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Early in my teaching career I taught eighth and ninth grade English in a small classroom that had nothing more than a chalkboard, ceiling fan, and about twenty-five attentive pairs of eyes looking up at me for guidance five hours each day. One simple retention technique I used regularly was to "personalize" my examples for vocabulary, grammar, etc. with the names of students from the class and local context. No one cared about Jonny in our grammar workbooks, but they did care about the crazy, unpredictable examples I would come up with using people and things we knew. And if you would have asked me or my students about their experience, everyone would have naively told you, "Yes, Mr. Liang personalizes our learning."

More than a decade later, I have to laugh at how poorly I used to define "personalized learning". Changing a few proper nouns in an exercise or buying an adaptive digital product doesn't qualify your classroom as a personalized learning environment. But unfortunately, "personalized learning" has become a popular catch-all phrase in education, especially edtech, and is used without restraint in school practices, advertisements, and publications. It has become a marketing trap and lacks any real substance when you reach real teaching practice.

People are carrying out "personalized learning initiatives" without properly defining what that even is, and the quality of students' learning experiences is suffering. It's important to set standards for what you and your organization mean when you say, "we are doing personalized learning," because it will keep you on course and allow you to define a vision of success. It will also enable you to know when you have fallen short in certain areas as you navigate the challenges of innovating in schools; it's hard work!

Through our early work at LEAP Innovations, personalized learning pathways, competency-based progression, learner profiles, student agency, and flexible environments have emerged as key considerations. Here are PL frameworks to get you started--you'll see some overlapping concepts in the field. Start by distributing these to your leadership team for reading, and then sit down to discuss what which frameworks or characteristics resonate with your values, your vision for your graduates, and your local context. This is not a simple curriculum debate; it's a realignment or rewriting of what you believe education can and should be. Enjoy!

Montessori Method

Website: http://amiusa.org/, http://amshq.org/

Who are they? The Association Montessori International (AMI) and American Montessori Society (AMS) both base their frameworks off the Montessori Method developed in 1907 by Dr. Maria Montessori from observations of children from birth to adulthood.

What's their framework or frameworks? AMI and AMS focus deeply on the relationship among the teacher, the child, and the environment. Children are respected as individuals and the learning experience is designed to foster growth towards independence and social responsibility.

Why would I use this framework over others? There are many public misconceptions around a Montessori classroom, but it is actually a very orderly and purposefully designed environment, curriculum, and role for the teacher. Learning more can help you understand methods to create freedom within limits, intentional development of life skills, and the interplay between learner choice and curriculum options.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Website: http://www.cast.org/

Who are they? CAST is an educational research and development organization that works to expand learning opportunities for all individuals.

What's their framework or frameworks? Universal design for learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. It consists of three main areas: engagement, representation, and action and expression. Engagement focuses on the affective network of the brain and the need for purposeful, motivated learners through multiple means of engagement. Representation focuses on perception, language, and comprehension strategies during the delivery of content. Action and expression highlights physical action, communication, and executive functions.

Why would I use this framework over others? The UDL guidelines are a well established approach to curriculum design and providing the proper considerations for all learners. They can help you evolve from "dumbing down" curriculum to creating their right scaffolds that allow you to maintain rigorous learning experiences that are accessible to all
Website: http://theinstituteatcesa1.org
The Institute at CESA #1

Who are they? The Institute at CESA #1 was established to work with member school districts in Southeastern Wisconsin to establish personalized learning as the prevailing approach to educating youth. They provide a wide range of professional development and hold an annual conference.

What's their framework or frameworks? CESA #1 created a "honeycomb" representation of the pathways to personalized learning school design, and it moves teams through core components, learning and teaching, relationship and roles, and structures and policies. Their three core components to get started with personalized learning are learner profiles, custom learning paths, and proficiency-based progress.
Website: http://www.personalizelearning.com/
Why would I use this framework over others? The framework provides a clear starting point for personalized learning and how schools or classrooms can move along a continuum. It can help you sort through the many factors at play and realize how structures and policies are actually the last step in the design of a personalized learning environment and need to align with large core values.

Personalize Learning LLC

Who are they? Kathleen McClaskey and Barbara Bray lead personalizelearning.com and provide on-going thought leadership and training around personalizing learning, including their book Make Learning Personal: The What, Who, WOW, Where and Why. They are well experienced educators with backgrounds in UDL, educational technology, and creative learning strategies.

What's their framework or frameworks? Their framework merges UDL, learner voice and choice, creative environments, intrinsic motivation, and educational technology in a cohesive approach that builds off of learner profiles.

Why would I use this framework over others? Kathleen and Barbara pull apart personalized, differentiated, and individualized learning in very articulate ways that will help you and your team be more clear in your communications. Their incorporation of UDL and learner voice and choice will also help you understand personalized learning in a very concrete, classroom-applicable manner.

Temple University

Who are they? Temple University is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and has a college of education and multiple centers dedicated to research in education.
Website: http://leapinnovations.org/
What's their framework or frameworks? Published in 1998, their Adaptive Learning Environment Model (ALEM) is an innovative educational program to meet the diverse social and academic needs of students. Its core design elements are the following: individualized progress plans, diagnostic-prescriptive monitoring system, classroom instruction-management system, data-based professional development program, school-based restructuring process, and family involvement program.

Why would I use this framework over others? ALEM acknowledges professional development and family/community as core strategies to achieve a personalized learning experience. It can help you recognize the diversity of factors that can be incorporated into your design of your PL model..

LEAP Innovations

Who are they? (Full disclosure, I work at LEAP). LEAP Innovations is a non-profit that bridges the gap between education and innovation for teachers and students pre-K through college. They work with forward-thinking teachers, principals, entrepreneurs, and companies to identify, implement, and evaluate personalized learning techniques and edtech products based on the schools' needs.

What's their framework or frameworks? LEAP Innovations focuses on competency-based progression, personalized learning pathways, learner profiles, student/learner agency, and flexible environments.

Why would I use this framework over others? LEAP Innovations has a unique position with their work across different areas and a heavy focus on research. Their framework can help you understand what's necessary by leaders and teachers to create an environment that enables learners to take more ownership and play an active role in their education.

I also would be sure to check out the framework by Next Generation Learning Challenges (NLGC), New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF), and iNACOL. There are many exciting people in this field-- check out EdSurge's full "resources to get started" list to rev up personalized learning in your classroom today.

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Which Personalized Learning Framework is Best For You and Your School? - EdSurge News

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Early in my teaching career I taught eighth and ninth grade English in a small classroom that had nothing more than a chalkboard, ceiling fan, and about twenty-five attentive pairs of eyes looking up at me for guidance five hours each day. One simple retention technique I used regularly was to "personalize" my examples for vocabulary, grammar, etc.

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Rogers Family Foundation

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West-Allis Milwaukee SD

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West Allis-West Milwaukee School District | NGLC

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Planning personalized, deep learning environments across the district (Planning)

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Davinci High School

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HS integrates online learning, dynamic project-based learning, college courses & internships

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Innovation Unit

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Summit Public Schools

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Summit flips the traditional adult-driven school model on its head by creating an environment that enables students to drive their own learning.

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4 Foundational Innovation Strategies

With these thoughts in mind, here are four ways to strategically infuse the basics with innovation.

1. Utilize your specialist teachers.

When Ross was an elementary school assistant principal in a district with a highly-regarded career and technical education (CTE) program, two of its instructors gave him a tour of their high school facilities. Throughout that visit, the teachers shared their educational philosophies and how they facilitated student learning. Some of these tenets included:

Allowing students to engage in productive struggle to uncover a deeper understanding of engineering principles

An emphasis on the iterative process

Assessment and grading not based solely on final products

Clearly, there was a contrast between learning in the CTE program and in a typical classroom. Ross asked these teachers, "Have you been given a formal opportunity to talk about your philosophies with other teachers at your school? Would students benefit if these philosophies were applied across all their classes?" The answers to these questions, not surprisingly, were "no" and then "yes!"

In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson discusses the coffeehouse model of creativity and how "many of history's greatest innovators managed to build a cross-disciplinary coffeehouse environment within their own private work routines." The same idea can be applied to education, as something can be learned from anyone regardless of official job title. For example, we'd love to see specialists (such as CTE, art, and music teachers) present to regular education teachers on the philosophies that drive the teaching and learning in their classrooms. Then we'd offer them structured time to collaborate on merging these approaches with what's already taking place.

2. Embed innovative practices into the curriculum.

Every day brings chances for students to innovate. But in our experience, the schools' forward-thinking change agents simply cross their fingers and hope the innovation happens (maybe through some form of professional development). Yet we can and should be more intentional about promoting innovation in our districts and schools with everything in our power.

Curriculum rewrites present us with unique opportunities to embed innovative practices that also represent our priorities as educators. While these additions may not guarantee that everything will be executed precisely as we envision, they're a step in the right direction.

Next year, Ross' district will rewrite its elementary science curriculum. It could be advantageous to include innovative practices such as Genius Hour, design thinking, robotics, and coding. These methods could be merged with other science topics or subject areas, and/or 30-40 minutes a week could be allocated to students immersing themselves in at least one of them. Of course, professional development would probably be necessary, and teachers might be able to participate on a volunteer basis.

A few years ago, Wissahickon School District in Ambler, Pennsylvania took a similar approach. According to former administrator A.J. Juliani:

Innovation often happens in organic fashion. At Wissahickon, we shared Genius Hour at our Best Practices Fair, and five other teachers jumped on board. The next year, momentum carried it into the new ELA curriculum. Now every ninth grader experiences Genius Hour, and teachers get to improve facilitating this type of learning every year.

3. Empower students to lead their own (and others') learning.

Tony has referred to himself as Cantiague Elementary School's lead learner ever since he saw Joe Mazza tweeting about the term and started researching its significance. He repeatedly encountered statements from thinkers like Michael Fullan and Robert Marzano stressing the importance of a principal becoming an instructional leader focused on staff, student, and community learning. As Tony researched, he realized that he already was a lead learner (one of many in his school community) because he modeled the importance of learning through his own daily actions while supporting and facilitating the learning of those around him.

He focused on empowering students through conversations with staff about how minor tweaks in daily instruction might give children opportunities to facilitate their own learning and shape the trajectory of their educational experiences. One adjustment involved teachers giving students choices in their reading and in their writing workshop. Whether through picking books that excited them (regardless of level) or researching an area about which they were passionate for a writing unit, the children were leading their own learning.

In addition to these language arts modifications, students have led lessons as a result of their Genius Hour research or science experiments that they've tried. As a result, Tony's school has seen a shift from a culture of teaching to a culture of learning.

4. Engage families and students differently and build transparency.

Many schools in this country function as fortresses in which everything that happens inside is the educators' business while everything that happens outside is the families' business. Unfortunately, there's never a bridge connecting these two worlds because many schools do very little to meaningfully engage families. This fortress mentality isn't in the best interest of students or the educational community. In their 2002 report titled A New Wave of Evidence (PDF), Mapp and Henderson wrote:

When schools engage families in ways that are linked to improving learning, students make greater gains. When schools build partnerships with families that respond to their concerns and honor their contributions, they are successful in sustaining connections that are aimed at improving student achievement.

The bottom line is that engaging families is a must, not an option. We can no longer rely solely on connecting with the families who happen to show up at PTA meetings. We must go beyond in our efforts to flatten our school walls, build transparency, and engage all families. We can accomplish these goals by letting children share their powerful educational experiences. For example, consider implementing a Social Media Intern or Tweeter of the Week program in your school (idea courtesy of Missy Emler). You could also create a Snapchatter or Instagrammer of the Week. Regardless of platform, what matters is children sharing timely and dynamic stories with the community. Schools have incredible stories, and children can be the best storytellers, so empower them to shape your school's narrative.

A Right, Not a Privilege

Withholding innovation from students who are learning the basics is equivalent to saying, "You're not ready for the privilege of learning in an exciting, authentic way."

It's not a matter of if we can make the two coexist, but how we can find a way to synchronously expose our students to both in order to create the districts, schools, and classrooms in which we'd want our very own children to learn.

How does your school embrace innovation without sacrificing the foundations of teaching and learning?

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Infusing the Basics With the Spirit of Innovation | Edutopia

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With these thoughts in mind, here are four ways to strategically infuse the basics with innovation. 1. Utilize your specialist teachers. When Ross was an elementary school assistant principal in a district with a highly-regarded career and technical education (CTE) program, two of its instructors gave him a tour of their high school facilities.

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Whether your role is as an administrator, teacher, parent, or student leader, if you're reading this, you are probably interested in helping other school community stakeholders understand the power of technology in a teaching and learning environment. A common mantra I'm hearing from digital learning coaches and innovative administrators is that they feel the progress toward using technology tools in their schools has plateaued. Many teachers have made great strides, but many more are still tentative with technology.

Just as it is a best practice for educators to model with math and reading and writing for students, it is also a best practice for all tech-savvy stakeholders to model for the tech-tentative.

Administrators: Model risk-taking with edtech for faculty

District and school administrators can start small to demonstrate the willingness to try new tactics and harness the power of technology. Start simple by sending out surveys with Google Forms or Survey Monkey, or interactive video lessons with PlayPosit or EdPuzzle, before meetings and professional learning opportunities. Then, share the resulting data and respond to the concerns of participants so that the meeting can continue positively and productively.

Or, go farther by using technology tools live during these professional learning times. For example, create a live word cloud with AnswerGarden or Poll Everywhere in response to a school-wide question to help focus the discussion. Ask faculty to share links and descriptions from their favorite resources with Padlet.

As teachers see how these tools helped facilitate their own professional experiences, they will see how they could be used with their own students.

Teachers: Model appropriate etiquette with edtech for students

When I work with teachers, one obstacle they say is in the way of them letting students use mobile devices every day in their classrooms is the distraction factor. With a classroom full of students who each have their own screen, how can even the most skilled experienced educator manage to teach content and responsible behavior simultaneously?

Well, not surprisingly, it starts with modeling-and some adults aren't exactly setting the right kind of example. Research has shown that some children feel as though they are competing with devices for adults' attention and that caregivers respond harshly to children who try to interrupt their attention to their devices. Teachers can help by talking with students about how they behave when using technology in class-they will turn off all notifications, will only use devices to help demonstrate and teach the students in the room, will not respond to emails during class-and ask students how they intend to behave when using their devices. Classroom contracts aren't a new concept, and when used well can help everyone hold one another accountable as a community. In a classroom community where each member is responsible, the teacher alone does not bear the burden of being the only manager.

Parents and educators: Model positive social media usage for children

Given the way social media was used by adults to converse and debate during the recent election, it can be challenging to tell our middle and high schoolers that they should follow the examples set by those adults. Instead of ignoring the problem or trying to convince kids to stay off social media, educators can shape the conversation this way:

1. Acknowledge that some adults use social media poorly and ask your students/children if they've seen examples and talk about those examples.

2. Empower your students/children. They can help make the internet a better place by making accurate and positive posts and by reminding other users to do the same. (I sometimes drop a link to a relevant Snopes page if someone I know posts inaccurate information and politely let them know they might want to check it out.)

3. Remind your students/children that are the policymakers, educators, business people, and parents of the future. They can start creating the future they want to exist right now. Show examples of other teen users who are already taking positive action so they know it is possible and are inspired to do something themselves.

And here's a useful note: Always follow the district social media policies, but consider starting a department or team Instagram account and use this as an opportunity to model for students. St. Bernard School in Connecticut goes even further and lets a new student take over the Instagram account each week. Give the students a chance to do some positive modeling, too!

Students: Model how to use technologies in new and creative ways

When designing lessons and projects, teachers can give every student a chance to model by incorporating student choice. Are they analyzing data or using math to solve real world problems? Invite them to choose either an infographic (with infogr.am or Piktochart or Canva) or to create an explainer video (with Explain Everything or Educreations) to show their conclusions based on their work. Are they connecting literature or history to the present day? Provide students with choices like storyboarding, acting in, and then creating a movie (with iMovie or WeVideo) or authoring their own book (with Book Creator or Papyrus) so they have original products to share.

Take it one step further and invite students to come up with their own ways to share their learning. Does a student want to use musical.ly to perform a current song from the perspective of a book character? What about creating a mock Snapchat story to show a day in the life of a scientist? When your students come up with these ideas, let them model creative uses of edtech and then share them with their peers and teachers.

A school community can push past that plateau and continue to make progress when all stakeholders are able to model for and teach one another.

Kerry Gallagher (@KerryHawk02) is a Digital Learning Specialist at a 1:1 iPad school serving 1500 students grades 6-12. She is also the Director of K-12 Education for ConnectSafely.org, and an EdSurge columnist.

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Has Your School Reached an Edtech Plateau? Here's the Key to Moving the Needle - EdSurge News

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Whether your role is as an administrator, teacher, parent, or student leader, if you're reading this, you are probably interested in helping other school community stakeholders understand the power of technology in a teaching and learning environment.

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Education World: Is Your School's Culture Toxic or Positive?

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It is possible to alter the environment around you--or at least assess it.

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My colleague and I recently visited a middle school science classroom. Students, outfitted with safety glasses, were organized into groups of three to four. The room was lively but not disorderly as each group worked on its own experiment. As we walked the perimeter of the room, we saw many of the hallmarks of a personalized learning (PL) classroom: small groups worked independently, each worked on an activity that they had chosen, the teacher engaged with small groups of students.

But when I asked a group of students about their project, I learned that their task was to mimic the rising and setting of the sun using a light bulb and tray of sand. They were asked to compare the temperature of a tray of sand with the light bulb turned on or off and consider the implications for the surface temperature of the earth.

These students knew exactly how this experiment would pan out before they even started.

The teacher worked hard to get the day's lesson off the ground. She did what all good PL staff development tools advise. She mapped out and prepared several different lab assignments from which students could choose. She trusted her students to choose their partners and their activities and to be productive in their work. As she worked with students in the class she deftly switched between the different activities students were working on. But, at the end of the day, the learning goals and activities were far below the level of understanding and reasoning capacities of these students.

Many teachers in the PL schools we've visited are making big changes to their classrooms, as the teacher in this example has. Gone are the rows of desks that we usually find in typical classrooms. In their place, teachers are creating spaces where students can engage in a variety of learning activities, often working at their own pace, sometimes working on a computer. Countless teachers have shown us how they are rewriting their lesson and unit plans to give students more chances to direct their own learning. And teachers have talked to us about how they are rethinking their assessments to better reflect deep learning goals.

But we're also seeing that it's easy for schools caught up in these sweeping changes to lose sight of what will really push student learning forward: high-quality, challenging, rich content.

Like many traditional schools, those attempting PL are still figuring out what it means to work with Common Core-caliber content and skills (for example, engaging with complex texts in ways that deepen understanding). Like many teachers in more traditional schools, we're seeing teachers in PL schools who need help understanding and vetting the texts and software they give students-as well as help with strategies to productively engage students with the material. There is serious risk, however, that the demands of tackling the iconography of PL (student groupings, project-based learning, etc.) is crowding out time and energy for teachers to create rigorous content and learning experiences for students.

Can districts and external partners support both rigor and personalization? This may be the most critical and least attended-to question for the successful implementation of personalized learning.

Some schools have managed to achieve the two goals effectively by using these common sense strategies:

Start with standards, not structures. Teachers in schools or districts that started their PL initiatives by focusing on Common Core-aligned, competency-based standards seem to be homing in on rigor more readily than those whose schools or districts started by focusing on personalization structures (like launching a station-rotation model where students move from one learning station to the next). They focus first on planning challenging learning objectives and assessments and let everything else flow from that. For example, in one district we visited, the teachers want students to become adept at recognizing when and how to apply a simple concept, like the Pythagorean theorem, to a complex problem such as an architectural design. Textbook word problems weren't getting the job done. A small number of pilot schools in this district are now exploring whether personalized approaches and strategies-particularly project-based learning and providing students with more flexibility in crafting their projects-could better expose students to complex problems and better motivate them to persist through complex tasks. How these schools organize their students throughout the day and the activities they engage students in are a means to an end rather than an end in and of themselves.

Assess and discuss rigor. Teachers in the PL schools we visited are clearly hungry for feedback. But too often, the principals, central office leaders, and external partners visiting their classrooms focused on "what was happening" instead of focusing on the quality and rigor of student work. We see a clear need for more systematic feedback that focuses on both instruction and content in their classrooms; school systems could train teachers and leaders to do just that. Student Achievement Partners' Common Core-aligned Instructional Practice Guides are one example of a flexible tool that teachers and leaders could use to help keep rigor part of the conversation as they reimagine a more personalized and engaged classroom for students.

Personalized learning will not help students if they are working with content that is below their capacity. Rigor and personalization need to go hand in hand.
In 2015, CRPE kicked off a multi-year, multi-method study of systemic efforts to support schools implementing personalized learning. We'll produce a formal report at the end of the nearly two-and-a-half-year project. But in an attempt to give educators more immediate feedback, we're trying something new in this "Notes From the Field" series. We'll share noteworthy anecdotes and early impressions from our school visits; these posts should be taken as initial observations from informed and thoughtful partners. We hope these more informal dispatches help launch productive conversations and reflection. Please reach out with your own observations and feedback on Twitter. Find us here: @CRPE_UW, hashtag #PersonalizedLearning

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Beware the Iconography Trap of Personalized Learning: Rigor Matters

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My colleague and I recently visited a middle school science classroom. Students, outfitted with safety glasses, were organized into groups of three to four. The room was lively but not disorderly as each group worked on its own experiment.

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This blog originally ran on CompetencyWorks.
The biggest piece of advice I can give to any teacher, school or district working toward a vision of personalized learning is this:
Learning community culture is the foundation of personalized learning.
For many reasons, this vital piece is often overlooked and rarely focused on in professional development. Districts focus on the more easily measured elements of teacher evaluation models, which speak more to specific instructional strategies and behaviors. Teachers feel pressure to "get to the content" quickly at the start of the year. Performance and production are valued over process.
The truth is that even the most carefully tuned proficiency-based system will crumble without a cultivated culture of learning.
Teachers and learners will hit a wall of frustration as they try to implement personalized learning of any kind. In order for learner-centered proficiency-based systems to work, the learning community culture needs to nurture and sustain the following elements:

1. Voice: The intentional inclusion of all learning community members in decision making in school and classroom environments.

Looks Like: Students setting up the classroom with the teacher; students creating and sustaining a code of cooperation; teachers at the planning table for school and district professional development; parents and students on a principal's cabinet.

Sounds Like: People asking the opinions of others; questions welcomed; intentional discussions; stopping a decision in order to get all stakeholder input; explaining decisions; accepting and supporting the outcome of decisions.

2. Independence and Autonomy: The ability to function within the learning community by thinking and acting on one's own, which grows into and enables the intentional shifting and re-balancing of decision making power and control among learning community members.

Looks Like: Students working on their own while teachers confer or hold small groups; teacher teams creating and changing schedules as needed; students setting goals about what work to do when; teachers making time for planning by sharing time and students as they need.

Sounds Like: A team meeting to adjust the weekly schedule to support a project; students checking in with an advisor to plan course selections; students quietly chatting with a partner about their reading, then picking up a new book instead of going to the teacher.

3. Growth: The valuing of continuous, honest reflection on and development of knowledge and skills.

Looks Like: students and teachers using learning progressions, students knowing where they are on learning progressions and knowing what to do to grow, teachers setting goals for professional growth based on a professional learning progression, students and teachers reflecting after learning opportunities.

Sounds Like: talking about what students can do or will be able to do, teachers talking with other teachers to learn about practices, avoiding the word "can't" and including the word "yet."

These elements support personalized learning at all levels of the learning community, from the classroom to the district. Of course, there are many different practices and tools that support this kind of collaborative culture and will take different forms depending on a variety of factors, including age, style and other learning community characteristics.

Take a moment to imagine your ideas about the ideal learner-centered school. If you had to describe the attitudes and behaviors of that ideal learning community, what would you say? This is the culture you need to cultivate. These resources can inform your cultivation.
Reinventing Schools Coalition
A Reason To Teach by James Bean

Learners Rule by Bill Zima

Drive by Daniel Pink

Mindset by Carol Dweck

Unsustainable by Tim R. McDonald
Articles and Blogs:
A Democratic Approach To Classroom Management, ASCD

Carol Dweck Revisits the Growth Mindset, Education Week

Whose Classroom Is This? Competency Works

Creating A Classroom Parking Lot, Competency Works

A Learning Progression To Support Teachers, Competency Works

For more, see:
Courtney Belolan works at RSU 2 in Maine where she supports K-12 teachers with performance-based, individualized learning. Follow her on Twitter: . Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update . This post includes mentions of a Getting Smart partner. For a full list of partners, affiliate organizations and all other disclosures please see our Partner page

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What Is The Foundation of Personalized Learning?

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This blog originally ran on CompetencyWorks. The biggest piece of advice I can give to any teacher, school or district working toward a vision of personalized learning is this: Learning community culture is the foundation of personalized learning. For many reasons, this vital piece is often overlooked and rarely focused on in professional development.

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Earlier this year, the Rhode Island-based Highlander Institute and the Clayton Christensen Institute teamed up to bring together a conference on blended and personalized learning in Providence, R.I. The goal of the event was to focus on the practical elements of blended and personalized learning by surfacing the tactics that practitioners were deploying in the trenches. More than 100 teachers and leaders from around the country were invited to share their approaches to piloting and scaling blended learning in classrooms and schools, which we summarized in our latest report, " From the frontlines: Takeaways from the 2016 Blended and Personalized Learning Conference," out this week.

Although our many presenters hailed from a variety of geographies and contexts, one refrain echoed loudly throughout the Providence Convention Center: implementing blended and personalized learning is about managing change. Innovators stressed that without effective change management, the best technology tools and the most elegant personalized learning models will come up short. Here are six change management strategies that practitioners stressed as vital to driving new models of learning across traditional systems:
1. Embrace not knowing
One tension in managing change across a classroom or an entire district is making the unknown an opportunity rather than a threat. This framing depends on leaders who are willing to make the unknown safe. As Amanda Murphy, a Highlander Institute Fuse Rhode Island Fellow from Westerly Public Schools, put it, managing change across a system is about "supporting the eager, but non-expert." In part, this requires giving people room to express concerns. "We had faculty volunteers who were interested but didn't have expertise," she said. "They talked about why they were nervous, and this helped people understand that there were many others in the same boat. It set the tone that it's okay not to know. And now they're asking for help."
2. Co-design
All too often, new approaches to instruction are designed in isolation from the teachers who will be implementing those approaches. Participants stressed that limiting the number of seats around a blended and personalized learning design table, in turn, limits the level of teacher buy-in to new classroom models. "Leaders have ideas for teachers, but it doesn't work top-down," said Julia Rafal-Baer of Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit network of state and district education leaders. "Teachers need to be part of the strategic conversation." Leaders noted that the more teachers are involved in the design process upfront, the more likely they will be to persist and adapt when challenges to implementation inevitably arise.
3. Cultivate early adopters
Many initiatives that participants discussed came from a few early innovators trying new approaches within their systems. Early adopters of blended and personalized can also provide a powerful antidote to top-down directives. For example, Donna Vallese, a former principal at Nowell Leadership Academy, a public charter school in Rhode Island, said she never told teachers they had to use certain tools like Google Classroom. "Instead, it was seeded with early adopters," she said. "It spread organically from the ground up, and then everyone was doing it."
4. Open doors
Classrooms can be infamously siloed environments where teachers operate in isolation. Participants noted that for educators pursuing innovative classroom models, breaking down those silos was critical. Tracey Nangle, a teacher in North Smithfield School District in Rhode Island, said that an open-door policy at her middle school helped to shift schoolwide attitudes and culture in favor of collaborative learning. "Teachers are given release time to work as teams and observe classrooms together. It builds respect between colleagues and exposes all of the great work that is happening," Nangle said.
5. Rethink roles
As schools manage change across their instructional models, the traditional roles that adults play may shift. David Richards of Fraser Public Schools described how his districts' move to competency-based learning prompted a rethinking not just of teachers' roles, but also of roles across the schools and ecosystem. "We looked at the positions we had and then abandoned them for the positions we needed," he said. Similarly, Eric Tucker of Brooklyn Lab Charter School in New York recommended using personalized learning models to move teachers away from the one-size-fits-all role they've traditionally played. "Embrace that educators have different skills and strengths," he said.
6. Make time
Practitioners looking to adopt blended and personalized learning practices stressed that the learning curve is steep and time scarce. Yet, some school leaders are finding creative ways to give teachers and themselves more time for year-round professional growth and for adapting to new tools and techniques. For example, Scott Frauenheim shared how Distinctive Schools created an unprecedented chunk of time for peer-to-peer learning during the school day by working with a scheduling expert to update where time gets allocated each day. "We found 105 minutes of planning and collaboration time by minimizing transitions between classes. This time is helping to prevent burnout and helping teachers learn to let go of what they've always done," he said.

Read the full report: " From the frontlines: Takeaways from the 2016 Blended and Personalized Learning Conference."

Take action: Are you a teacher or leader spearheading blended and personalized learning in your school system? Join us for next year's conference in Providence! Click here to learn more.

The article originally appeared on eCampus News.

For more, see:

Julia is the director of education research at the Clayton Christensen Institute. Her work aims to educate policymakers and community leaders on the power of disruptive innovation in the K-12 and higher education spheres. Be sure to check out her book, "Who You Know: Unlocking Innovations That Expand Students' Networks" https://amzn.to/2RIqwOk.

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6 tips from personalized learning innovators leading change - Christensen Institute

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Earlier this year, the Rhode Island-based Highlander Institute and the Clayton Christensen Institute teamed up to bring together a conference on blended and personalized learning in Providence, R.I. The goal of the event was to focus on the practical elements of blended and personalized learning by surfacing the tactics that practitioners were deploying in the [...]

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