Innovative Education in Vermont
Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
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 all about celebration!
And at it’s core is a project that we built from the ground up. In collaboration with our CCS 5th grade humanities teacher extraordinaire Katie Fraser.
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 of study shift with increased personalization and when projects are moved to the front of the learning experience? The following chronicle’s Charlie’s year-long experimentation with adjusting his team’s approach to increase student engagement:
–Susan Hennessey & Bill Rich
Flood Brook School, in Londonderry, Vermont is a K-8 school; we currently have 82 students in our grades 6-8 middle school. I teach sixth-grade language arts in the morning, and integrated science/social studies during the afternoons.Students rotate through three integrated units of study throughout the year. Integrated studies are scheduled four afternoons per week. Each class is 90-minutes long.
Six classroom teachers and a Library/Media Specialist comprise the middle school teaching team. Classroom teachers have divided into partnerships, each responsible for writing one, integrated, project-based unit of study. Each unit runs from 6-8 weeks. Students cycle among the three units over the course of the year.
This is our first year employing this “divide & conquer” approach. During the prior three years, the entire team collaboratively wrote nine, integrated units.
The typical unit plan structure looked like the following.
What we noticed: All the prior units had the project at the back of the learning experience.
After growing greatly discouraged about attitudes towards and the effectiveness of our integrated approach, I decided to take a risk, and do something Tarrant Institute coach and friend Mrs. Rachel Mark had been gently suggesting to my middle school team for some time, put the project at the front. The project should be the “main course”, not the “dessert”. I further elaborate on my epiphany here.
My teammate Ms. Joey Blaine and I wrote an integrated unit titled Why should we care about human rights? We wrote it with the intention of increased personalization and placing the project at the front of the learning experience.
Our 2nd Integrated Studies Exhibition #floodbrook #vted pic.twitter.com/lk9fGs0LmI
— Charles Herzog (@PJ_Vermont) March 8, 2019
What compelled this intention was the sometimes alarming dissatisfaction students were expressing about integrated studies. We were driven by this Inquiry Question:
How might student attitudes towards integrated units of study shift with increased personalization and when projects are moved to the front of the learning experience?
Check out this video to see the unit results and how we answered this question:
Learning from and with students – teacher inquiry
All middle school students were involved in my research. They were informed of my research at the start of each unit cycle and shared their thinking via Google surveys and focus groups. Debriefs were held at the end of each unit cycle, and students, once again, shared their thinking via surveys and focus groups.
At the end of each unit cycle, I compared, reflected upon and analyzed pre & post unit student data in the following forms: blind numerical, blind written feedback and focus groups I facilitated.
The data suggests students’ attitudes towards integrated studies shifted in a positive direction as a result of increased personalization and intentionally putting the project at the front of the learning experience.
Students’ blind written feedback also suggests a positive shift in attitudes. The tone of pre-unit feedback skewed heavily negative, with only a smattering of neutral or positive remarks. Post-unit feedback was far less brutal in tone and divided equally between critical and neutral/positive remarks.
Thoughts and reflections from my reflective blog posts throughout the projects echo many of the observations presented. On the whole, student attitudes appeared more positive. Students’ moaning and groaning about having integrated studies decreased noticeably after the first few class periods of our unit.
Day 3 Monument build: pillar painted, flames, placards and sconces finished. #floodbrook #vted pic.twitter.com/hFUQX7JgaM
— Charles Herzog (@PJ_Vermont) November 15, 2018
Furthermore, in each unit cycle, students took great pride in the monuments they designed and constructed, and they felt good about publicly sharing their products created during small group work.
Moving forward, my partner and I endeavor to write integrated units of study with the intention of maximizing opportunities for increased personalization and placing the project at the front of the learning experience, as the data suggests doing so increases engagement and develops a positive mindset of the content under study.
While there was less teacher talking than in past units, there was still too much. However, consider that a significant degree of teacher-led discussion was about the Holocaust. We felt this required teacher-led discussion due to the sensitive nature of the topic. Regarding the science content, that too was skewed towards teacher-led discussions. In the future, we endeavor for students to engage in science content in a more self-directed manner, whenever possible.
Launch events are more important than we realized. On the first day of each unit, we took students on a field trip of southern Vermont monuments. We observed, to differing degrees, this increased student “buy-in” for the unit. Thank you to the Tarrant Institute’s Susan Hennessey for the idea. My partner and I will continue planning engaging unit launch events.
PBL Launch event. If you’re gonna build a monument you might as well visit some and discuss design, what they’re communicating, etc. Big thanks to @VTEducare & @hennesss!! #floodbrook #fbs #vted pic.twitter.com/zx9KPjlz1A
— Charles Herzog (@PJ_Vermont) October 8, 2018
For those interested in developing authentic project-based units of study here are some resources:
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 to say the students aren’t afraid of me. I’ve tried to teach them to not take themselves too seriously. I tell them if someone says something that’s funny about you, then laugh. It’s funny!
My bright spots this year are definitely the relationships I’ve forged with my students, watching their growth in math, and helping them feel included in the process. The questions I’ve been researching are:
Will implementing projects or project based learning into my classroom lead to improved results on standardized tests? Will they actually learn the math?
This has met with mixed results, but by including the students in the decision-making process, I’ve forged relationships with them that didn’t exist before. Though the projects were fun, I’m not sure it was really about that, in the end.
Meeting with my site-based team and taking them on a school visit was a definite highlight of the year. Yes, overall, the tests scores on our standardized testing did improve. Did everyone become proficient? Hardly. But there was growth in the right direction from the beginning to the end of the year.
Another unexpected bright spot that I didn’t consider when I started this experience has been connecting with like minded, energized, risk taking, other middle school teachers. The network we’ve formed is powerful and has given me many resources to read and ideas to try.
I thought having a site-based team would be easy. Easy to schedule, easy to get ideas from, and easy to spark a curiosity for learning math in the students that were asked and accepted as part of the team. As we all know, theory seldom matches actual experience. One of the students couldn’t handle it. Schedule, behavior, inability to concentrate all contributed to this student only participating once in a while and even then seemed intent on trying to distract the group.
Another student was hardly ever available due to being on too many other councils, groups, or extra-curricular activities. And then there were two. I don’t want to underwhelm the importance of these two. They were very helpful and their input is extremely valuable.
I have work to do next year, both in the selection process and trying to get meetings to become habit so students, and their teacher, plan around it.
Secondly, I thought trying to personalize the experience for students would instantly achieve buy-in and increased passion in my students. Allowing them to make choices about how do get the work done on projects or other activities seemed like a win-win. I, like some of my colleagues, also found that given too many choices and free time to work did not achieve the results I was looking for. Some students seemed completely unmotivated no matter what I tried.
I have more ideas for next year, to include having a subset of students help me plan the curriculum. We’ll see how that goes.
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 curriculum?
This is nit-picky, but having the word “personalized” is redundant in this context. Anyone who’s worked with students to design curriculum knows that there are myriad layers of personalization when it’s students who are steering the ship.
Not-shockingly, students working at the curriculum design table use their own experience and perspective to develop activities and outcomes that lean into creativity, flexibility, and exploration. You know, the things represented by this idea of teachers providing student voice and choice in learning. They want want to build, dig into projects, and work toward complicated solutions, rather than monochromatic, binary finish lines.
It took some time to find an on-ramp for bringing social justice to the design table with students. I’d broached the subject a few times early in the year, but we collectively decided that looking at issues within our community (that of Shelburne, or Vermont in general) seemed like a great time to get started with using social justice as our lens. This brought us to the unit we’re currently wrapping up, the one I’ve very generically been referring to as our “Community” unit.
Our original goal was to engage 8th grade students by digging into issues within our community connected to social justice. While doing so, we’ve been simultaneously working to connect and collaborate with the Science Leadership Academy Middle School (SLAMS), a pilot school in inner-city Philadelphia. After meeting the entire faculty at this past June’s Middle Grades Institute, a connection with one of their teachers, Hilary Hamilton, sparked an idea. First, have our students explore issues within their respective communities. From there, connect our students with a goal for them to determine what defines both the similarities and differences of our communities.
Cool stuff. And we’re off and running.
Not only that, but it was a crew of 8th grade student leaders — all of them members our twice-weekly student planning committee (SPC) — that just brought the house down at the Middle Grades Conference on Saturday, January 12th. Included is the Slides presentation that they used (yes “they”; I would estimate that in our 25 minute presentation I probably spoke for about six minutes total), as well as some Twitter hype from the day.
The biggest thing I’ve been really happy about is the fact that our work regarding social justice — something that is of course relevant but can also be uncomfortable and is far-too-often underrepresented in curriculum — has felt meaningful to students.
I think this is largely due to the amount of choice and freedom to explore issues we’ve provided. But one of my biggest worries going into this year was that any content connected to social justice (in particular, topics centered on injustices or inequalities regarding race, gender, sexuality, etc.) would feel “preachy”, handed-down, or like a teacher mandate. Per student feedback, it hasn’t. Awesome.
Using the concept of intersectionality has been really helpful.
It builds on the work, and allows for a second year, of a former student — Heidi — to come into the classroom and teach. This also paired beautifully with students using “social identifiers/identities” and breaking down what they mean, whether they’re “fixed or fluid”, and which lead to privilege, discrimination or both.
To wrap this up, students then applied each of the social identifiers to their own lives.
Difficult work, and sometimes with unexpected results. A great example: most middle level students have little to no clue what their socioeconomic status would be considered. This leads to really interesting conversations about their role as household dependents while moving closer and closer toward independent adulthood. Love it.
After using a short clip from the film Crazy Rich Asians as a conversation-starter for social identities, students were really interested in watching the rest of the movie. We ended up doing so, but with a bonus task. Students were challenged to use “Social Identifiers Bingo” to match when particular social identifiers showed up in the film. It was a small, but engaging activity that, I think, ultimately enriched the viewing experience. It’s also a really funny and largely poignant movie. Well worth a watch.
Finally, I’m really excited about the project that students are currently engaged in. Using the Design-Thinking framework as a “playlist”, each student group (formed by students filling out an inventory on social identifiers they’re interested in pursuing), students are working on tangible products.
These products must work as a response to a driving question that, in the “Define” stage of Design-Thinking, students crafted to capture an issue within our community. The learning has been project-driven and hands-on. For the past two weeks I’ve done very little “teaching”, but have instead been roving between groups working to put out fires while asking questions to spark creative thinking or problem solving.
So fun. My favorite type of work as an educator.
I like wrapping up this blog post with a focus on the not-so-great. I recently had the chance to read Daniel Coyle’s The Culture Code(shout-out to Bill Rich and Jeanie Phillips for their deep discussion via podcast on the book). In it, one section centers on the nearly incomprehensible success of NBA coach Gregg Popovich.
One thing I was struck by was the description of how he gives feedback to his players. Before, during, and directly after games the feedback he provides is all positive; celebrating and reinforcing the good. It’s not until later, in one-on-one discussions, after he’s confirmed with a player that they are ready for dissecting the not-good, does he go into constructive criticism.
I love the idea.
Coyle explains how it goes along with why the “sandwich feedback” format isn’t the most effective way to deliver constructive criticism. To have meaningful advice about means of improvement surrounded by praise leaves the recipient with a confusing takeaway. Rather, crush the positives regularly, and when it’s the appropriate time for both members of the discussion, dissect the negatives.
Also worth noting: this section of The Culture Code also highlights that, at times, Popovich has been cited for giving very direct, unvarnished feedback to players. Some might call it intense. However, this in-your-face feedback is also a product of the relationship-building that Popovich values and cultivates with his players. It may be raw, but it’s built on honesty and trust.
Represented as a simple, bulleted list:
I’ll turn to the Slides presentation from the Middle Grades Conference one last time for a glimpse at where we’re going. I think this “Road Ahead…” slide captures what we’re thinking and where we’re hoping to go:
One final note: as I worked with the student presenters for some final tune-up prepping, they saw this slide and we started talking about where we’re going with our curriculum. It was a brief chat, but meaningful. It was only five students, but they represented an array of ideas, hopes, and means of creating engaging and enriching curriculum. I wrote down as much as I could, knowing that we’d continue the discussion with the rest of the SPC this week.
That quick chat where the students showed such strong agency and ownership of the learning process was a microcosm; one representing not just the power, but the necessity to always have students at the table for curriculum design.
Something that will, indeed, be firmly in place as we continue to move ahead.
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 offshoot #highfive goes out to the thinking that has come from these visits, along with the brainstorming from readings/videos/conversations.
“What is truly the best environment for learning?”
remains an unanswered question since the first public school opened in 1635. …384 years! For me, that is both a big point of frustration and a major motivator.
Personalization and student-centered is what I have been most focused on, and Team Quest is forging ahead in shaping this environment with their 45 sixth graders. The environment in their classrooms is alive and vibrant in so many ways.
But can I say with conviction that this is the “best environment for learning”, and that all classrooms should look like those on Team Quest? I cannot as of now, and that remains a point of frustration for me.
I am a stickler for a plan. Type A. Enneagram Type 3. Call it what you will. My closet is color-coded and sleeve-organized. I leave the house every morning with beds made and dishes washed. I never get behind on laundry.
My son blames all of this on my birthplace. “Oh, mom,” he whines, “You just think you have to always do the right thing because you are southern.” And while he is partly right, some of it is just how I was born. I like order, not chaos. I like rules; they make me feel safe.
If I’m honest, I really just want my classroom to look like my closet or my bookshelves. I want everything where it should be, every student at their desk, no loud noises, every surface clean and organized. Does classroom disorder spark joy? Nope…throw it out! But, at the same time, I want to be a good teacher, responsive to student needs, on top of current research about what works best in the classroom. I want to say yes, when I can and as often as I can.
And to top it all off, I can be hyper-sensitive to teachers around me. Are they judging me because students are silent reading on a couch? What do they think about the volume in my classroom. And will I get in trouble for letting kids use their phones to listen to music in class?
How do I do all of this without needing anti-anxiety meds?
The Personal Interest Projects (or PIP’s) that we started last year ARE engaging students. I just gave a survey late this fall, and almost ¾ of students are enjoying PIP’s. Students are enjoying getting a say in what they learn and how they spend their time each week
This year, my fellow teachers even immediately suggested putting aside time specifically for PIP’s! So now that I’m getting favorable results and seeing teacher buy-in, I’m turning my attention to other aspects of my teaching. When the Learning Lab first met together in August, I was blown away by what other teachers were doing, how they were working personalization into not just a separate time but their everyday classroom time. I then refined my inquiry question, asking, “How can I give students a completely independent learning experience through PIP’s and then have students use those same skills to give them personalized learning in the humanities classroom?”
I started with silent reading time. I received a PTO grant to buy new books and some camp chairs, so students could spread out with choice books. I have let students listen to music on their phones while they read. Overall, it’s going well. My students beg for silent reading, because it’s a cozy time, a normal routine. The music helps them focus, and students love getting that privilege and choice. I’ve even allowed students to start listening to music and spreading out while they work on writing as well.
Just this week, a student who cried last year during silent reading time (because she “hated reading”) came into my room, beaming, because she had just finished a book on her own! Another student can’t stop reading books I recommend…he’s tearing through them!
Listen, if you already feel like you are fighting an uphill battle letting students listen to their own music in your room, if you already feel like you are having to defend your teaching choices to your teammates, then throwing the social-media-use-in-school-monkey-wrench into the mix does not help your morale or your case.
Honestly, at first I was mad. I wanted to just cry, “Uncle,” wave the right flag, never allow phones or music in my classroom. You can’t resist snapchat during silent reading? Fine, then you’re stuck with my late 90’s, early 2000’s indie music mix!
But, no, I quickly reminded myself. This school year is the year of Yes. It’s the year of me letting go of rules that serve no purpose, choosing student’s engagement and voice over my own OCD comfort.
And so the phones stay. And the music stays. I remind myself of the Developmental Design strategy, “Assume nothing, teach everything,” and go over phone and music expectations. I reiterate the expectations every class. I take away the use of phones and music from students that aren’t following the rules.
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 engagement and achievement?
Bright Spot: Some days I feel like I am a rock star educator; other days I feel like a complete mess. And through this journey I am learning that it is not only possible but okay to be both.
This journey over the last three years to a student-centered, fully differentiated classroom has been quite the ride. It started with project based learning and a creative group of 4th and 5th graders and has led to here, where we are now with a group of fourth graders who are learning so many life skills through this model.
This leads us to the bright spots… those days when I feel like a rockstar educator. These moments come from my students and their ability to work in ways that I could never have dreamed of when they first walked through that fourth grade door in September. This year we have focused on helping our third and fourth graders to make choices about what they need to be successful in their learning through helping them to evaluate where they are and what they need.
This model ties in well with the idea of universal design: the idea that all children can be successful in the general education classroom by providing access points for every child’s entry into the grade level curriculum no matter where they are. Simply stated, meeting each child where he or she is at this point in their learning.
Last year, my class was visited by representatives from an inclusive classroom program. Turns out we were selected with two other schools in Vermont to serve as an inclusion model. This fall, my classroom was chosen as a model for inclusive design. This has been my passion since I started teaching and this was a bright spot in my journey. That this student-centered model, where third and fourth grade share students based on need and proficiency skills, has helped to foster and create an inclusive classroom for all students.
Sitting here grading math assessments and all I can say is WOW! This new model we have implemented with learning lab and @VTCoreySmith is working. I’ve never had so many kids meet and exceed in this unit before! #choicemenus #flexiblegrouping @ProctorSchool @rhlearning @hennesss
— Courtney Elliott (@MsElliott345) February 2, 2019
Belly Flop: Now for that belly flop or that dilemma that I feel like I am facing moving forward…those days I feel like a hot mess educator. Those days I go home wondering if in the long run I am failing my students.
What happens when eventually these students are placed in classrooms that fit the more traditional boxes?
What happens when the only access point for them in the classroom is a one size fits all curriculum for all students?
I worry about if what I am doing is best preparing my students. I worry that if having them work at their own level at the skill and not teaching to a program will hurt them in the long run. For example, will allowing students to make choices to guide their own learning affect them in a traditional classroom setting because they will not be able to be at their pace?Yes, on their benchmark assessments they may move from a first grade math level to a third grade math level but what happens when they are expected to complete a fifth grade math curriculum? I worry about if by allowing them to make choices in the classroom based on need they are not learning what they will need to prepare for future endeavors in education.
Students apply for independent math study for Throwback Thursday @ProctorSchool! @VTCoreySmith pic.twitter.com/ctLvrtnZvd
— Courtney Elliott (@MsElliott345) March 6, 2019
So in conclusion, I feel like I am in a place of limbo with my classroom environment and pedagogy. I know in my heart that this learning is right for my kids. I see the progress in the benchmark data and their joy and engagement with learning on a daily basis. For example, Corey and I have had several conversations with students around their learning and what helps them learn best.
Platypodcast #2 on Choice Menus – what they are, how we use them in 3rd and 4th, and how they impact our learning #vted #grcsu #pres @ProctorSchool @MsElliott345 @LearnerBased https://t.co/zKBuZb5Mmr
— Corey Smith (@VTCoreySmith) February 12, 2019
The data collected from these meetings or check ins is that they enjoy choice and setting goals. They feel comfortable working at their own pace and seeing where they are in their learning of the skill through the use of checklists and rubrics. They like to feel empowered and like they are in charge.
Corey and I hope to create a student engagement survey after break to further highlight what the students have said in these classroom discussions. Still, I have those days where I just wonder that once they leave my classroom and continue on their educational journey that I have made the road harder for them in some way. It’s a lot to think about, but aIl I know is my heart tells me that I am doing the right thing. I just need to remember that.
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 hoped for, I did a lot of reflecting. I started thinking about my own practice with my students and how I spend the first six weeks the whole year preaching to them about growth mindset. I started wondering, how many of us talk to our students, or dare I suggest lecture them, on the importance of those moments of mistake or failure? How many of use make sure our students know that without those mistakes, learning would never happen? How many of us ask our students to share with the class the mistakes they have made because those mistakes are so incredibly awesome that the entire class benefits from them?
If you are anything like me, you are excitedly waving your hand in the air, perhaps bouncing out of your seat because you do all of that and perhaps more. Why do we do this? Because our students’ mistakes are often the most important part of their learning. Mistakes in my classroom are what run our lessons and drive conversations and collaboration. Now, how many of us, as educators, put our mistakes out there for other educators to learn from? If you are anything like me, you have quickly put your hand down and are avoiding any and all eye contact with other people.
I think the consensus around the school building is that I have it all figured out. From the outside looking in, my classroom looks great. I am constantly researching and finding new ideas and my students are always willing to jump in and try it out. I get to go to some great conferences that focus on all those buzzwords in education right now. I am presenting at district in-services and conferences around the state with my amazing 4th grade partner. Like I said, it looks great.
The reality is much different, though not a bad different. It takes an incredible amount of work for it to look like my students and I have it all figured out. The truth is, I have failed so many times in what I have done before I have found one thing that works. And sometimes, it never works. So why do my colleagues have this false picture of what goes on in my room? I think the answer is because I, like all of us, want to put my best work out there for the world to see. I want people to see my successes, my breakthroughs, my ‘aha’ moments.
I don’t fully put myself out there, but I think that needs to change. The world needs to see the messy, the oops moments, the moment I have my head in my hands wondering where it all went wrong because it happens. Boy, does it happen.
We call them epic fails in 3rd and 4th grade. Why? Because our failures are what drive our learning. Learning can’t happen without them. And of course, any time you decide something is epic, it is just that much more awesome and important. I want my students to know that their failures are something to be proud of because they will learn from them.
I changed the setup to my Ss self assessment and self reflection rubric in math thinking it would be easier for them and make more sense. It just confused them and I had to tell them where to place themselves on the rubric #bellyflopfriday
— Corey Smith (@VTCoreySmith) January 25, 2019
My journey of student-centered learning and personalization started last year before I joined Learning Lab. Throughout this journey, I have epically failed so many times, I can’t count. It would not be uncommon for you to walk into my classroom and find my class sitting in a circle problem solving where we went wrong. I will tell you though, that 3rd graders are incredible problem solvers and our epic fails usually lead to some sort of amazing breakthrough.
My goal this year has been to create a system that allows my students to self assess, self reflect, and then drive their instruction through Choice Menus based on their assessment and reflection. The problem is that 3rd graders don’t know how to reflect. No problem. I created incredibly clear and specific rubrics for them to use while reflecting on their assessments. Most of the students are able to successfully use the rubrics, but when it comes time to choose their level of learning for their Choice Menu, they have no idea if they are a Seeker (beginning), Explorer (approaching), Trailblazer (meeting), or Guide (exceeding).
There seems to be this disconnect between assessments, reflection, and driving their learning. I have wondered if I am expecting too much of them. They are 3rd graders after all and I am expecting them to do what middle school teachers expect?
I decided that I was not expecting too much of my students. They are 3rd graders after all and they are capable of so many incredible things.
The first half of the year was spent trying to figure out where I went wrong with the assessments, the reflections, and the Choice Boards. And okay, it turns out I was expecting too much of them because I expected them to fill out their self reflection and REMEMBER from day to day what level they were performing at. Honestly, I am not sure I could remember if I was in their shoes.
I needed to find a way to help them connect their assessments and reflections to the actual work that they needed to do to progress through their learning. It turns out that the solution was simple. I created badges for my students, tangible badges that they could proudly display and remind them of where they are working.
This has probably been the most positive and engaging thing I have introduced to my students this year. They are excited about the badges. When working on rounding skills, students were on task during independent time because they wanted to trade their Seeker badge in for an Explorer badge. Students were starting to request assessments more frequently and their self reflections were an accurate representation of where they were working. One small success but it feels momentous.
Back to the failures. One small success does not mean the year is over and I am done. So where to now? While the badging is a great way to help students connect assessments, reflection, and independent work, I cannot keep up with them. Creating this system for rounding was easy because it is a small concept in a year where so much is expected of them. I worry that I will not be able to keep up the pace of creating enough assessments for them to continually check their learning. I worry that I will not be able to find enough resources for the Choice Menus to allow them to be independent. I worry that because I am creating such a tailored experience for them, that I am not covering all the material presented in the canned program that we use, and it will affect them in the long run, especially as they get ready to take SBACs for the first time.
I also feel like I am at a stand still with our Learning Lab team. We were all gungho at the start of the year but it has since died down. Our students are not engaged in what we are doing and that bothers me. I am hoping that after the winter break, Courtney and I will be able to sit down and redesign our Tuesday lunches with our Learning Lab team and involve the students more.
Bright spots, belly flops, epic fails. Regardless of which category my work has fallen into this year, it has been beneficial for both myself and my students. I am excited to see where the year goes from here.
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.
Lack of team buy-in has been the most frustrating part of this project. Each meeting includes a lot of “Good idea.” and “Oh cool.” followed by a retreat to their rooms to continue business as usual. I understand that this is not their idea, not their project. As my Dad would say “Not my circus. Not my monkey.”
Understandably, educators have plenty to do on a daily basis, but we are required to assess transferable skills for lessons and unit of study anyway. So, I did not feel that asking team members to speak the same language was going to be met with such resistance.
Possible solution! I emailed a link to the transferable skills badge categories, and the Scholar Application, asking that the link be incorporated at the end of their assignments. Everyone agreed to give it a try (yay!) but it was never added. (bleah!) The difficulty is that students only apply for these badges in science, so MUCH too myopic for a true student buy in.
Meetings with administrators, student groups, and other coordinators have happened. Change can not be forced, so a change in focus seemed necessary.
My new tactic is to request a meeting with the fifth and sixth grade team. Possibly finding inroads earlier on will help students gain a greater understanding of transferable skills and their importance. Badging in younger grades will require different procedures, but may gain some traction as a practice for the future.
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 my hair after several weeks of modeling and connecting different mathematical representations as explicitly as I could, only to find that the majority of students could barely hold onto their understanding from one day to the next, I put the learning in their hands. Really in their hands. I assigned each student a teammate and a specific fraction problem. Their job was to create a teaching tool that would allow anyone to learn how to solve problems similar to one that had been assigned.
Cue student groaning. “Ms. Grey, I don’t even know how to solve this problem!” “Why can’t you just teach them?” and many more comments I pretended not to hear. I provided them with an explicit checklist, a list of resources to help them understand how to solve the problem themselves and whatever technology they needed.
Completing this project was not a straight line for most students. First, they had to understand what they knew and didn’t know about solving their problem. Then they had to try to explain it. Next, they had to admit that they either knew way less than they were letting on, or quite a bit more. Finally, they had to come up with a product that wasn’t just fun and funny, but something that someone could actually use to learn.
I collected all of their finished products on a Padlet site, then set them up to use each others’ products to study for a summative assessment.
Even after feedback from me throughout the process of creating these products, some students didn’t create a usable learning tool despite knowing the material themselves. However, when a peer would complain that they needed to know how to complete the problem, and that the poster/video/slideshow wasn’t helpful, suddenly there was a rush to edit.
This project was no magic wand that made all of my students hit the targets. However, it did help a lot of students take more ownership over their learning, forcing them to come to terms with the fact that they didn’t know the material, and they needed to, and that they had the power to learn it themselves. Not the brightest spot, but also not a complete bellyflop. If nothing else, I got to see llamas incorporated into fraction division.
How can I get students to use these resources during our work times to engage in the learn, assess and relearn cycle? There seems to be a chronic desire for me to spoon-feed them information.
Bright Spots:
Belly Flops:
Questions Moving Forward:
When asked “what is your working definition of personalized learning?” Charlie Herzog, an educator at Flood Brook replied:
“Relevancy is the essence of personalized learning. It’s about giving students voice & choice regarding content, and offering multiple pathways to explore/learn the chosen content. It’s about students reflecting on their learning journeys; considering where they’ve come from, and where they desire to take their learning next.”
We think this definition works equally well for the adult learners doing the hard work of designing and orchestrating personalized learning. Once Herzog launched this year’s crew at Flood Brook School with the intention of putting his working definition into practice, he too found time to reflect on his learning journey and consider where to take his learning next. Here’s Herzog’s candid and courageous reflection, which reminds us how vulnerable and thrilling this journey can be.
–Susan Hennessey & Bill Rich
I never-endingly wrestle with our integrated studies endeavor at Flood Brook. We integrate science and social studies around compelling questions while employing a “project-based” approach, in multiage fashion, grades 6-8.
Among the students the reviews are mixed. If we offered them a thumbs up or down poll I fear the results. What then? In the name of personalization do we end it? If they don’t want it, and what they want is science and social studies completely separate, why not do it? Hell, it would be easier for me to end it.
No, I’m not ready to end it. The reason is I haven’t done project-based learning right. I haven’t personalized it enough.
I trapped myself. Under the burden of urgency I fell into the comfortable: deliver content, provide graphic organizers, require Cornell note-taking, check all the boxes…and now start the project and be excited about it. Sure, be excited by it after I sucked all the air out of it. I understand why students might feel integrated studies is a slog.
I was about to do it again. Oh, the content is always delivered with a certain flair. It wouldn’t have been boring, but there would be graphic organizers to fill out.
My partner, Joey Blane, snapped me out of it. Turns out, her spirit for integrated studies needed a jump start too. Weren’t the kids supposed to like this? Weren’t we?
We changed the entire plan we wrote at MGI. Now we’re going to build a monument that’s going to address, “Why should we care about human rights?” We have zero idea what it’s going to look like because the kids are going to design and build the whole thing.
This is really scary. What if it’s a disaster? It’s beyond my comfort zone. But doesn’t project-based learning push all teachers beyond their comfort zone?
The root of our problem with integrated studies is we haven’t personalized it enough. Yes, we offer a slew of project options. Yes, we give students choice of compelling questions to pursue. Yes, we give students a voice in the planning of the units. But we haven’t put the project at the front of the experience.
This New Tech Network image graphically represents what I’m getting at here.
New to #PBL? This image breaks down the difference between project based learning & "doing projects." #PBLChat #k12ed #edchat pic.twitter.com/9bzlAg7X4z
— New Tech Network (@newtechnetwork) October 19, 2018
Despite our hard work, our excitement, and our best intentions for our students, we haven’t given kids reason to care. In my mind I hear, Even if I did care, even a little about it at the start, you’ve tortured the content to such an extent that any motivation I had to start the project is dead.
So, I’m going to spend quite some time learning about engineering monuments, human rights issues, activism, symbolism, physical sciences, etc. I don’t know what the monument is going to look like. I don’t know how to build it. Beyond the Holocaust, I have no idea what human rights issues we’ll be investigating, nor do I have any idea what form of activism the students will take.
I’m scared. I’m really nervous, but I’m excited, and I haven’t been this excited in a while.
PBL Launch event. If you’re gonna build a monument you might as well visit some and discuss design, what they’re communicating, etc. Big thanks to @VTEducare & @hennesss!! #floodbrook #fbs #vted pic.twitter.com/zx9KPjlz1A
— Charles Herzog (@PJ_Vermont) October 8, 2018
Herzog’s updated inquiry question now reads “How might putting the project at the front of a project-based learning experience increase personalization for students?”
Watch the video below and consider visiting his class to learn more about his journey. Schedule a visit here!