A Vermont-centric look at personalized learning for social justice

The recent issue of the research journal Middle Grades Review was extraordinary for two reasons. First, it focused on the intersection of personalized learning and social justice education. And second, Vermont educators authored all but one of the articles. I encourage folks to peruse the entire issue, but this may not be realistic in the …

Ch 1: Defining Personalized Learning

Just what is Personalized Learning? Personalized learning is a partnership between students and teachers in the design of learning that emerges from students’ interests, questions, needs, and preferences, towards an aim of self-directed learning (Bray & McClaskey, 2014). The best personalization is both personal and social, filled with purpose, and rooted in community. It’s a …

3 #GlobalGoals projects feeding Vermont

What do the Global Goals look sound like in action? The three Essex Middle School students who delivered the keynote address at the 2nd annual Cultivating Pathways to Sustainability conference spoke from the heart. They also spoke from experience, having spent the previous year using the #GlobalGoals to address hunger in their communities.

Sharing your school’s Passion Projects

Does your community know you as a learner? Flood Brook School buzzed with excitement. Students brought in their projects on tables or on carts, the weight sometimes shared with friends. As they set up their displays, parents, teachers, younger students and community members milled about, waiting for the opportunity to learn more about student projects …

Curiosity Projects: A stepping-stone to Personalized Learning

What is curiosity? Is curiosity important? What does it mean to be a curious learner? What am I curious about? These are some of the questions Cornwall, VT students considered this winter as they embarked on inquiry-based, personalized, research projects. For six weeks, we turned learning over to our students for the (first annual!) Curiosity …

Personalized STEM learning at Essex High School

New podcast episode: Essex STEM Academy In this episode, we talk with math educator and STEM Academy leader Lea Ann Smith about Essex High School’s STEM Academy and take a look inside a program that lets students pursue projects in medicine, engineering, computer science, mathematics or biology — by working with community partners during the school …

NEW Essential Skills & Dispositions Toolkit

Many schools and classrooms across the country identify student skills for success. Ideally, those skills cut across content areas and are grouped within grade bands. They are communicated and prioritized within the learning community. While Vermont’s AOE has identified five Transferable Skills, some learning institutions choose different ones – sometimes also known as “21st century skills”. …

Allan Miller

Allan Miller Allan Miller is an innovation coach and Digital Learning Leader at Charlotte Central School, in Charlotte VT. akmiller@cvsdvt.org  Inquiry question: “What systems and processes can be implemented at Charlotte to sustainably engage students and teachers in personalized learning that is aligned around our [district’s] core transferable skills? How can we encourage students to …

Genius Hour

Genius Hour Genius Hour refers to open-ended, student-driven projects during a pre-deterrmined time. Students pick a topic and decide how they will exhibit their learning. During the research phase students often connect with mentors within the school or in the community. (Genius Hour is also called Passion Projects or 20% time.) Check out : This …

Publications & Presentations

Presentations Local Presentations Grow Community Through Service Learning and Leadership. Katy Farber & Peter Stratman. Presented at Vermont Fest, November 2018. Conversations About Micro-Credentialing. Susan Hennessey & Tim O’Leary. Presented at Vermont Fest, November 2018. Ideas Into Action Through School-Driven Change. Penny Bishop, John, Downes, Scott Thompson, and Life LeGeros. Presented at Rowland Conference at …

Student clubs for engagement and wellbeing

Need more student engagement and wellbeing? Join the club! Educators are always looking for ways to get students more engaged with school. In this third school year impacted by the pandemic, engagement and wellbeing are more important than ever. Ample research links extracurricular opportunities to student engagement and to social emotional learning. We also know …

Fostering a Sound Culture at Hazen: Youth Voices and the Sounding Board Project

How can a school community emerge from isolation to reflect on individual and collective experiences from this uniquely challenging and transformative year? This spring, Hazen Union Middle/High School came back together around a creative engagement installation: the Sounding Board. Part of a broader Hazen Youth Voices Project — a collaborative initiative launched by the school’s …

Increasing Student Self-Direction

“Increasing Student Self-Direction” was a webinar presented by Rachel Mark as part of the 2020-2021 UVM Tarrant Institute Professional Learning Series. We present it here in its entirety. You can either watch the webinar recording, listen to an audio version, or read the annotated transcript. Follow-up questions about self-direction in your classroom? Email rbmarkvt@gmail.com.   …

#vted Reads about Equity & Cultural Responsiveness in the Middle Grades

In January 2020, the Vermont state legislature proposed a resolution formally apologizing for the legislature’s role in passing a 1931 law making eugenics perfectly legal and encouraged in the Green Mountain State. Meanwhile, on the Standing Rock Reservation, in South Dakota, the future of the Dakota Access Pipeline is in doubt, but only at the …

Trust the Science: Using brain-based learning to upgrade our educational OS

Spoiler alert: When we adjust learning conditions to be more in sync with the known laws of brain-based learning, learning improves. Momentum builds. Trust the science For 15 years I’ve been helping Vermont educators and school systems apply what we know about the brain to inform what we do in our schools. And for 15 …

What CVU students want you to know about education

Today on the 21st Century Classroom: Beckett: When the school systems were created was to produce factory workers, to have good workers for their assembly lines and could make cars and they all knew basic information and could all say the same facts. It was a standardized person pretty much, being produced into the workforce. …

Lucie delaBruere

Lucie delaBruere has spent 30 years in Vermont school teaching and learning with students from kindergarten to grad school. For 20 years her classrooms at Concord HS,  Cabot School, and North Country HS and Career Center were filled with project-based learning that was hands-on minds-on and integrated within both local and global community. Her students …

#vted Reads: The Benefits of Being an Octopus

This one goes deep, folks. On this episode educator Corey Smith joins me to talk about The Benefits of Being an Octopus, by Ann Braden. We talk glitter and posterboard, coffee and peanut-butter smoothies, and using the Equity Literacy Framework to dismantle inequality in our systems of learning with both students AND adults. What might …

3 ways to ensure equity is at the heart of your work

VTDigger reports that Vermont Secretary of Education Dan French said “From our standpoint, we portray districts being on a journey. Just like everyone in the world is on a journey. And we don’t see 2020 as some sort of hard and fast date.”  However, regardless of a deadline, we should remain focused on centering equity …

Ch 9: Sustaining Innovation

Phew! How can you sustain all of this great work? That’s a perennial question. Continuing to push forward can sometimes feel isolating, interrupted, or disjointed. Here are just a few ideas to help you feel connected, supported and inspired instead! Expand your digital learning networks Think about how social media helps us connect with others. …

Ch 5: Flexing Your Pathways

Ah, that second pillar. Flexible pathways are key to engaging learning. They’re all those great ways we engage students actively and meaningfully. According to the Vermont Agency of Education: Flexible Pathways are any combination of high-quality expanded learning opportunities, including academic and experiential components, which build and assess attainment of identified proficiencies and lead to …

2.2 Avoid the Pitfalls!

We’ve seen educators launch PLPs in many different ways. And we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Students, of course, have helped show us the way. Here are two ways to avoid common pitfalls. Check out the book to see more of these! DO: Start with engaging learning Often, teachers start with …

5.1 Engaging Pedagogies for All

OK, so middle school students crave personally meaningful and engaging learning experiences. How do we create these? Ta-da, featuring a non-exclusive list of strategies and practices designed to do just that. Please add your own in the comments and let us know what we’ve missed! Project-based learning In Project-based learning, students identify a question they …

What does integrated studies look like at Flood Brook?

At Flood Brook School, middle level teachers believe in an integrated approach to curriculum delivery. Four years into implementing an integrated (science & social studies), multiage (grades 6-8) approach towards units of study, Charlie Herzog responded to student concerns with a focused inquiry cycle asking this important question: How might student attitudes towards integrated units …

#vted Reads: The Power of Moments, with Rachel Mark

Thank you for joining us for another episode of #vted Reads. This time we will be discussing The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. We’ll look for ways to make classroom moments more powerful, explore opportunities to raise the stakes for your students, and visit the popsicle hotline. Oh, and we’ll talk …

Check, Please! #Hockey with Peter Langella

Reading and discussing graphic novels OMG Check Please! Librarian Jeanie Phillips talks graphic novels with Peter Langella, Vermont librarian, educator and former minor league hockey player and coach. First off the bench: “Check Please!” by Ngozi Ukazu, and how a good coming out story still needs all the other bits. Come for the comics, stay …

Randolph students turn digital audio producers with PBL

  Flexible pathways in digital music We had a chance to hear from student digital audio producers at Randolph Union High School, in Randolph VT. They, along with innovative educator Raymond Cole, shared what makes this project-based learning class such a hit.   A full transcript follows below.   In this episode of The 21st …

The power of documentation in meaningful learning

Exercises for an LMS This past spring, a small group of Stowe Middle School students gathered to help their teachers and peers solve a problem. As students worked on independent interest projects, they periodically reflected on their learning. All were interested in finding ways to make this reflection meaningful, for both students and teachers. But …

Phys ed 2.0: More learning, less suffering

Personalizing PE In this era of personalized learning, it’s not just the jocks that find P.E. enjoyable. At Crossett Brook Middle School and Shelburne Community School, students employ cool technology, develop creative projects, and pursue personal interests and goals while developing autonomy, healthy habits, and deep understandings.

Telling a complex story through imagery

The power of metaphorical thinking A picture can speak a thousand words and convey a complex concept that text on its own can’t quite manage. And the act of crafting them is a powerful way to synthesize understanding. How would you create a visual whose goal is to capture the complexities of personalized learning?

The 8th grade consultants shaping education at Burke Town School

The power of the student consult If you’re wondering what engages, excites and motivates students, the answer is easy: ask them. Creating opportunities for students to give feedback on plans, projects, assessments and activities builds a collaborative learning community, and creates leadership and student voice opportunities. Here’s how one school gave student consultants a shot.

4 key concepts for families about proficiency-based reporting

Parenting students in a world without grades Proficiency reporting is a set of legal requirements that all Vermont high schools must meet before 2020. In essence, we’ll report only on what a student knows and can DO, with no ultimate judgement about how well they can do it. A? B-? C+? Out the window. Here’s …

J-Term at Hazen Union

Personalized, proficiency-based PBL or bust During a faculty meeting in late December of 2016, educators and staff talked about the need to provide personalized learning options for students at their small, rural Vermont school. They wanted do so in a way that  honored the students’ need for passion-based, independent projects, as well as the desire …

Identity

Young adolescents are compelled to explore various aspects of their identities, including values, beliefs, social identities, learning profiles, interests, cultures, and aspirations. When teachers provide opportunities for exploring and expressing identities, they will be able to strengthen relationships and provide personalized support to students’ academic and social emotional learning. As students seek to understand the …

Data shows #vted leads nation in educators on Twitter

Vermont’s new leading role online In today’s podcast, Mark Olofson talks with Joshua Rosenberg and Spencer Greenhalgh, education researchers from Michigan State University. Their research focuses on the state-level twitter conversations among educators: who is doing it, and what they’re getting out of it. And, spoiler alert, when they looked around the country, Vermont emerged …

Tackling school change as a community

Community conversations about education What would you tell your neighbors about your school? What do you think they’d say in return? The Washington West Supervisory Union has set out to find out, by hosting a series of community conversations. Life LeGeros, a Tarrant Institute professional development coordinator and WWSU community member, is taking part in …

Our Research Agenda

Staying grounded in best practices Research in the middle grades shares a common goal of understanding and improving teaching and learning. Best practices in middle grades education underpins everything we do here at the Tarrant Institute: the professional development we provide partner educators, the action research projects we help those educators undertake in their classrooms, …

(Re) Designing PLPs with students

What Vermont students really think about personal learning plans Put 47 middle-level students together, challenge them to think differently about ways to create effective, relevant and meaningful Personalized Learning Plans, and watch the magic happen. This past summer, we did exactly that.

Creating a PBL culture from Day One

Build a community to support project-based learning I bet you have big dreams of creative, innovative projects and engaged students in your classroom. Students who are busy researching, collaborating, creating, and solving authentic problems they are interested in. But this doesn’t happen without a strong community of learners.

Telling the PLP story

Student reflection with Adobe Voice and Explain Everything Students at Fayston Elementary School worked hard this year with their team of teachers, not just to implement personal learning plans (PLPs), but to understand them to such a level that they could tell their stories. Using the digital tools Adobe Voice and Explain Everything, students crafted …

Negotiated curriculum and project-based learning

Building a democratic classroom at The Edge Part of the power of implementing a negotiated curriculum is that it doesn’t just center student voice, it actually moves the learning space towards a democratic classroom, a place where students can advocate for themselves and their learning interests, goals and styles. It’s an important piece of the …

Exploring careers in middle school

How one school tackles work-based learning “Work-based learning experiences are activities that involve actual work experience or that connect classroom learning to employment and careers. Through work-based learning experiences, educational programs become more relevant, rigorous, challenging, and rewarding for students, parents, educators, and businesses. These opportunities particularly help students make the connection between academic principles …

What are some good tools for studying hurricanes?

Science app-smashing in a 1:1 environment Brendan Nerney, a middle grades educator at Mill River Union High School in Clarendon, Vermont, explains some of the edtech tools his students use to study hurricanes with their iPads. The students used a variety of edtech tools to produce a mock newscast documenting a hurricane and its aftermath. Let’s …

L is for Learning Management System (LMS)

What can you do with an LMS? LMS stands for Learning Management System. An LMS is an application for planning, delivering, managing, and assessing a learning process. Likely, your school or district will choose which commercial LMS package to deploy (Canvas, Haiku, Schoology and Google Classroom are a few), but how you use it is entirely up to you.

Celebrating learning at Richmond Elementary School

4th grade researchers share Capstone Projects with community This past Wednesday, 4th grade scholars at Richmond Elementary School, in Richmond, Vermont, shared the results of their research with their families and community. They opened the doors of their school to family and friends for Celebrating Learning at Richmond Elementary School. I had a chance to attend …

Hack your classroom: flexible physical learning environments

Flexible learning environments have a physical component — and effect Do you recognize the object at left? Does it look like a comfortable learning environment for a student? Does it look like the type of learning environment a student would choose for themselves? OF COURSE NOT, and because you are all such passionate and committed educators, you started …

3 tools for interactive timelines

Find new uses for data visualization Free, online timeline tools allow students to break free of the traditional two-dimensional timeline and create highly customizable multimedia projects to showcase research, serve as digital portfolios, manage projects, guide gallery walks or form study guides. And yes, they can also be used for book reports.

Project-based learning at Essex Middle School: algebra and songwriting

Making math and music at The Edge We were lucky enough to get to sit down with three groups of students at Essex Middle School’s Edge Academy just before the break and hear how their year-long project-based learning (PBL) projects are going. In the final installment of the series, we talk with three students making math …

Citizen Science: routes to collaboration on scientific research

For a lot of kids, science can be something you learn about, instead of something that you do. This is understandable – a lot of experiments that students do in the classroom aren’t exactly leading towards new discoveries. Even if it’s an amazing reaction or a wonderful simulation, it can be hard for students to …