope that you find time to get cozied up to a good book. These short amounts of daylight should beckon us to find warm and bright spots within our homes. For many of us at TIIE, that means getting into your favorite chair …
Are you there, #vted? It’s me, Jeanie. On this episode of the podcast, we’re re-joined by one of the very first guests on our show, Jory Hearst. She returns to talk about All-American Muslim Girl, by Nadine Jolie Courtney. Jory shares her own journey through and relationship with Judaism, and the ways she found her …
In the midst of a global pandemic teachers are adapting in a multitude of ways. We have had to fundamentally change the way we teach, learn, and engage with each other. While feeling overwhelmed and underprepared for many of these challenges, I found that I was also able to slow down and reflect more deeply …
What would it look like if your school plan was alive and represented in much of your day to day work? That would be a stark contrast to many of my teaching days. When the “plan” lived in a binder that came out once a year. I chuckle at the imagery of pulling out a …
As an instructional coach, I want to push myself on the fact that I rarely take the time to celebrate “bright spots”. I’m definitely the type that can find a flaw in the midst of the brightest 10 carat diamond and once I see it my eyes and attention are stuck. So this post is …
Learning Lab VT is a year-long practicum that networks Vermont educators and students, who conduct classroom research related to the questions: What, exactly, are teachers and students doing in settings that are becoming increasingly personalized, and to what end? How might our findings be helpful to each other, our students, and our colleagues? Below are …
Now that you understand the why of proficiency-based and personalized learning, are you ready to see the how? Learning Lab VT throws open the doors of classrooms around Vermont, so you and other educators like you can see personalized learning in action, up close and personal. Your hosts are educators just like you, who, along …
Bright Spots: They say imitation is the highest form of flattery… I guess I’m flattered. It never ceases to amaze me how humorous middle school students are by accident, and not when they try to be. I try to tell them I’m the only funny one around. To which they reply: “Funny… looking!” It’s safe …
Students are an integral part of Learning Lab VT. They have to be. When educators sign up to host Learning Lab visits, this necessarily involves and impacts their students. We all want Vermont’s students to have and use their voices, and we hope that open classrooms give students more audience for those voices. You well …
Welcome to Learning Lab VT Ever wonder whether you’re really up to the task of meeting your learners’ needs? We have. Our learners — Vermont middle and high school educators — are in the midst of a monumental transition that, done well, will ensure that Vermont’s public schools deliver on their mission of excellence and …
Courtney Elliott & Corey Smith A 3rd and 4th grade classroom teaching team at Proctor Elementary School, in Proctor VT. courtney.elliott@grcsu.org & corey.smith@grcsu.org Inquiry question: “How might personalization through self-reflection, self-assessment, and flexible grouping and scheduling across grades 3 and 4 at Proctor Elementary School positively impact student engagement and achievement?” Learning Lab reflections: Courtney’s …
Tom Drake Tom Drake is the principal of Crossett Brook Middle School, in Duxbury VT. Learning Lab Reflections: Bright Spots and Belly Flops
Tasha Grey’s Learning Lab Reflection: As much as I love division with fractions, and think it makes perfect sense, no matter how much time we spend and how many different approaches I take, student understanding is always incredibly fragile. Like baby hummingbird fragile. Taking the advice of a cohort member, instead of pulling out …
Continue reading “Fractions, Llamas, Self-Directed Learning”
Welcome to Learning Lab VT Vermont’s schools are home to some of the most innovative, passionate and skilled educators in the nation. And they’re opening up their classrooms to the world. Welcome to Learning Lab VT. We’re all in this together. You ever wonder whether you’re really up to the task of meeting your learners’ …
HELLO! I’m Jeanie Phillips and welcome back to vted Reads! We’re kicking off our second season of the podcast with none other than author, professor, associate dean and Vermont education LEGEND, Dr. Penny Bishop. We’ll talk VT PLPs, the power of a compelling school example in changing classrooms practices, and how to steal all the …
Continue reading “#vted Reads: Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades, with Penny Bishop”
In this episode of #vted Reads, we talk about Troublemakers, a book by Carla Shalaby. We touch on what we’re really doing when we ask our students to code-switch, Black Lives Matter, and the trouble with classroom norms, and we pose the question: ‘How do school systems bestow unearned privilege on some, and un-earned hardship, …
Continue reading “#vted Reads: Troublemakers with Mike Martin”