# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On Wednesday, June 7th, a new learner-centered magazine made a big splash in the education world. Trailblazers, a national publication created by and for learners amplifies the voices of young learners who have stories and ideas to share about the learner-centered movement. The magazine's co-founders and SparkHouse participants, Anya Smith-Roman, Kaylyn (K.J.) Winters, and Abigail Emerson took advantage of the creative freedom afforded to them at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School and the Mount Vernon Institute for Innovation by launching this project at the end of 2016. The message of Trailblazers is as simple as it is profound-Young Learners, Big Voices, New Paths. By curating guest articles from youth around the country (and world), Trailblazers sheds light on the powerful insights learners are ready to share if the conditions are right. With permission from the Trailblazers team and the article's author, we are providing Pioneering readers with a sneak peak of one of their first issue's articles and invite you to check out the full issue .

For the first time, I was engaged and empowered. I too could understand knowledge and had a voice.

Growing up, I simply assumed I was unintelligent. While kids added numbers written neatly on Ms. Woodrow's notepad, numbers flew through my brain, spinning frantically as I slowly waved my fingers, piecing them together. When Ms. Woodrow gathered us in a circle to share a story, everyone touched each word with index fingers and slowly pronounced letters. Words jumbled in blurs of syllables and trembled against the inside of my throat. I just could not do it; letters and numbers were elusive friends, taunting me anytime I came near their playground.

One day before gathering to read a story, a woman knocked on Ms. Woodrow's door. Mrs. Bear and I walked to a quiet room and towards a grey cubicle. We reviewed the warm sounds of letters and read sentences into the blanketed air. We wrote words onto note cards until the pencil's graphite shoes stumbled over the word "bed." Mrs. Bear leaned over. "Do you know how I remember how to spell the word 'bed'?" Her pencil drew the letters in lowercase bubbles."I think of Cali..." Her pencil drew a figure with long hair, its head resting on the "b," a pillow.

Next, she drew the figure's feet propped on the face of the "d." "...sleeping in her bed..." Her pencil covered the little figure in a blanket; the graphite warmth falling down over the letters. "...dreaming at night." Silver clouds rose from the figure's sleeping head. My eyes glinted at the transformation before me. My lips fell open at the realization of this word. It had an infectious beauty. Fireworks rose in my brain, the colors and fire falling, streaming through my head and catching my neurons into flames. For the first time, I was engaged and empowered. I too could understand knowledge and had a voice.

I thought that to be a genius required insane intelligence. But, there are twelve qualities of Genius: curiosity, playfulness, imagination, creativity, wonder, wisdom, inventiveness, vitality, sensitivity, flexibility, humor, and joy.

That night, I emptied the bag Mrs. Bear gave me on the floor, separating the puzzle of note cards. Arranging the laminated words and piecing together their jagged edges, I formed a sentence. My soul flashed. I had created that sentence. I read it aloud, then mixed it up. I thumbed through each note card, saying the words into the living room's listening air. I closed my eyes and spelled, the letters' sounds linking to create a unit of meaning. I read each story carefully. When I finished, I emptied the bag's contents again and read to my mother, new smiles growing after each word. Like the queen of One Thousand and One Nights, I was Scheherazade, telling word stories every night to myself, my sister, and my mother.

In the elementary school library, I sat among the kindred spirits of the books and their authors, feeling my obsession with words came from the same spark in their souls. A fire lit within me to gather stories.

This spark of curiosity continued into middle school when "Creative Expressions" appeared on my schedule. Opening the door, a man with wild hair and a lab coat splattered in paint gleefully welcomed us in a German accent. Dr. F, a substitute, discussed the class in a frenzy. The next day, our teacher, Mr. Heidt-who looked suspiciously like Dr. F with smoother hair-began class with an invitation to free write based on his own exclamation and a quote by Edward Bulwer-Lytton: "Uh! I got a fevah!; 'It is a glorious fever this desire to know.'" This was my clicking moment. Creative Expressions ignited my spark of curiosity into a passion for learning. Mr. Heidt taught me everyone has the potential for Genius. I thought that to be a genius required insane intelligence. But, there are twelve qualities of Genius: curiosity, playfulness, imagination, creativity, wonder, wisdom, inventiveness, vitality, sensitivity, flexibility, humor, and joy. I learned to value my own qualities and those qualities in others.

It's remarkable that school has been a place that has both made me feel hopelessly unintelligent and lit my soul on fire in wanting to know more. While I gained confidence in myself as a learner (mostly in reading and writing) when still very young in elementary school, for much of my elementary school experience, my feelings of being simply unintelligent persisted. I always felt behind or slow as the class was being taught a lesson by the teacher. Until 7th grade Creative Expressions, I never felt so empowered as a learner. These feelings of empowerment came from the idea that I could learn or do anything as long as I was curious. Mr. Heidt gave us a space filled with color and strange odds and ends that peaked our curiosity and allowed us to chase our passions and create.

If schools can transition from teachers as "holders of knowledge" to "facilitators of learning" and can provide spaces for students to chase their curiosity and passion instead of extinguishing it, students can become geniuses: life-long learners and innovators.

Realizing I was not simply unintelligent and that all can learn and create with passionate curiosity was a moment that changed my life personally. It also highlighted the need for education to shift from teachers being "holders of knowledge" to them being "facilitators of learning." Part of facilitating learning is helping to peak learner curiosity and then providing an environment where students feel comfortable chasing that curiosity, solving problems, and exploring a subject more deeply.

Another clicking moment-one that made me think about the need for education transformation-occurred for me in a tenth grade geometry class. In math, I have always felt under-confident. Although I appreciated math as a subject that could be fascinating, I was never curious enough or truly believed that I could understand it. I simply memorized steps to complete the seemingly irrelevant problems. This changed during my sophomore year in high school. My geometry teacher showed the class Powerpoints about what fascinated and confused her about geometry. She gave us space to wonder, and we were given time to work through problems and proofs on our own and in groups. For the first time, I had a math teacher speak with me-a student in an average/lower level math course-about math as a critical thinker and curious learner. Although I understand that geometry might afford itself to this type of learning because it is so visual and self-reflective (as it often involves proofs), I wonder how my experience with math in school would have been different if my math teachers had always shared with us what excited and confused them in math and had given us space to wonder. How would I have grown as a learner? These experiences have shown me that I (and everyone) can learn and do anything with their own curiosity. I just need to be in an environment that doesn't, as educator George Couros has said, extinguish it.

Albert Einstein once said, "I have no special talents; I am only passionately curious."

There is a poster of Albert Einstein in the library at my high school that says: "In school, he was no Einstein." Einstein wasn't a genius because of his schooling or any special talents. He was a genius because he chased his passionate curiosity.

If schools can transition from teachers as "holders of knowledge" to "facilitators of learning" and can provide spaces for students to chase their curiosity and passion instead of extinguishing it, students can become geniuses: life-long learners and innovators.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On Wednesday, June 7th, a new learner-centered magazine made a big splash in the education world. Trailblazers, a national publication created by and for learners amplifies the voices of young learners who have stories and ideas to share about the learner-centered movement. The magazine's co-founders and SparkHouse participants, Anya Smith-Roman, Kaylyn (K.J.)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
[SHARED] Student Agency: Design for Choice 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
My kids participate in an amazing hands-on learning experience every summer. It's called home. It's where they write stories, paint pictures, go on expeditions, visit parks, read books, and build things with duct tape and cardboard.

For the entire summer, they own the learning process. There are no tests, no benchmarks, no curriculum maps, and no bell schedules. It is an educational anarchy, where they tear down the walls between ideas and subject areas as they make and tinker and explore and curate the learning on their own terms.

Don't get me wrong. It's not perfect. Just yesterday they were at each other's throats over "creative differences." They have had moments where they complained about boredom, only to discover, minutes later, that boredom actually leads to creative breakthroughs. They have had days where they walked away from a project in frustration and binge-watched Netflix.

And yet . . .

They are developing into life-long learners. They already view themselves as geeks who can figure out anything over time. They pursue creative work with passion. Yes, that passion sometimes leads to arguments. Our home vacillates between looking like Phineas and Ferb and VH1 Behind the Music. But most of the time, it leads to a state of flow, where they are lost in their work. Most of the time, it looks more like Phineas and Ferb.

In a little over a month, they will return to school with the bell schedule and the benchmark tests and the prep packets. While I realize that schools cannot operate under the educational anarchy of summer, I can't help but wonder what it would look like to empower students with more choice and agency in their learning.

Ten Ways to Incorporate Student Choice

Student choice is more than simply choosing a topic. It is about empowering students through the entire learning process. This is especially true in classrooms that embrace creativity, design thinking, and project-based learning. Here are a few of the ways we can incorporate student choice:

1. Let students choose the topic. When I first had students blog, I would post a writing prompt on the projector. However, when I had students explore real blogs, they pointed out that outside of school, bloggers write about topics they care about. So, I told them to choose a topic or theme. They could create foodie blogs, sports blogs, gamer blogs, etc.

2. Let students ask the questions. I believe students should question answers as often as they answer questions. This is why inquiry is such a critical component of design thinking. Students need to move from awareness to curiosity in a way that will fuel their creative thinking.

3. Let students decide the content. I love sustained silent reading. I get it. It's old school. It won't make the list of trendy new maker space learning. However, it works. A few years ago, I taught 8th grade self-contained. The school librarian and the upper grade teachers had cultivated this love of silent reading. So, when we went to the library, it was like going to a candy store.

4. Let students pick the materials and resources. In design thinking, students work through an ideation phase and then begin building a prototype. I love the idea that they guide not only the concept of what they will create but they also figure out what materials they will use in order to build their prototype. This goes beyond physical products. In digital content, they can choose what applications they will use and what type of media they will work with. When designing an event or a service project, they can determine the venue, the materials, and the resources.

5. Let students choose the strategies. When I think of the most tedious things kids experience in school, there is a high likelihood that they don't get a chance to choose the strategies. Take close reading. The rigid approach says, "use these symbols and follow this recipe." Students focus on doing things the "right way" and they fail to make sense out of the actual text.

6. Let students choose the scaffolding. I remember requiring students to use a set of scaffolding for the research process. A handful of students loved it because they needed it. The rest of the students viewed the scaffolding like a cage. I should have treated the scaffolding as an optional resource that they could access when they found it necessary.

7. Let students choose the format. When possible, allow students to choose the format for their creative work. It might be a video, a podcast, or a blog post.

8. Let students choose the audience. When students define the audience, they are able to clarify what they are doing and how they are going to do it. This honors student agency.

9. Let students choose the groups. This is the most controversial. People will often point out that in the real world, you don't always get to choose your groups. I get that. But when you work on a cool, voluntary collaboration, you often get to choose your groups. In my experience, our most functional groups were the ones where students worked with their friends. At first, they were too social. But then the challenge and the excitement of the tasks kicked in and they were able to tap into their mutual trust and go deeper in their work. While this might not be necessary for every project, it is something teachers can try out.

10. Let students manage the projects. This was the hardest thing for me to let go of. However, I believe that project management is a powerful, transferrable skill. Students need to learn the art of project management. Over time, I have learned to allow students to own the project management and to build their own systems to monitor their progress.

Should students choose everything?

For all the talk of the "guide on the side," the truth is that guides are still guides. Even in a student-centered classroom, the teacher is still the expert. There are times when limiting choices actually increases creative thinking. Students work within the constraints to find solutions that push divergent thinking. Moreover, there are times when students don't have as much prior knowledge in an area and you, as the teacher, will expose them to new ideas, approaches, and content that they might have otherwise ignored.

However, when we incorporate choice, students own the learning process. We honor their agency and empower them to become the life-long learners we want them to be. At some point, they will leave the classroom and they won't have a guide right there by their side. They will have to take charge and make decisions about their own learning. This is why student choice is so critical.

Burning Questions

When I embraced the idea of student choice, I had a ton of questions:

What about the standards? What about the curriculum map? What about the test?

Do I have permission to do this? What will my principal think?

What are the dangers in student choice? What about the whole idea of the "paradox of choice?"

If I embrace student choice, won't things get crazy? How do I manage all of this chaos?

How do I assess the learning if students are choosing to do such different things?

Should I try something like a Genius Hour?

Over a decade later, I am still thinking through those ideas. I don't pretend to have all the answers. However, I plan to share what I've learned along the way in a series on student choice.

Empower Your Students with Voice and Choice

Want to get started with student ownership? Check out this page with free articles, videos, and resources. Also, check out the Empower Blueprint and Toolkit below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ten Ways to Leverage Student Choice in Your Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My kids participate in an amazing hands-on learning experience every summer. It's called home. It's where they write stories, paint pictures, go on expeditions, visit parks, read books, and build things with duct tape and cardboard. For the entire summer, they own the learning process.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to my interview with Natalie McCutchen (transcript)

With few exceptions, I would bet that most teachers feel they could be doing a better job of differentiating instruction. It's not that we don't want to do it-we know our students learn at different rates, that some need more help and others could be moving much more quickly than we let them. The problem for many of us is that we just can't figure out how to manage it. How do you run a classroom where each student is working on a different thing at a different speed?

The first time I ever saw a truly self-paced learning environment was on my visit to a Montessori Elementary School two years ago. And although I was completely enchanted by the student-centered environment there, the class size was small. I wondered whether that method could really be scaled up to class sizes at a typical public school.

So I was excited when, at a recent TeachMeet, I saw that there would be a session on self-paced learning. At the session, Franklin, KY, middle school math teacher Natalie McCutchen showed us how she has converted her pre-algebra class to a completely self-paced system, where students work on different skills at their own pace, and how she's gradually introducing self-paced learning in her other math classes as well. I found her system to be astonishingly simple, and I thought a lot of other teachers might like to try it for themselves, so I interviewed her for my latest podcast episode (see player below) and asked if I could share her methods here.

Here's a quick snapshot of how she does it: For each chapter in their math textbook, students take a pre-test to determine which skills they have already mastered and which ones they still need to learn. For the skills they still need to master, they work independently on lessons (either reading them in the textbook or watching them on videos) and do practice problems until they feel they've got the skill down. This is the true self-paced part: Students decide how many lessons they need. They decide how much practice to give themselves. "Maybe there are five videos that you could watch today," Natalie explains to her students. "You watch as many as you need. If you watch two videos and you understand it, then you move on to the practice. If you need all five, use all five." Rather than forcing students to follow the same path in lockstep with one another, practicing page after page of skills they already have down, this system gives them a chance to build the metacognitive muscle they'll need to become lifelong learners.

When a student feels he is ready, he takes a mini-assessment for a single learning target, usually made up of just a few questions. If he does well on that small assessment, he can move on to another skill. Once he has mastered all the skills in the chapter, he takes a whole-chapter assessment-this is the same test he was given as the pre-assessment. If he does well on that, he's ready to progress to the next chapter.

How do students know which lessons and practices to work on, and when?
Natalie creates a Chapter Guide for each chapter. It includes each learning target, the pre-test question or questions that align with that target, the lessons students should watch or read to learn about that target, the practice problems that match up with that target, and the assessment question or questions for that target.

Look at the example below. If this student missed question 2 on the pre-test, she should do Lesson 2.4 on pages 102-104 and may need to do Skills Practice 2.4 on pages 403-406 in preparation for the assessment for that learning target, which is item 2a on page 38. She might only need to read through the lesson and do one or two practice problems in order to do well on the assessment, or she might choose to do them all. Likewise, if she got question 6 correct on the pre-test, she doesn't need to do the lesson, the practice, or the assessment for that learning target at all-she'd just mark that as mastered on the chart.

Do students get the answer keys?
Students have access to the answers for all of the practice questions, so Natalie does not need to check these; it's up to the student to do the practice problems, then self-check them to see if they're getting the skill down. There's no real incentive to cheat here, because if a student doesn't teach herself the skill, it will show up in the mini-assessment for that target: The mini-assessment IS scored by the teacher, and students are not given an answer key for it.

hey keep the chapter guide in a composition notebook. We glue all their items in there. So they have that with them on their desk every day, and I'm able to go by and say Some kids may turn in two assessments per class period, depending on how hard they worked. Some kids may turn in one. Some kids, maybe they didn't get to an assessment that day." And because Natalie encourages collaboration between students, the room is What does class time look like?
"It's very much organized chaos," Natalie says. "T Okay, what have you done? Where are you today? And at the end of class, I can say, busy: "I really prefer them to work together on the lesson, especially with my pre-algebra students, because they are such good math thinkers, they understand and can talk math, I want them to work together. You know, two or three in a group seeing if you can figure it out on your own using the video." How much did you get done?" Because students are all working independently, the amount of work produced on any given day can vary. "

ometimes they have to come back to the pack," she explains. "I'll say What if some kids can't handle all that independence? What if they just fool around the whole time?
Natalie's solution to this problem was what really impressed me about her system: Not all students get to do self-paced; some have to work with her in a more traditional teacher-led setup. Self-paced learning is a privilege reserved only for kids who take it seriously and work hard. If you mess that up, you can lose the privilege, returning to a group that's working directly with the teacher. "S You know what, you really didn't work that hard yesterday. I'm not even sure what you got done, I don't see anything on here. Just come back with us today. " For some students, this is a step backward, but they get other chances to move ahead later. "They like being ahead. You know, they think it's kinda cool. Sometimes I'll let them go out in the hallway, sit at a little table. They like that, but I stress to them you still have to work."

Natalie McCutchen developed her system through some trial and error, and she's constantly refining it, so none of this is set in stone. But if you'd like to try and replicate her approach to self-paced learning, here are the steps to take:

Step 1: Select a Unit of Content
This can be a chapter in a textbook or a batch of skills or content you would typically teach as a unit over a couple of weeks. This unit should have clearly defined learning targets, which are likely dictated by whatever standards your school follows. If you've been teaching for a while, you probably already have this step taken care of. In Natalie's class, each chapter in her math textbook represents one unit.

Step 2: Create the Assessment
Decide what students should be able to do by the end of the unit and create an assessment that measures it. The simplest type is a test with clearly identified right and wrong answers, where each item (or small group of items) in this assessment is aligned with one learning target. For skills that require more teacher interpretation to measure, like writing, the assessment could be a writing task, such as an extended response question with a prompt and a rubric. Each skill listed in the rubric would align with a specific learning target.

Step 3: Create the Chapter Guide
Following the model shown above, set up a guide that shows which assessment question aligns with each learning target, then lists book or video lessons students can follow to learn each skill, exercises that will give students independent practice with the skill, and a brief assessment students can take to test their mastery.

Step 4: Give the Pre-Test
Use the assessment you created in Step 2 to pre-test students on the skills for this unit. Use the results to identify which learning targets each student has already mastered, and which ones they still need to learn. [Note: Natalie's school uses standards-based grading, but that's not a strict requirement for this system. You could still record mastery of learning targets in the standards-based style and convert those measurements to traditional grades. To learn how, see Matt Townsley's video on converting standards-based indicators to letter grades.]

Step 5: Help Students Identify Standards to Master
Giving each student a Chapter Guide, have them mark which standards they have already mastered-based on pre-test results-and which ones they still need to learn.

Step 6: Provide Time, Materials, and Supervision for Self-Paced Learning
From this point on, students will begin the process of moving through the lessons on their own. Your job is to make sure they have the materials they need to do the work: If you are sending students to videos, make sure they have devices to access them (and earbuds to keep the audio to themselves). Make sure students know where to look for answer keys, and where they can access the mini-assessment when they are ready to take it. Check in with students regularly to make sure they are making good use of their time.

Step 7: Iterate
Keep in mind that this system probably won't work perfectly the first time you try it. You may want to try it just once with a short unit, rather than attempt to convert your whole year to self-paced learning. You might want to offer it only to students who have the academic skills and maturity to handle it. You may need to tweak it, then tweak it some more. But speaking for the kids who would love a chance to see just how fast they can learn and how far they can go, I'd say it's worth a serious try. ♦
Other Resources:

There's more where this came from.
Join my mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration - in quick, bite-sized packages - all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. To thank you, I'll send you a free copy of my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half. I look forward to getting to know you better!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Self-Paced Learning: How One Teacher Does It

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Most teachers feel they could be doing a better job of differentiating instruction, but many can't figure out how to manage it. How to run a classroom where each student is working on a different thing, at a different speed? See how one teacher does it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
(Name) Modules 5 and 6 Start Up Development Calendar and Catalyst Conference Preparation (Green)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Project-Based Learning (PBL)

Two teachers who guided a project-based learning unit that included travel share how to replicate the deep engagement they saw without going anywhere.

Adrianna Smyth / Edutopia

A student conducts an interview as part of the authors' immersive project-based learning unit.

Our independent school recently redesigned the schedule to allow for two 3-week-long immersive courses each academic year. We anticipated that devoting that time to a single interdisciplinary, project-based course could be transformative for our students, but we didn't imagine the deep impact it would have on us as educators.

We hope to explain how rich experiential learning like the project we describe here can be implemented in other schools. Several key elements stand out: an authentic, multidisciplinary essential question; scaffolds to maximize student-directed learning and community-building; and access to outside experts and engaged citizens who were interested in exploring questions with high school students.

Our course, "Water in the American West: History, Policy, and Science," explores the essential question "Whose water is it?" During this course, we traveled with our students to the eastern Sierra Nevada of California, an arid environment with extremely limited water availability and a long and storied history of water conflicts. Students explored the aquatic ecosystems of the area to understand how organisms rely on water, and did fieldwork including gathering of specimens, exploring sites, investigating archival primary sources, and discussing issues with local residents, including scientists, environmental activists, policy makers, indigenous tribal members, and ranchers.

We then asked our students to approach the essential question from the perspective of one of these stakeholders and conduct scholarly research as well as an additional interview with a member of that stakeholder group.

Transferring What We Learned to Other Schools

As we contemplate ways to replicate the transformative power of this immersive course in our typical semester courses, we have realized that the three points below are applicable in any school or classroom looking to foster the deep learning we saw in our students. The travel experiences our students had were powerful, but are not required to motivate students to take ownership of their learning.

1. The importance of the essential question: A simple but complex essential question is concrete and relates to students' lives while inviting alternative answers from multiple perspectives. In our case, access to water is fundamental to life, and the question of who has the right to use it brings up strong initial responses in most students.

This creates immediate interest and buy-in, and sets up a learning environment in which students really want to work to discern how to fairly allocate this resource. This is clearly replicable within any classroom.

2. Scaffolding for student-centered learning: Knowing that we wanted students to grapple with the essential question throughout the course, we began by creating a culminating assessment that would compel them to do so. Students would exhibit their learning about one of the stakeholder groups' response to the essential question by collaborating in small groups to create a research paper and an informative poster, which they would present to the school community.

After crafting project requirements that spelled out our expectations for research, drafting, and the final products, we worked backward to build a series of activities and materials that would provide students a foundation and then progressively give them more control over their learning.

Students moved from activities and sources that were small in scope to fieldwork involving gathering and testing scientific data, exploring local primary sources in a regional museum, and touring key locations with local activists and experts. Eventually, students moved on to conducting interviews with stakeholders and drafting the research paper.

These experiences were the most time-consuming to arrange and the ones over which we had the least control as teachers since they were truly experiential and subject to many variables, not least of which was the spontaneous exchange of ideas between local residents and our students. Numerous times a speaker or a student made a comment or asked a question that tied multiple thematic threads together at just the right moment. Those moments would not have happened without the essential question and the scaffolding.

The final stage of the course followed a workshop model in which we stepped into the background, serving as coaches while students organized themselves, identified additional resources and interviews they wanted to conduct, and completed their projects.

3. Involvement with the community: Perhaps the most important factor in the success of this course was the degree to which students had opportunities to work directly with passionate members of their stakeholder groups. By researching and networking months in advance, we were able to recruit deeply knowledgeable scientists, environmental activists, and local residents. Students were able to frame their research and conclusions based on what they learned in conversation with actual stakeholders, and in turn authentically represented these groups.

In several cases, we saw students' preconceptions shattered as they developed empathy with the people they interviewed. This was how the course went from "interesting" to "transformational." The complexity of the issues around our essential question became very real as students formed relationships with stakeholders and gained compassion for a community wrestling with a complex issue. Though the community was not directly the students', the question has direct relevance throughout the arid region our students inhabit.

This deep engagement with a community need not involve long trips: Teachers can set up an essential question based on the local community, or they can bring students into contact with more distant groups via video meetings.

These three elements-the heart of successful experiential and project-based learning-made it possible to put the reins of learning solidly in the hands of the learners in a way that excited, motivated, and propelled them forward.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Set Up Rich Experiential Learning Units

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Project-Based Learning (PBL) Two teachers who guided a project-based learning unit that included travel share how to replicate the deep engagement they saw without going anywhere. Adrianna Smyth / Edutopia A student conducts an interview as part of the authors' immersive project-based learning unit.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sponsored by Pear Deck and Participate

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

If you would have asked me a decade ago if I thought Project Based Learning would ever expand beyond a small pocket of innovative schools I would have said "I doubt it"; I could never have imagined that it would be such a widely-used buzzword in 2020. To my pleasant surprise it has expanded to mainstream vernacular and is continuing to sweep across schools in our country.

And yet, despite all the buzz surrounding it, there still is a pretty wide range of understanding as to what high quality PBL is, and more importantly, how to plan for and facilitate it. To many, PBL is met with uncertainty and apprehension; while terms used to describe PBL, like organized chaos, productive noise, and student-driven sound appealing to some, for the majority it creates a lot of unnecessary ambiguity.

To most teachers' surprise, I like to think about PBL as a structure, almost a formula, that can both uphold academic rigor and also engage students. To show you what that structure looks like in action, I'll walk you through how I plan a PBL lesson step by step.

Project-Based Learning: A Working Definition

Before we jump into how to approach planning a project, it's important that we are operating from the same definition of PBL, because there are many! After years of working in the leading organizations of the PBL movement I came to arrive on the following as my non-negotiables for a project to reflect high quality PBL:

1. It is grounded in standards.

2. It incorporates best practices of assessment for learning.

3. It's authentic to the given community.

4. It explicitly scaffolds and assesses 21st century skills.

So what does it look like to put these non-negotiables into practice and plan a project? I will walk you through the process I have come to embrace and share with teachers who cross my path, either through our time together in the trenches during project coaching, or when they pick up my book, Keep it Real with PBL (for elementary and secondary). The specific project I highlight here, Silent Voices, is a collaborative effort between myself and the 5th grade team at Lake Elementary in Vista, CA.

The "Silent Voices" Project

The 5th grade team at Lake Elementary is comprised of four teachers. The team wanted to tackle a content area they knew they needed to go "deeper" with to better engage their students: The American Revolution. We knew this topic was difficult to make interesting for students, but we believed that through PBL we could successfully provide them with a rigorous, authentic and meaningful learning experience.

Step 1: Brainstorm Authentic Project Ideas

I often hear from teachers that getting started with a project idea is the hardest part, but for me it's the most exciting part! I encourage teachers to identify a Driving Standard (these typically come from science or social studies because they both provide a nice context, which math or ELA can easily support). From there, think about a current issue that brings the standards to life.

Knowing they wanted to teach about the American Revolution, the teachers pulled the California social studies standards they were responsible for covering; specifically, 5.5: "Students explain the causes of the American Revolution" and 5.6: "Students understand the course and consequences of the American Revolution."

We sat around a whiteboard and threw up a bunch of ideas that could possibly make students interested in an event from over 200 years ago. We landed on the concept of connecting hidden voices (an issue that would feel relevant to them as 10 year olds) and empathy-building (a character trait from school also familiar to them) to the historic event. We also landed on supporting standards of Common Core ELA for narrative writing, compare and contrast, and research; but more on that later!

Step 2: Plan with the End in Mind

My approach to project planning is very much rooted in Understanding by Design (UBD), so once I have identified the standards and an authentic issue, I then jump to the final product. There are so many ways students can show what they have learned-from public service announcements, to podcasts or documentaries, to art installations and simulations or performances. Whatever is decided upon, all the project planning from this point on is in service of preparing students to ultimately produce that final product.

As we continued planning this project, the teachers at Lake realized that there was SO much they could do with this concept of elevating silenced voices and building empathy awareness, that we actually had to scale back our final product ideas! Together we landed on having students create two final products:

1) 2-voice poetry, which is a style of narrative poetry that showcases the similarities and differences between two unique perspectives, or voices. Students would write and create an audio recording of the reading of their written poetry to share via listening stations at Open House Exhibition. This final product would showcase important ELA skills such as speaking and listening standards, the use of technology and writing production, and narrative writing techniques.

2) Student art: Students would represent their understanding of a "hidden voice" or silenced perspective in a contemporary issue using symbolism and a specific art style (photography, digital art, painting, or pop art). Students would also write a detailed artist statement for submission of their work to the San Diego County Fair. In this artist statement students would explain the historical and contemporary inspiration for their work, style choices, and influences; thus bringing together the social studies standards and ELA research standards (and possibly even art standards if the art teacher chose to collaborate!), using topics of student interest as the context of the product.

Step 3: Benchmark Your Project

This is arguably the most important step because it ensures that best practices of scaffolding and formative assessment are embedded in the project. Benchmarking is simply taking your end products and breaking them down into manageable phases, or milestones. Within each of these benchmarks the teacher identifies the content and skills necessary to complete the given phase of the project. Tied to each benchmark is a concrete deliverable that students turn in to be formatively assessed. While daily checks for understanding are still happening and smaller assignments may be collected for credit, project benchmark deliverables are formatively assessed using a project rubric (more on that next!) and recorded in the grade book.

For the Silent Voices project, we identified the following benchmarks and deliverables:

In Benchmark #1 students learned about the "big picture" historical context of the American Revolution-the causes of the revolution and the early events and individuals-through textbook readings, PowerPoint lectures, videos and other short readings. The focus of these individuals and events was from a Eurocentric perspective-typical of what we would find in most textbooks. Students also began novels that represented voices of those we don't typically hear in our textbooks: enslaved people, children, women, etc. To show that students had mastered the necessary content from this benchmark they completed a traditional history quiz. Sometimes it's okay to include traditional assessment methods as benchmark deliverables-you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater in PBL, and in these circumstances a rubric isn't necessary for grading since the feedback and the depth of learning are limited.

Benchmark #2 focused on the experiences of the "silent voices" in the American Revolution. Teachers provided model texts through short stories of Native Americans, white women, enslaved people, lower class, Chinese, religious groups, and children. Students continued reading their literature circle novels during ELA and also learned about narrative writing techniques through writers workshop methods. The benchmark deliverable for this second section of the project was a piece of writing titled "A Day in the Life of..." which represented what daily life was like for a person from one of the groups of the "silent voices." This deliverable showcased their narrative writing skills, textual analysis skills, and content mastery for social studies. Because the textbooks don't provide the perspective of "the silent voices" students truly had to synthesize, analyze and apply what they were learning in ELA and social studies to be able to complete this benchmark-the higher order thinking that this project requires is one of the many reasons I love it!

Benchmark #3 required students to continue analyzing what they were learning on this topic by collaborating with a peer to find the differences and commonalities across two unique "silent voices." Students were guided through the process by discussion protocols, visible thinking routines, completing a venn diagram, and a workshop on 2 voice poetry. Ultimately they wrote and recorded the audio for this benchmark's deliverable, a 2 voice poem to show two different perspectives from the American Revolution. This benchmark used narrative writing techniques from the second benchmark as well.

Benchmark #4 moved students from the historical time period of the American Revolution to the current day. Throughout this benchmark students were challenged to look for the perspective of the "silent voices"-whose story are we not hearing? Students were exposed to some contemporary issues though various forms of media, conducted a survey of other students to gauge problems within their student population, engaged in more discussion protocols and ultimately landed on a topic for their own research based on their interest (Special Interest Groups-SIG). After conducting this research students created a detailed graphic organizer to show what they had collected and organized; some students chose to complete an infographic as a challenge option.

Benchmark #5: In the final benchmark students applied everything they had learned about searching for the story of "silent voices" through historical and contemporary events, and used art as the vehicle for showcasing their knowledge and skills. Each of the four teachers identified a style of art they were passionate about-photography, digital art, painting and pop art. Each teacher created a series of workshops about their art style, including well-known artists, artistic composition, and basics of color and design. Students worked with the teacher that matched their interest, analyzed models from their given style, and ultimately learned how to create a piece of work that showed the silent voices in a given current issue from their research. Students went through the critique process of drafting and also completed an artist statement with their final product-all of which was curated and exhibited for the community.

Step 4: Build Your Project Rubrics

In keeping with the spirit of UBD, I also create assessment tools with the end in mind, which produces a pretty large project rubric (but never fear, we never use ALL of it at once-more on that in step 6!).

To build this rubric I encourage teachers to take the following steps:

1. Finalize the content standards you plan to assess; Note: each content standard gets its own row on the rubric. Then drop each content standard into the "proficient" column of your rubric. In the case of the Silent Voices project we identified social studies standards on the American Revolution and Common Core ELA standards for narrative writing, compare and contrast, and research.

2. Pull up Blooms Taxonomy verbs and bold the verbs in the language of the standards in a given domain. From there, reference Blooms verbs to help you write the language of one level up (advanced) and one level down (developing/emerging). For example:

Identify which 21st century skills you want to scaffold and assess in the project. I like to use these New Tech Network rubrics and simply copy and paste the rows in their entirety into my project rubric. For this project we identified Collaboration: Commitment to Shared Success, and Agency-Growth Mindset.

To see what the entire project rubric looked like for the Silent Voices project, click HERE.

Step 5: Plan for Formative Assessment

Once the project rubric is completed then you can begin to think about which rows will be used with which benchmarks. Each benchmark will get its own separate, smaller rubric that will only have a few standards on it. I encourage teachers to try to map it out so that each row of the larger project rubric is used twice throughout the project. The purpose of this is so that students can reflect, receive feedback and have the opportunity to grow in each area at multiple points throughout the project; this is truly assessment for learning, rather than assessment of learning. What this also means is that each benchmark will likely only be assessed using 2-3 rows from your (very large!) rubric.

You can see which rows of the rubric were used for which benchmarks in the "Silent voices" project by looking at the far left column on the project rubric (link in previous section). These benchmark numbers dictate what the smaller rubrics will look like for grading each deliverable (since, remember from my note in step 4, we will never use this entire rubric at once!). So for example, benchmark #3's rubric would include the following rows only: collaboration, viewpoints and narrative writing.

Step 6: Create Student-facing Rubrics

Most teachers from most grades will tell you that the language of standards are not student-friendly, and I agree! That's why I encourage teachers to take their teacher rubric and convert it into a student rubric. To do this, simply take each row of your teacher rubric, look at the proficient box, and write the standard as success criteria for students, or "I can" statements. This breaks down teacher-facing language into vocabulary that students can understand, which helps them to know what is expected of them while also helping them reflect on their learning. Using the teacher rubric row from the above example, you can see what a row for students would look like below:

You can see a blank and completed student template in my book Keep it Real with PBL. (Teaser: it even includes emojis that elementary students love!)

Step 7: Plan Daily Lessons Using a Project Calendar

Now is when 'the rubber hits the road' and it's time to think about what daily learning will look like within your project. I like to simply use a Google Doc and create a table that mirrors that of a 30-day calendar, that way you can hyperlink all the daily lesson plans and resources so that it's in one place. Most of what is linked in these Google Docs are simply workshop resources and lesson plans that teachers traditionally use to cover the content that appears in the project; or helpful new websites and activities to cover contemporary topics.

Again-backwards planning-I zoom out and look at the big picture before zooming in to look at the specific days. I first map out approximately how long each benchmark will take me (typically 1-2 weeks) and then I go into each day and think about specific lessons within each benchmark. I then will drill down to think about differentiation within each day. Check out the companion site to Keep it Real with PBL for sample calendars, resources on differentiation and project management.

After spending a great deal of time working in PBL organizations, and writing my dissertation on PBL as a pedagogy in practice, I landed on this flow for project planning because I think it simplified a process that can often become larger than life for teachers. It's my hope that by embedding standards, best practices of UBD and formative assessment that teachers will begin to see how PBL can be a helpful framework for them to teach what they need to cover, without it feeling like one more thing to do!

You can learn more from Jenny at her website, CraftED Curriculum. This entire lesson is detailed in her book, Keep it Real with PBL: Elementary.

And if you're a secondary teacher, check out her book, Keep it Real with PBL: Secondary.

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to Create a Project Based Learning Lesson

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There's still a wide range of understanding of what high quality PBL is and how to plan for it. Here's a step-by-step guide.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Listen to my interview with Tracy Enos or read the transcript here.

In our never-ending quest to find better ways to differentiate and personalize instruction for students, we have plenty of options. I covered a lot of the basics in my Differentiation Starter Kit. Then last year we learned how math teacher Natalie McCutchen manages a self-paced classroom. And for ESL students, there are the Can-Do Descriptors.

Now, Rhode Island teacher Tracy Enos shares her system for customizing instruction to meet the needs of every student. She calls it a playlist, an individualized digital assignment chart that students work through at their own pace.

First, consider what we usually do: When planning a typical unit of instruction, teachers map out a series of lessons to deliver, assignments for students to complete, and some kind of final assessment at the end. They might share this plan with students, but then the execution is done by the teacher: The teacher delivers the lessons, tells students when to do the assignments, and guides students toward the final assessment.

With playlists, the responsibility for executing the learning plan shifts: Students are given the unit plan, including access to all the lessons (in text or video form), ahead of time. With the learning plan in hand, students work through the lessons and assignments at their own pace. And because each student has her own digital copy of the playlist (delivered through a system like Google Classroom), the teacher can customize the list to meet each student's needs.

"A playlist is basically like a road map," Enos explains. "I started using them in my classroom when I looked at my room full of 26 students and I saw the variety in their abilities. I knew I needed something different so that I could meet the needs of each one of those kids. Instead of just saying, 'OK, everybody, we're going to work on this lesson today,' I needed to individualize it so that different kids are working on things that they needed."

The term playlist, by the way, was coined by one of Enos' colleagues, math teacher Jason Appel.

Here are screenshots of three sample playlists from Enos's class. If you click on each one, you'll be taken to the full version to view in Google Docs. Although these examples come from a language arts class, Enos feels strongly that the playlist concept could be used in any content area.

Argument Writing Playlist

The first playlist is for a unit on argument writing. What you see here is just the first few tasks; there are 19 on the full playlist.

In the first column, Enos simply names the task. The second column provides specific instructions for the task. The third column is set up for students to record any notes they have about the task, and the fourth is where students record the date they completed the task.

Although much of the playlist will be exactly the same for each student, especially for the first few tasks, individual tasks can be customized to meet individual needs. Because the playlist is stored in digital form, the teacher can go into each student's playlist at any time and make adjustments as needed.

In addition to adjusting certain tasks, Enos also builds space in each playlist for purely individualized tasks. If we look further down her playlist, we see that tasks #14 and #15 have been left open for individualized focus revision activities, to be determined after the student has written her draft:

Enos does place occasional hard deadlines into her playlists; item 13 above has a date assigned to it. Although students are allowed to complete the work before the deadline, having this task pinned to a specific date helps prevent students from getting too far off track from each other.

Parts of Speech Playlist

This next one is from a unit designed to review the parts of speech. Notice that some of the tasks are quite simple and quick: Students just need to log on to a certain platform, create an account, or join an online group. This makes the playlist a practical tool as well as a good instructional vehicle: One place to keep learning tasks AND the kinds of housekeeping items that accompany most units. And breaking units into smaller tasks gives students a feeling of accomplishment as they move through each item.

To see the full version of this playlist, click the image below:

Again, the "Directions" column allows for maximum flexibility. The teacher can add tech tips, reminders, or any other information that might help student complete the task more smoothly. And if this is done in digital form, the teacher can easily add tips, links, or other comments at any time, making the playlist a living document.

Book Club Playlist

The final example is a playlist created for a unit on dystopian fiction, in which students participated in book clubs.

Notice that the playlist also includes checkpoints, where students must touch base with their teacher before moving on. These can be built in at any point for any reason, such as making sure students have completed key housekeeping tasks (like in the example above) or having the teacher review a draft for quality.

Many of the tasks in the playlist will ultimately result in the student submitting work through Google Classroom, or they might require a paper submission in a class that hasn't gone quite so digital. In fact, the whole system could be done on paper-one look at how student learning is managed in a Montessori classroom and you'll see how that can work. What's key is that students work through the list on their own, which frees the teacher up to spend more time working one-on-one with students.

If students are truly working at their own pace, wouldn't that mean some are way ahead, even finished with a unit, while others drag way behind? Setting a few hard deadlines (as shown in the argument writing playlist) can help keep the pacing from spiraling too far out of whack, but if our goal is true individualization, then we shouldn't want everyone to be too closely aligned.

This can be managed on a day-to-day basis. Students who are taking longer to master key tasks will likely get more one-on-one assistance from the teacher or be placed in groups to help them. Those who finish the required material quickly can be given enrichment tasks that take the learning to more advanced levels.

Homework also takes on a different role in a class that uses playlists: Because students work through the playlists on their own, they decide whether they get homework or not. If a student is moving through a playlist quickly, they may not have a need to spend extra time on the work at home. Conversely, if a student finds he needs extra help in class, he may decide to catch up on a few videos at home.

For a more in-depth exploration of playlists, listen to my podcast interview with Tracy Enos using the player above or by listening on iTunes or Stitcher (for Android). If you have questions, ask them in the comments below and I'll have Tracy come over and answer them. And if you have used a system that's similar to playlists, please share your experiences in the comments so we can all learn together.♦

There's a lot more where this came from.
Join the Cult of Pedagogy mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration-in quick, bite-sized packages-all geared toward making your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to my members-only library of free downloadable resources, including my e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, which has helped thousands of teachers spend less time grading. If you are already a subscriber and want this resource, just check your most recent email for a link to the Members-Only Library-it's in there!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Using Playlists to Differentiate Instruction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Want better differentiation? Learn how to use this simple method for providing students with customized plans for working through a unit of study.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is the first post of a two-part series on scheduling and grading during COVID-19. You can read the second part, on grading policies, here. For all of GOA's resources and offerings related to learning online at this challenging time, please visit our COVID-19 landing page.

In early April 2020, GOA conducted a survey of independent and international schools, hoping to gather data about how they were approaching schedule and grading policy while learning online during the COVID-19 crisis. The goal was to gather and share information in an organized way during a time of rapid, challenging change. In our many conversations with educators and school leaders, schedule and grading were two topics where they were eager to learn from each other.

The Survey by the Numbers

GOA analyzed the responses of 89 independent and international schools, 34 of which are members of our consortium. Of the 89 respondents, 63 are based in the United States. Sixty-three schools have an elementary school division, 73 have a middle school, and 77 have a high school. Twelve of the respondents serve only elementary and/or middle school students. ( List of respondents). Dates of an official move online ranged from January 27 to April 6, 2020, with the majority of respondents moving online sometime in March.

The survey asked a series of questions about how schools designed schedules and grading policies for a move online. The survey included a request for samples of and rationales for schedules and grading policies. This post focuses on scheduling.

What the Data Showed

The overall data shows that the vast majority of schools are mixing synchronous (happening in real time) and asynchronous (happening at different times) learning. Of the 89 respondents, 26 schools (29%) describe their schedules as evenly split between synchronous and asynchronous learning. Forty-two schools (47%) describe their schedules as primarily asynchronous. Only 21% of respondents described their schedules as primarily or solely synchronous. When asked about the rationale for their schedules, schools shared responses that fell into three major categories:

1. Flexibility: Learning and working remotely looks different from student to student, family to family, and educator to educator. Flexibility in schedule is important.

2. Wellness: Worry about screen time, stress, and pace while learning remotely drove many schools to consider carefully how much and how often students were expected to be on video calls.

3. Sustainability: Maintaining a rigid schedule of primarily synchronous learning is overly demanding for most students and teachers, and it was impossible for most international and boarding school respondents, where students, educators, and their families are spread across as many as 12 different time zones.

Key Trends

How these major considerations manifested in the actual design of schedules varied from school to school, but in most cases schools could not simply replicate their daily schedules online. For reasons of flexibility, wellness, and sustainability, they had to make some concrete changes. When we look at these changes across a large group of schools, a few trends emerge.

1. Culture and Relationships Drive Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Decisions. The majority of sample schedules included designated synchronous time for a co-curricular, extra-curricular, or community purpose. For students in grades 3-5, Graded School reserves synchronous time for class meetings and one-to-one calls with the teacher. Lakefield College's schedule begins each day with synchronous, community-focused meetings. Pomfret School (schedule) and Culver Academies (schedule), which have primarily asynchronous schedules, use synchronous time for advising, conferences, and tutorials, not direct instruction. Charles Wright Academy students have two synchronous class meetings per week, with community meetings, family meetings, and teacher conferencing filling out remaining synchronous time.

2. Longer Blocks. Many schools who might have had six to eight blocks in a day moved to fewer, longer blocks each day. Kingsway College students begin mornings and afternoons with synchronous lessons, then have a total of three hours of asynchronous time to focus on movement, passion projects, or class work. Menlo School has created a simple five-day, primarily asynchronous schedule that has ten three-hour blocks. As you can see on this schedule, certain blocks may meet synchronously once a week (how much of that time is actually synchronous is up to the teacher), with students responsible for planning the rest of their time.

3. Later Starts or Earlier Ends for "Instructional Time." In thinking in new ways about time, many schools are beginning synchronous class time or "taking attendance" later in the day, perhaps a nod to the growing body of research that students would benefit from a later start. You can see evidence of this in the Pomfret and Culver schedules shared above as well as Catlin Gabel School's schedule. Schools still starting at more traditional times like Loomis Chaffee (schedule), Greens Farms Academy (schedule), and The Bush School (schedule) are offering asynchronous learning in the afternoon. As Windward School's schedule notes, this might result in less "instructional time" as defined by synchronous time with a teacher.

4. Overall, the Younger the Student, the More Asynchronous the Learning. Among the respondents, most elementary schools have primarily asynchronous schedules, relying on support from families at home to implement learning plans designed by teachers. Graded School's Distance Learning Plan offers a comprehensive overview of how one school shifts its schedule as it moves from pre-kindergarten through high school.

5. Seeking Balance. Many schools have made, and are making, adjustments to their schedules-especially those schools who have been online for longer-usually to strike a better balance between synchronous and asynchronous learning. Elementary schools that began as fully asynchronous have begun to integrate synchronous elements. High schools that began by replicating daily schedules that were primarily synchronous have backed off. Billings Middle School's schedule reflects clear decisions to balance synchronous and asynchronous time. The Watershed School has alternated synchronous time between mornings and afternoons.

The Impact on Teaching and Learning

Some schools noted the impact of a redesigned schedule on teacher practice.

"Moving from a seven-day to a [five-day] schedule simplified planning and got teachers thinking in five-hour chunks of time that they could design in pursuit of one or two-week modules. It also made work and school more predictable with parents' work lives and made for more consistent contact between teachers and students," said Derek Kanarek, Upper School Academic Dean at Catlin Gabel School

Lauren Bowers, Instructional Coach at the American School of Dubai, identified the need for professional learning in order to ensure schedule shifts are effective: "By collaborating with schools who have been in this for a while, there was overwhelming advocacy for asynchronous learning. This is a time for students to really explore a personalized learning approach that is self-paced (within reason). However, I think in order for this to best serve our students, there also needs to be a shift in the approach of delivering instruction, designing assessments, and providing proper scaffolding, pacing, and graphic organizers to support this work."

Responsive Design

Learning from these 89 schools reminded me of this terrific post by Mike Crowley, where he quotes the Executive Director of the World Health Organization, Michael Ryan:

"If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of good... Speed trumps perfection. And the problem we have in society at the moment is everyone is afraid of making a mistake... The greatest error is to be paralysed by the fear of failure."

It's worth repeating that respondents who have been learning online for weeks or months continue to make adjustments to their schedules. Many schools reported collecting regular feedback from students, teachers, and families, feedback that drives shifts in schedule and other policies. None of the schools claimed utter confidence in their models; in fact, most respondents were eager to see these results so they could continue to learn from each other.

In that sense, these schools, many of which are large and well-established, have become start-ups: tackling a novel problem, paying close attention to those they serve, acting quickly, iterating constantly, and not adopting a system solely because it's the one they have right now.
Recommended Resources This is the first post of a two-part series on GOA's Schedule/Grading Policy Survey. You can read the second part, on grading policy, here. Visit GOA's COVID-19 landing page for our latest resources, offerings, and events. To learn more about our approach to online learning, explore our Student Program and Professional Learning offerings.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Flexibility, Wellness, Sustainability: GOA's Review of School Schedules for Learning Online

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is the first post of a two-part series on scheduling and grading during COVID-19. You can read the second part, on grading policies, here. For all of GOA's resources and offerings related to learning online at this challenging time, please visit our COVID-19 landing page .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Passion blogging is a low-stakes chance for students to analyze texts of their choosing before they move on to complex literary texts.

Analysis rhymes with paralysis, I have discovered: Too often in the past, the texts I asked my freshman English students to analyze left them frozen, detached from their own thoughts and feelings. They scratched at the surface of literature that was not particularly meaningful or accessible to them. The result was cold, inauthentic writing, and I dreaded teaching analysis.

But last summer I read Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell's book Beyond Literary Analysis and decided to use their approach. Marchetti and O'Dell uncouple the task of analysis from traditional literary texts and instead invite students to delve into a broader definition of text: "anything that has a beginning, middle, and end and can be broken down into smaller pieces and studied."

Songs, movies, sports events, and personal experiences are all texts for our students. Marchetti and O'Dell argue persuasively that the keys to strong analysis are passion, ideas, structure, and authority. Students do their best analytical work with texts they know and love.

Enter Passion Blogging

I had tried blogging with students in the past, but prompt-generated blogs felt forced and student-generated blogs often devolved into rants or stream-of-consciousness free writes that were painful to read and not especially helpful to my students' growth as writers.

Passion blogging is founded on what students know and care about. Their online space is built on their own authority. Their classroom community of readers provides a genuine audience, and the focus on analysis gives shape and purpose to their writing.

Before setting up blogs, my ninth graders created heart maps, as suggested by Marchetti and O'Dell-they drew large hearts and filled them with illustrations and words about their interests and passions. I nudged them in this process by asking them what they would do if I gave them 20 minutes to look up a topic on the internet. What did they want to know more about? What topics fascinated them?

Students selected interests from their heart maps, determined related research to explore, and began the analysis process. Because they were already knowledgeable about and invested in their topics, they could apply their writing energy to developing a strong structure and ideas with sound support.

We read mentor texts, including movie and video game reviews, to explore how professional writers analyze their topics. In addition, students wanting to follow their mentor texts by enlivening their posts with photos learned about open source licenses and photo attribution, and formatting the blog posts gave students practice with transferable tech skills.

My 36 students and I wrote 10 posts apiece during our first semester. Before each blog post, I reminded students to research support for their analysis and then attribute, quote, and link to their evidence. That provided opportunities to discuss the credibility of sources.

After each post, we each read and responded to at least five posts. Teachers can ask students to respond to at least five blogs that have fewer than five comments to ensure that all students garner feedback-they can respond to blogs with more than five comments but can't count those toward their required five. A bonus of peer reviewing is that it creates opportunities for lessons in digital citizenship.

Our class blogs are intended as a practice space for developing skills, and I grade them accordingly. Blogs that show attempts at passion (voice), authority (attribution and care with mechanics), structure (organization and transitions), and ideas (supported with examples) earn full credit. Intermittently, I meet with students for writing conferences to discuss strategies for strengthening their blogs' effectiveness.

My students' passion blogs resulted in creative, voice-filled analyses on wide-ranging topics such as the 19th Amendment, the best local hiking trails, why Austin Forkner is an amateur Kawasaki legend, a student's cataract surgery, ways school kills curiosity in students, a weekend of pheasant hunting, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, an Across the Universe movie review, hunger strikes, a grandfather's escape from Iran, and the Best of Iowa competition at the county fair.

Toward Literary Analysis

Analyses of news events, political proposals, new technologies, and entertainment options flood our digital lives. Analytical dexterity is essential for participating in this world of arguments. But as English teachers, we also want our students to analyze literature to understand how writers bring ideas to the page.

As Marchetti and O'Dell note, students can and will transfer what they learn through blogging to literary texts. My students and I have used what they learned from blogging to guide our discussions of poems and short stories.

In November my freshmen wrote their first formal literary analysis papers of the year, based on George Orwell's Animal Farm. The work we had done in passion blogging was evident in students' confidence as they approached the assignment. Their ideas-the heart of strong analysis-were bold and supported with examples from the text. Their voices reflected the authoritative tone we had worked on in blogs. They employed transitions similar to the ones they'd used to engage their readers in their blog posts.

Students given frequent low-stakes opportunities to analyze living texts of their choosing will develop the skills of structuring arguments, providing evidence, and explaining their thinking-skills they can apply in the analysis of literature.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tapping Students' Interests to Develop Literary Analysis Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Passion blogging is a low-stakes chance for students to analyze texts of their choosing before they move on to complex literary texts. Analysis rhymes with paralysis, I have discovered: Too often in the past, the texts I asked my freshman English students to analyze left them frozen, detached from their own thoughts and feelings.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - When Destiny Reyes started elementary school, she felt highly motivated. Like most young children, she liked learning new things, and she excelled at school. She got good grades and reveled in her success, thriving in an environment that, at least implicitly, set her up in competition with her peers. She was at the top of her class, and she proved herself further by testing into a competitive, private middle school. But there, among Providence's brightest, it wasn't as easy to be at the top of the class, and her excitement about school - and learning - subsided. Eventually, she says, nothing motivated her. She went to school because she had to.

Destiny, 18, is like most students in the United States. Surveys reveal a steady decline in student engagement throughout middle and high school, a trend that Gallup deemed the "school engagement cliff." The latest data from the company's Student Poll found that 74 percent of fifth graders felt engaged, while the same was true of just 32 percent of high school juniors.

One of the key components of engagement is students' excitement about what they learn. Yet most schools extinguish that excitement.

While 74 percent of fifth graders report feeling engaged in school, just 32 percent of high school juniors say the same.

It all comes down to motivation. In many schools, students do their work because their teachers tell them to. Or because they need to do it to get a certain grade. For students like Destiny, getting a good grade and outshining their peers - not learning itself - becomes the goal of school. For other students, they need minimum grades to be on sports teams or participate in extracurricular activities or please their parents, and that becomes their motivation. Students who do their work because they're genuinely interested in learning the material are few and far between.

But that's exactly backwards.

The teacher demands, the grades, the promise of additional opportunities - they're all external rewards. Decades of research, both about educational best practice and the way the human brain works, say these types of motivators are dangerous. Offering students rewards for learning creates reliance on the reward. If they becomes less interesting to the student or disappear entirely, the motivation does, too. That's what happened to Destiny in middle school when she no longer got the reward of being celebrated as the top of her class.

Inspiring students' intrinsic motivation to learn is a more effective strategy to get and keep students interested. And it's more than that. Students actually learn better when motivated this way. They put forth more effort, tackle more challenging tasks, and end up gaining a more profound understanding of the concepts they study.

Still, Deborah Stipek, a Stanford University professor of education and author of the book "Motivation to Learn: From Theory to Practice," is pragmatic about the role of extrinsic motivation.

"I think most realistic people in the field say that you've got to have both," Stipek said. "You can rely entirely on intrinsic motivation if you don't care what children learn, but if you've got a curriculum and a set of standards, then you can't just go with what they're interested in."

The problem is that the balance, in most schools, is way off. While some schools around the country are trying to personalize learning and, in doing so, to tap into students' interests, Stipek estimates that most teaching minimizes students' internal desire to learn.

"Ninth graders who have spent their whole life being told what to learn, some of them don't even know what they're interested in because they haven't been given the opportunity."

Beccy Siddons, teacher and advisor, Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, Providence, R.I.

In traditional schools, it's easier to offer a steady stream of rewards and punishments to keep students in line. And preparing students to succeed on state tests tends to discourage the lessons that let them explore their own interests. Teachers who want to inspire intrinsic motivation have to swim against the current.

That's not the case everywhere, though. Destiny's trajectory of diminishing engagement took a turn in high school. Instead of getting increasingly uninterested and disconnected from school, she became more engaged. That's because she enrolled in the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center, a public high school district in Rhode Island that goes by 'The Met.' She is now a senior.

The Met is at the extreme when it comes to tapping into intrinsic motivation. Students don't take traditional classes. They spend virtually all of their time learning independently, with support from advisors or at internships. Students all have individual learning plans and accumulate credits toward traditional subject areas through projects, self-directed study, internship experience and dual enrollment with local colleges. Almost everything they do, all day, connects to a personal goal or something they're interested in.

That's what inspired Destiny to enroll at The Met. "I thought, oh my God, I have all this power to choose what I want," she remembers.

Education researchers have been studying student motivation for decades, identifying the best classroom strategies to promote an intrinsic drive to learn. The Met puts many of them to use. Students learn through real-world, hands-on problem-solving; they tackle open-ended assignments that require sustained effort; they get the power to choose what and how they learn; they finish projects with something to show for their learning in portfolios and concrete products; they set their own academic goals; they need never focus more on a grade than the process of learning because they don't get traditional grades. All of these things come straight out of playbooks for inspiring intrinsic motivation, including Stipek's. And the impact on students can be profound.

"I thought, oh my God, I have all this power to choose what I want."

Destiny Reyes, on her first impression of Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center in Providence, R.I.

Destiny started high school with the academic zeal she left middle school with - meaning very little. Her freshman-year report card reflected that. While The Met doesn't give out traditional grades, students do get assessed on their mastery of the goals they set for each subject. The dominant note on Destiny's report card from ninth grade is "meeting expectations." She had very few instances of "exceeding expectations" and in some subjects, her mastery was only "in progress." In her sophomore year, things started to shift, and "exceeding expectations" started to become a more common assessment. By junior year, Destiny exceeded expectations in almost every subject and "in progress" was nowhere to be found on her report card. Gone was the middle schooler who didn't want to be in class. In her place was a driven young woman who again liked school.

Destiny's experience is common for Met students. On state surveys, these students report being more interested in their coursework, more convinced that what they're learning will matter to their futures, and more supported at school than their peers in almost every other district in Rhode Island. She and other students at The Met continually bring the conversation back to how much difference it makes to be in control of their learning.

Sarah McCaffrey, a 10th grader, appreciates the stark difference between The Met and her experience in middle school, "where it was just 'Do this, this, this,'" she said. "I like more hands-on, where I'm in control, rather than you're just going to tell me how to do it and then I do it. It's more like I'm in charge."

Marissa Souza, a 2017 graduate of The Met and now a sophomore at Rhode Island College, said she had similar motivations in high school. At The Met, she said, students set their own goals, based on their own assessments of their strengths and weaknesses, tied to the dreams they identify for themselves. "You're more proud of your work because you know this was your goal," she said. "You met your goal, you didn't meet a goal that a teacher or principal made for you."

"It really pushes you to be your best self," Marissa said.

It tends to take a little while for students to rise to the challenge, though.

Beccy Siddons, Destiny's advisor, considers watching that trajectory to be one of the most exciting parts of her job. As the main contact for an "advisory" of about 16 students who stay with her for their entire time at The Met, Siddons guides students through their internships, all of their academic work and, eventually, their college applications.

"Ninth graders who have spent their whole life being told what to learn, some of them don't even know what they're interested in because they haven't been given the opportunity," Siddons said.

That was Destiny as a freshman. Her first internship was at an elementary school in a bilingual classroom, a safe, familiar choice for the native Spanish- and English-speaker. Looking back, she's grateful that experience made her realize she didn't like teaching. But at the time, she didn't know what to try next. As a sophomore, she saw another student present about an internship at the New England Aquarium, and it piqued her interest. She first worked there as a junior and quickly discovered a deep love of sea life. She now has a favorite creature she didn't even know existed before: the puffer fish. And she has a career interest she otherwise might not have found until college, if ever: environmental science.

Siddons routinely oversees such meandering paths, and a key part of her job is helping students discover passions they didn't know they might have. The freshmen she welcomes to The Met are a far cry from the seniors she sends out into the world.

The early part of that transformation does take work, though. And while it isn't typical for schools to orient themselves around intrinsic motivation, hundreds do attempt it. Next Generation Learning Challenges has grown into a network of about 150 schools, all of which focus on tapping into students' intrinsic motivation in one way or another. The Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools represents 102 school districts doing similar work; EdLeader21 has another 300 districts, many of whom aim to inspire students' intrinsic desire to learn. And the Big Picture Learning network, built around the success of The Met, now counts more than 60 schools in the U.S. (and another 100 abroad).

In Chicago, a charter school made its commitment to this goal very clear, choosing the name Intrinsic Schools when it launched in 2013 to serve students in grades seven through 12. Learning there happens in "pods," large, flexible classroom spaces that let students rotate from independent work to group instruction to collaborative, project-based learning. Ami Gandhi, director of innovation and collaboration and a co-founder of the charter, said that in the first year, administrators blocked out "independent learning time" for students, expecting they would thrive with the period of freedom. Looking back, Gandhi calls that naïve.

"I would go into the pod during that time and kids were just sitting there," Gandhi said. "I was like, 'What are you interested in?' 'Nothing.' 'What do you want to explore?' 'Nothing.'"

"If someone's been telling you what to do for nine to 10 years of your life in school, you really don't know what to do with that independent time," Gandhi said.

Teachers had to help equip students to take advantage of academic independence. At first, they didn't give students open-ended choices. They told them what they should work on in the independent time. Then they gave them a menu of options, slowly working up to the point where students could choose for themselves, entirely. After the first-year's naiveté, Intrinsic Schools teachers systematically prepare students to take control of their learning.

Another major challenge for schools trying to spark intrinsic motivation is to make sure that fun, engaging lessons also bring academic rigor. Several studies have found that projects and hands-on activities can be effective at intrinsically motivating students, but don't actually result in substantive learning.

Stipek, the Stanford researcher, said this comes down to teacher preparation and school design. Teachers aren't trained to design academically rigorous lessons that motivate students in the right way. And schools aren't set up to give teachers the time to do so. It is possible, though. Stipek directed the UCLA Lab School for 10 years, and she said her teachers - experienced and highly trained - consistently planned projects that engaged students' natural desire to learn while also forcing them to master concrete concepts and skills.

"It's not that it can't be done," Stipek said. "It's just really, really hard."

And because it's hard, it's necessarily risky. Many teachers - and their bosses - are afraid to experiment with this work. Stipek said the accountability movement, where states hold schools to strict standards for student performance on standardized tests, put a damper on teaching methods that prioritize intrinsic motivation. She believes accountability is important, but, in its latest form, has prompted teachers to focus on test prep. That prioritizes the testing outcome - the grade - rather than the learning process, a surefire way to kill students' sense of intrinsic motivation.

"It's not that it can't be done. It's just really, really hard."

Deborah Stipek, Stanford University professor of education, on designing academically rigorous lessons that also promote intrinsic motivation

Researchers have found that one consequence of using grades to motivate students is that they stop challenging themselves for fear of trying something hard and failing at it. The hesitance of teachers and administrators to take a leap with new learning opportunities is an extension of the same thing.

Destiny's school, though, breaks the mold.

Students don't do particularly well on standardized tests at The Met. Rhode Island gives every school a star rating based on test scores, graduation rates and other metrics. The Met graduates more students than the state average (90 percent vs. 84 percent), but its rating, just two out of five stars, is dragged down by student achievement on state tests.

School leaders, though, don't pay much attention to test scores. Nancy Diaz Bain, a co-director, said she and her colleagues prefer to keep track of state survey data about student engagement, parent feedback about their children's progress, student behavior, graduation rates and student performance in college courses. When students from The Met take and pass college courses in high school - which all of them do - they not only prove they can handle advanced coursework, they save money on an eventual degree, Diaz Bain said. And the other metrics about student engagement and success persuade school leaders that the model works. They also persuaded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to pour $20 million into helping Big Picture Learning expand The Met's model to other schools and President Barack Obama to highlight The Met up as an example in a 2010 speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (The Gates Foundation is also one of the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)

For her part, Destiny feels prepared for what comes next. She'll finish high school this spring and then pursue a bachelor's degree. She plans to major in environmental science. While she knows her peers from traditional schools may have gotten a broader education, she expects the depth of knowledge she gained doing internships and related research projects will actually give her a leg up in college. And she'll enroll armed with a sense of intrinsic motivation to learn new things that many of her peers lost a long time ago.
This story about intrinsic motivation in the classroom was produced by The Hechinger Report Join us today. , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it's free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Intrinsic motivation is key to student achievement - but schools kill it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - When Destiny Reyes started elementary school, she felt highly motivated. Like most young children, she liked learning new things, and she excelled at school. She got good grades and reveled in her success, thriving in an environment that, at least implicitly, set her up in competition with her peers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
CBL in Action: How do you design for student feedback and self-reflection?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Feedback is best when it's immediate, timely, and focused on student goals. In many classrooms, it's often easy to spot examples of summative feedback (i.e. an end-of-course test, term paper, or project presentation). At GOA, we are placing an increased focus on formative feedback, which helps students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work. As our colleague Susan Fine has written about, formative feedback is essential to supporting students in locating their intrinsic motivation and driving their own learning.

Since our student courses are online, we have been thinking deeply about how to use technology in concert with sound pedagogical practice to deliver formative feedback and support student learning. Inspired by Grant Wiggins' 2012 post On Feedback: 13 Practical Examples, and we're eager to share 14 ways technology supports a culture of feedback.

1. Collaborate on writing assignments.

A middle school Language Arts teacher asks students to use Google Drive for an in-class writing activity. Students open their own Google Docs, share them with the teacher, and set to work responding to a prompt. The teacher opens each student's document in separate browser tabs and is able to monitor and provide feedback on student work in real time. In addition, students share documents with each other for peer feedback (which the teacher can also monitor and coach). As she observes student work, the teacher identifies themes and examples for the entire class and consolidates that feedback on a single "master feedback document," which she shares with the entire class.

2. Engage families.

In an effort to engage families and home communities in supporting student work, a second grade teacher uses a video discussion tool like Flipgrid that allows him to share student work or questions as prompts for short video responses from families, neighbors, and friends. Students can later watch and discuss these videos with their teacher in school.

3. Connect with mentors.

Towards the end of a field research project in biology class, a science teacher identifies professional researchers and academics who will volunteer to listen to and provide feedback on her students' data and analysis. Using video chat tools with screen sharing capabilities like Skype or Zoom, the students share pre-prepared slidedecks or other visual aids with these outside experts and take their questions and feedback.

4. Use your voice.

A world languages teacher wants her students to practice their listening and comprehension skills while processing and acting on her feedback. Using a tool like Kaizena, she leaves audio comments on student written work. Using her mobile device, she also uses voice memos, WhatsApp, or Voxer to send short audio messages that include specific action items for each student to work on in preparation for oral exercises in the next class.

5. Cultivate collaboration in small groups.

A high school English teacher wants to bring his writing workshop discussions into new environments and modes, so he creates a Slack domain for his class that allows his students to share work and discuss it in small groups or as a whole class via Slack's various channels and chat tools. To ensure feedback is high quality, the teacher adapts a tuning protocol for Slack and "pins" it to his class domain.

6. Leverage automated feedback.

Rather than use his time to correct multiple choice quizzes, a history teacher decides to leverage automated feedback via tools like Quizlet and Kahoot to give students not just the chance to do concrete work at any time that will get immediate feedback, but also the chance to make multiple attempts, ensuring the content "sticks." These tools are also playful and gamified, alleviating some of the drudgery of concrete quiz work.

7. Personalize feedback.

A sixth grade teacher wants her feedback to feel more personal and engaging to her students. She asks students to submit work in digital format, and, using screencasting tools like Explain Everything or Loom, she pulls the work up on her computer screen and records herself giving feedback in real time, then sends those videos back to students rather than handing back marked-up papers.

8. Develop a network.

Determined that her students should not only understand statistics as a field, but also appreciate its relevance to the world outside of school, a statistics teacher asks her students to apply their learning to current events and real-world problems like sports, politics, and social justice issues. Students synthesize their ideas into usable and user-friendly articles, posts, and visualizations (using tools like Gapminder and Venngage) for blogs or social media like Twitter and LinkedIn. To get feedback, they ask their followers and experts they find via these online communities to comment on their work.

9. Create instant videos.

A soccer coach uses a mobile app like Hudl or Coach's Eye to record her players during practice drills. She and the players can watch and respond to the videos immediately, making adjustments in real time. These apps also allow the coach and players to share videos both within and outside the team, watch playback in slow motion, isolate short clips for targeted feedback, and use telestration to annotate videos.

10. Create online spaces for peer feedback.

Eager to incorporate more peer feedback into his ceramics class, an art teacher uses a multimedia tool like Voicethread to allow students to post photos of their work online that can be viewed and commented on by peers, either by video or audio. This asynchronous format allows students to reflect on and provide feedback on their peers' work at their own pace, perhaps even during class while others are working on projects.

11. Give students control of pace.

In his highly differentiated classroom, a third grade teacher begins to explore the use of artificial intelligence and adaptive learning technology like Knewton or Smart Sparrow. The teacher is able to sequence exercises and assessments in new ways, allowing students to tackle new tasks according to how they perform on previous ones. The teacher then uses analytics of students' performance to work individually with students who might need support or new challenges.

12. Flip with purpose.

A middle school math teacher enriches her flipped classroom practice by using EdPuzzle or Nearpod to embed short quizzes, surveys, and short answer questions into her instructional videos. Her students are able to test their own mastery of the content, make several attempts by rewatching the video, and provide the teacher valuable insight via the analytics that capture and synthesize student work.

13. Make it multimedia.

To encourage a learning environment built on transparent feedback, a social studies teacher asks students to create a Padlet where they post images or links to their work (annotated maps, infographics, essays, etc.). Both teacher and peers then follow up by adding their own short feedback posts to the Padlet, aggregating the discussion in a usable, shareable grid. Students have the option to share feedback in a variety of ways, including text, image, or media file.

14. Ask YOUR students how YOU are doing.

Knowing that one of the most meaningful ways to create a classroom that encourages formative feedback is to ask for feedback and to model a culture of feedback, a ninth grade science teacher embeds her slidedecks in interactive tools like Pear Deck in order to assess students' understanding and ask their opinions in real time. In addition, she leverages digital exit tickets like those in Socrative to gather and synthesize student feedback and self-assessment in a useable, archivable way.

How do YOU use technology to support a culture of feedback in your classroom? Tweet us your ideas @goalearning!
Global Online Academy (GOA) reimagines learning to enable students and teachers to thrive in a globally networked society. Professional learning opportunities are open to any educator. To sign up or to learn more, see our Professional Learning Opportunities for Educators or email hello@GlobalOnlineAcademy.org with the subject title "Professional Learning." Follow us on Twitter @GOALearning. To stay up to date on GOA learning opportunities, sign up for our newsletter here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
14 Ways Technology Supports a Culture of Feedback

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Feedback is best when it's immediate, timely, and focused on student goals. In many classrooms, it's often easy to spot examples of summative feedback (i.e. an end-of-course test, term paper, or project presentation). At GOA, we are placing an increased focus on formative feedback, which helps students identify their strengths

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After five years of teaching GOA Poetry Writing, an online course at Global Online Academy, I continue to learn how to create multi-layered feedback. My students give each other feedback, I give them feedback, and they give me feedback. When it works, we all learn. There's a sort of triangle effect, and it doesn't flow in one direction. As a matter of fact, it crosses paths so frequently and with such growing complexity that one challenge is keeping track of all the notes.

Maybe feedback is like jazz-sometimes solo, sometimes collaborative, and with players riffing back and forth off a known melody. There's some improvisation and missteps in the process, but that's all part of the art. The musicians-or in my case, the poets-listen and call to each other. They use feedback to push themselves and each other deeper into the creative process.

In the course, here are 5 ways I use feedback to make learning more visible.

1. Create a Trusting Community with Clear Goals

One Sunday evening early in the course, the class met on Zoom to get to know each other and to begin a list of criteria of what to look for when we write poems and offer feedback. Even with students in seven time zones, 13 (out of 17) of us were able to meet.

Here are 12 of our writing ensemble:

In the first half of GOA Poetry Writing, we work to form a community and to create a safe space to take risks. Students have to trust me, each other, and themselves. Feedback has to be learned and practiced, but everyone can master it. Giving feedback to a teenager's poetry, as you can imagine, is a delicate task. It has to be kind, constructive, and well-supported. Among the goals are to build confidence, to increase awareness of craft in reading and writing poetry, and to offer tactful and constructive feedback toward revision.

2. Scaffold Student to Student Feedback

Every week, in small groups of four or five, students share poetry drafts in writing and audio. In Canvas discussion threads, peer readers are required to structure feedback to drafts into two paragraphs-1st for appreciation and 2nd for improvements. Some students are gifted at praise! (They often use exclamation points.) Most need reminders to point to the text; in other words, to substantiate claims with evidence.

Here's an example from one student's early round of peer feedback in September:

Here's an example from the same student three weeks later. All of the students improved, but here you can see how this poet has expanded the specificity and depth of her feedback so that it is more helpful to the writer, the peer group, me, and even herself.

The appreciation paragraph is easy to learn. Harder is the paragraph on tactful suggestions, which, essentially, is where the learning happens both for reader and for writer. This reader substantiates her observations with exact quotes; she raises questions and uses "I" statements instead of prescribing; and she's conscious of tone. Her growing awareness of her reader will also help her as writer. Reading and writing go hand in hand. As the young poets get better at assessing each other's poems (as well as the weekly Featured Poets who have many book publications), they are building skills for giving themselves feedback.

3. Provide Opportunities to Layer Teacher to Student to Teacher Feedback

In addition to peer comments, I'm modeling how to write the two-paragraph comments, which I share each week in a public module on Canvas. I also leave individual, personalized comments and a low-stakes grade on all of the students' peer feedback, urging them to use more specific examples, to notice more elements of craft, to ask more questions, and also to step back and see the poem as a whole. Keeping track of progress is messy work; in addition to Canvas, I find that I need to create charts with hand-written notes so that I can make learning visible and reinforce progress. Through all these layers of peer-, teacher- and self-feedback, the poets are learning what to look for in poems and applying it to next week's draft.

At certain points in the course, I also ask students to reflect on the value of peer and teacher comments. You might say this round of correspondence is a meta-meta reflection, as students write to me reflecting on comments they received on their poetry drafts. This constant reinforcement of writing and reflecting helps develop critical tools that will help them become better writers and better readers of each other's work. These spirals of feedback push them deeper into language and process. Since they're not graded, though, it's less self-conscious than it may seem. As a matter of fact, some of these layers are written as informal letters, emphasizing the personal nature of writing to a real audience.

Here's one example of a letter, reflecting on feedback, which essentially is a self-assessment, including goals.

4. Use EdPuzzle and Slack to Reinforce Student Goals

How do I know the GOA students read my feedback? How do they set their own goals? This is where it helps to be even more multi-layered. Every week, I use EdPuzzle to check in. EdPuzzle allows me to create a short video, insert open-ended questions, monitor that students indeed watched the videos, and keep track of their goals. For example, I ask them to read through my comments and synthesize what is most helpful. I ask them to set goals based on their peers', my, and their own feedback. What do you want to work on most for the next poem? On a more global level, I solicit feedback for improving the course. EdPuzzle allows me to reinforce goals and comments that are articulated in Canvas.

This year, I've also used Slack, which adds to the immediate, personal, and informal communication to individuals, pairs, and groups. Sometimes, I'll upload a document to Slack that synthesizes students' individual notes into one shared document. Here's a screenshot of Slack after synthesizing their list (from Zoom and from written comments) on what elements of craft to look for in peer comments.

5. Foster Independent Learners Through Peer Groups on Zoom

Because I want students, most of all, to become independent learners, in the second half of the course, I push them to work more on their own without me. Now that they are expert with the written format, I'll ask them to go "live," that is to meet in small groups on Zoom to give each other oral feedback. There's a clear structure for those groups and tasks, as well as written notes and a screenshot of the Zoom meeting to show accountability. Whether they work perfectly is not the point. 1) They are practicing methods of feedback they learned to give more safely in writing; 2) they are getting to know each other better; and 3) they are doing all this on their own without a teacher. What is better than that?

Here's one of our recent quartets having fun, while sharing poems and jamming in a Zoom Room:

If feedback is like jazz, then it's in the rehearsals-not the final concerts-where the learning happens. It's where students are encouraged to take risks and learn from mistakes. Drafts are always in progress, always improvable. Learning, too, never sits still. Writers develop their chops in low-stakes drafting. And then through layers of cross-directional feedback, learning becomes visible. The spirals of call and response can be as wailing or as muted as a jazz trumpeter stretching her notes.

For more, see:
Global Online Academy (GOA) reimagines learning to empower students and teachers to thrive in a globally networked society. Professional learning opportunities are open to any educator. To sign up or to learn more, see our Professional Learning Opportunities for Educators or email hello@GlobalOnlineAcademy.org with the subject title "Professional Learning." Follow us on Twitter @GOALearning. To stay up to date on GOA learning opportunities, sign up for our newsletter here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
All That Jazz: Using Feedback to Make Learning Visible

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By Jeff Schwartz, GOA Faculty Member and educator, Greenwich Academy After five years of teaching GOA Poetry Writing, an online course at Global Online Academy, I continue to learn how to create multi-layered feedback. My students give each other feedback, I give them feedback, and they give me feedback. When

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
November 2008 | Volume 66 | Number 3
Giving Students Ownership of Learning

Adam Fletcher

Any conversation about student ownership in education would be incomplete without mention of John Dewey. It was his Democracy and Education (1916) that helped me see the connection between student involvement and student ownership. According to Dewey, the type of activities that stimulate real involvement "give pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results" (p. 181).

Patterns of Involvement

Throughout my career in educational administration in Washington's state government and as a private consultant, I have talked with hundreds of students and educators, learning about how schools have enabled students to get involved in the kinds of activities that Dewey advocates. In these conversations, certain patterns of encouraging true involvement have emerged.

Every time students talk about meaningful activities, they specifically identify either the type of activity they are involved in or the issue they are addressing. Students consistently identify school-focused issues as important, even as their interests in community-based issues wax and wane.

Another consistent theme is relevance: Students feel connected, engaged, and meaningfully involved when they are addressing relevant issues that reflect their interests, their passions, and their identities. Whether they are related to curriculum, leadership activities, or extracurricular programs, roles that students consistently identify as meaningful enable them to participate in design, facilitation, and assessment, with the goal of improving their schools and enhancing learning for all students.

I brought these lessons together as the basis for my Frameworks for Meaningful Student Involvement. Drawing from such pedagogues as Dewey, Myles Horton, and Paulo Freire, I have defined meaningful student involvement as "the process of engaging students as partners in every facet of school change for the purpose of strengthening their commitment to education, community, and democracy" (Fletcher, 2005, p. 5).

The Building Blocks

Activities that fully embody meaningful student involvement are what I like to call the "architecture for ownership." Strong learning is the foundation of the building. Without learning, students who are involved are at best underinformed, naive posers; at worst, they are likely to misrepresent their needs and those of their peers.

The following examples demonstrate how schools can involve students in building an architecture of ownership.

Students as Planners

In a number of schools, students are involved in selecting textbooks, creating classroom behavior guidelines, and designing new buildings. The individual student who makes the plans may be the only person affected by student planning, or student planning may affect the entire student body. Either can be meaningful; it is the conditions and the applications of the activities are what matter.

Washington's Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) provides a student-driven educational planning program for schools called Navigation 101. In this program, students connect coursework in the school to their life goals. They research "dream" careers, study high school graduation requirements, and select the courses they want to take. Schools may adjust their course offerings to meet the interests of students. Identifying students' lifelong learning goals encourages teachers to meet the learning ambitions of particular students, offering a clear route for academic assistance and giving students the opportunity to share their dreams with supportive adults.

Members of the Student Engagement Team at the Black Hills High School in Tumwater, Washington, have gotten involved by conducting buildingwide surveys and testifying before the Education Committee of the Washington State House of Representatives. They have also planned schoolwide forums for the 2008-09 school year. Team membership is open to all students at the school.

In the 2007-08 school year, the team participated in the hiring of their future principal. Meeting after school, students told district hiring officials exactly what they wanted in their future building leader. They respectfully and deliberately pressed the officials about potential principals' attitudes toward standardized tests, student-principal interactions, and community building within the school.

Toward the end of the school year, final candidates for the principal position answered students' questions directly, and a student from the team was included on the panel that interviewed candidates. Bob Kuehl, the human resource director for the school district, said of the participants in the Student Engagement Team,

They're very insightful of the needs of a school from a student's perspective and they're very candid about their opinions and thoughts. ... They have a lot of strong feelings that need to be heard and used.

This type of commitment is exactly what meaningful student involvement can-and should-foster among all partners throughout a school.

Students as Teachers

Several national programs recognize the potential of students as teachers. In the 1990s, Dennis Harper, a longtime proponent of the student-as-teacher model and founder of Generation YES, developed a program for the Olympia School District in Washington State that actively engaged students in teaching teachers how to use technology in their classrooms. According to Harper, 40,000 teachers have benefited from technology training offered by Generation YES students since 1995 (Cruickshank, 2008).

Through the GenYES curriculum, students have participated in a sort of learning exchange. While they help teachers understand Web page development, Internet search tools, or how to scan pictures and create PowerPoint presentations, students learn about every topic in the school curriculum.

As Harper describes it, engaging students' innate interest in technology enables teachers to contextualize technology. In turn, this encourages students to become literate in areas they are interested in, as well as the subject areas they study. Combining student ownership and literacy leads directly to meaningful student involvement.

Students as Professional Development Partners

P.S. 205, a K-5 school in the Bronx, New York, has sought to develop new approaches to school improvement. Working with Communities for Learning in Floral Park, New York, students became meaningfully involved in a learning community that included multiple students, teachers, parents, and administrators.

Through a series of guided critical reflection and development sessions for all team members, including students as partners, the team transformed its own expectations and those of the school at large. Students took part in the data collection and analysis that led the learning community to identify differentiation as a focus for the 2007-08 school year. Together, team members are developing an understanding of how differentiation may be used to promote learning.

According to Martin-Kniep (2007), such research projects can be a core of learning communities, ultimately influencing practice throughout the learning environment. She writes,

Students possess tremendous experience and expertise in the areas of teaching and learning. Their experiences as learners in schools are far more grounded in reality than are those of most adults. ... They live teaching and learning every day. (p. 88)

At P.S. 205, students were full members of the learning community focused on school improvement. The group prepared for student participation with the careful leadership of Communities for Learning staff members, each of whom are trained in how to meaningfully involve students. Guided deliberation, constant check-ins, and reflection during and after their involvement allowed students and educators on the team to consider the effects of student ownership in the learning community. The students' insights were incorporated into school improvement plans along with those of other team members.

Students as Decision Makers

Pushing paper across tables and going through the motions of decision making without practical, meaningful applications is no one's idea of a good time-or good learning. Yet many schools actively promote this approach in their student governments, allowing students to choose the themes for school dances year or the colors on this year's yearbook cover, but not giving them any say in decisions that have more serious implications. School curriculum, policy, and climate are more meaningful leadership areas for students. In addition to making decisions that affect themselves and their immediate peers, students can participate in boards of education, grant making, and school assessment at the district and state levels.

Massachusetts and California are the vanguard of state school boards in terms of providing full student membership, and dozens of districts and state agencies across the United States are increasing student involvement in a variety of ways.

The Boston Student Advisory Council has engaged students in effective efforts to help develop, form, and implement districtwide policies in Boston Public Schools. A Boston-based national nonprofit organization called Youth On Board helped the district redesign the program, creating new mechanisms that actively engage students in decision making. Since the 2006-07 school year, the council has met twice monthly, regularly shared its perspectives on high school renewal efforts with the superintendent and members of the school committee, and informed its schools about issues affecting the entire city. The recent addition of a student representative on the Boston School Committee has increased the group's profile as well. The Advisory Council's decision making has led to a variety of policy changes affecting schools across the city. Its leadership guided a new cell phone policy and a "lockout policy" affecting truancy, and their newest efforts have focused further on school attendance.

These activities represent the cusp of what meaningful student involvement truly looks like. Students advocating for educational improvement, researching classroom climate, and leading new approaches to learning and teaching stand together in the architecture of involvement, effectively demonstrating what school change looks like when the hearts, heads, and hands of students are infused throughout the process. But just as in building houses, no one builder works alone: Adults, including teachers, administrators, counselors, and support staff, must join students on the building crew.

In 1995, Dick Corbett and Bruce Wilson wrote an article titled "Make a Difference With, Not For, Students" in which they offered this sage warning:

Our proposition is that student role redefinition is a critical linchpin between adult reform and student success, and that failing to acknowledge this connection is a potentially fatal flaw in promoting our understanding of reform and in creating effective change initiatives. (p. 17)

Corbett and Wilson rang the alarm that we would fail miserably if we did not seriously consider the very people who are most affected. Now, 13 years after their warning, we sit in the ruins of many failed attempts at improving schools, blaming others without often considering our own complicity. Corbett and Wilson's ongoing studies about the perspectives and roles of students in school improvement were perhaps best elaborated on in the findings from their comprehensive study of Philadelphia schools, published in Listening to Urban Kids: School Reform and the Teachers They Want (2001).

There are many reasons schools must live up to the challenge that students present, not the least of which being that students are more than the future: They are the present, urgently pressing teachers, administrators, and school leaders to respond to the challenges in our schools right now. Let's make meaningful student involvement a reality for every student in every school today.

References

Corbett, D., & Wilson, B. (1995). Make a difference with, not for, students: A plea to researchers and reformers. Educational Researcher, 24(5), 12-17.

Corbett, D., & Wilson, B. (2001). Listening to urban kids: School reform and the teachers they want. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Cruickshank, D. (2008, April). Dennis Harper: Harnessing student-led tech support: Tech-savvy students help teachers get up to speed. Edutopia. Available: www.edutopia.org/dennis-harper.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.

Fletcher, A. (2005). Meaningful student involvement: Guide to students as partners in school change. Bothell, WA: HumanLinks Foundation. Available: www.soundout.org/MSIGuide.pdf

Martin-Kniep, G. (2007). Communities that learn, lead and last: Building and sustaining educational expertise. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Adam Fletcher is the author of several publications about student involvement and has provided training for K-12 schools and community-based organizations. He is currently the Coordinated School Health Program manager at the Washington State Department of Health; adam.fletcher@doh.wa.gov.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
November 2008 | Volume 66 | Number 3 Giving Students Ownership of Learning Adam Fletcher Any conversation about student ownership in education would be incomplete without mention of John Dewey. It was his Democracy and Education (1916) that helped me see the connection between student involvement and student ownership.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The draft completed version: bit.ly/dgst395
[a quote from someone amazing that inspires curiosity, encourages critical thinking, or connects in some other obscure way to anything else here]
A digital project is __________ [two sentences, between 25 and 45 words] __________. A digital project is not __________ [a single sentence, between 10 and 15 words] __________.

You'll spend the whole semester working (by yourself or with a group) on a single digital project. This document will give you the tools you need to guide your work, but you should feel free to interpret these instructions loosely. We will be working together by offering feedback to each other through the various stages of this work.

Ultimately, a successful digital project is one that:

Creates _____ [a sentence fragment between 5 and 10 words] _____

Employs _____ [a sentence fragment between 5 and 10 words] _____

Addresses _____ [a sentence fragment between 5 and 10 words] _____

Collaboration

You may work on your own or collaborate with a group of up to __ [a number] __ people. If you work with a group of more than __ [a number] __, you should _____ [a sentence fragment between 5 and 15 words] _____. While you are welcome to work on your own, collaboration may help you to _____ [a sentence fragment between 5 and 15 words] _____.

Your project can take any number of forms, such as __ [a word or phrase] __, __ [a word or phrase] __, or __ [a word or phrase a little wackier than the other two examples] __, but probably not __ [a word or phrase] __ or __ [a word or phrase] __. At a minimum, you should hand-code __ [a word or phrase] __, design __ [a word or phrase] __ yourself, or manually __ [a word or phrase] __. You are encouraged to use tools that _____ [a sentence fragment between 3 and 10 words] _____, such as (but not limited to) __ [a digital tool or platform] __ or __ [a digital tool or platform] __.

Creative Constraints

Sometimes arbitrary constraints can inspire creativity. Choose at least one of the following:

1. use a digital tool for something other than its express purpose or function

2. _____ [a sentence or fragment between 10 and 20 words] _____

3. _____ [a sentence or fragment between 10 and 20 words, a bit more bizarre or obscure than the previous one] _____

4. _____ [a sentence or fragment between 10 and 20 words, a bit more bizarre or obscure than the previous one] _____

5. _____ [a sentence or fragment between 10 and 20 words, a bit more bizarre or obscure than the previous one] _____

Theme

Our collective theme (inspired by the image at the top of this post) is _____ [several evocative but vague sentences describing the theme] _____. All projects should connect in some way, however loosely, with this theme, or otherwise radically and __ [an adverb] __ diverge from the theme in a way that inspires awe, surprise, or __ [something else] __.

Working Ethically and Respectfully

All projects completed for this class should aim to _____ [a sentence fragment between 8 and 15 words] _____ and never _____ [a sentence fragment between 3 and 10 words] _____ or _____ [a sentence fragment between 3 and 10 words] _____.

Proposal or Prospectus

You will prepare a proposal or prospectus outlining your plans for the final project by __ [a date] __. It should contain these components: _____ [a sentence fragment between 3 and 10 words] _____, _____ [a sentence fragment between 3 and 10 words] _____, and _____ [a sentence fragment between 3 and 10 words] _____. You will share it on Slack for feedback from your peers and will also have a chance to discuss and refine your ideas in class. This process will __________ [one or two sentences, between 10 and 30 words] __________.

Peer-review

On __ [a date] __, you will share a draft of your work A draft should include ______ [a phrase or list between 3 and 15 words] _____. You will offer __ [an adjective] __ feedback to your peers. And, of course, chat with Jesse if you want to confer or get additional feedback at any point.

Sharing Your Work

You will submit your work by publishing it to the Web, using Domain of One's Own (or some other platform), and sharing a link to it via Slack. But the audience for your work shouldn't just be Jesse or the members of our class, but rather _____ [a sentence fragment between 5 and 10 words] _____. On the last day of class, we will meet in person to _____ [a sentence fragment between 5 and 15 words] _____.

Documenting Your Process

In addition to (or as a component of) your digital project, you will also document your process in a letter, a series of images, a short video, __ [a word or phrase] __, or __ [a word or phrase] __. You will also have a chance to offer thoughts on your digital project in the final self-reflection you will complete for the course. Take risks, break stuff, and don't be afraid to fail, as long as you fail __ [an adverb] __.

Feel free to dramatically reinvent the expectations usually reserved for final projects in college classes. Make this one your own. But feel free to call on Jesse (or your peers) for help.
[a single GIF that connects back to the theme and leaves people excited or bewildered by the work to come]

Tags: dgst395

I write stuff, teach stuff, and hang out with my husband, daughter, and a menagerie of animal friends.

final project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The draft completed version: bit.ly/dgst395 [a quote from someone amazing that inspires curiosity, encourages critical thinking, or connects in some other obscure way to anything else here] A digital project is __________ [two sentences, between 25 and 45 words] __________. A digital project is not __________ [a single sentence, between 10 and 15 words] __________.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We often focus on student engagement, but student empowerment is a step further. Here, we focus on the seven shifts toward student empowerment.
Two years ago, I was a chaperone for my son's fourth-grade field trip to a hands-on pioneer museum. Students learned how to make homemade candles, how to chop wood, how to do some very basic woodworking, how to make bread, and how to quilt.

They were fully engaged in the learning. According to Schlecty's levels of engagement, nearly every student demonstrated both a high attention a high commitment to the learning.

However, I noticed little moments of frustration. When students learned about the peg process used in log cabin design, a girl asked if they still use the same process in modern log cabin construction. If so, had they adapted the process to be more earthquake-proof? Had they changed the peg design? Do they now use glue with the pegs? I reached for my phone to look it up and realized that they had banned devices when we first walked in. So the question hung in the air, unanswered.

At another point, a boy felt how hot the log had become after using a hand drill. His friend said it was because the wood was hotter on the inside just like our bodies are hotter on the inside. The first boy shook his head and said, "No, it's because things get hot when they move up against other things." They pulled me into the conversation and suddenly, we were discussing friction, movement, heat, and energy.

"Do bigger drills get hotter than smaller drills if they move at the same speed?" he asked.

But right at that moment, they called us over to a new task.

To be clear, the field trip was amazing. Students remained engaged nearly the entire time - physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. The volunteers at this museum knew how to interact with the students and keep them fully interested in the content. However, after being highly engaged, the students wanted to move to a new level in their learning. They wanted to try little experiments, chase their questions, and make more decisions. In other words, they wanted to own the learning.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time for that. As I stood there watching students move quickly from task to task, I thought about all of those moments when I cut off learning right when it was becoming empowering because I viewed it as off-task or because I had something engaging I didn't want them to miss or because I thought we might run out of time.

We often talk about what it means to move from compliance to engagement. It's the idea of creating an environment where students want to learn rather than have to learn. This is that top level of engagement, where students are highly committed and highly focused. But I wonder how often we stop there, with committed and focused students who aren't getting the chance to own their learning.

If we want students to be creative, self-directed learners, we need to go beyond student engagement and into empowerment. They need to own the learning. My friend George describes this as a continuum based upon student agency.

Note that highly engaging environments often promote empowerment because they focus on student agency and ownership. The moment you add student ownership to student engagement, you have empowerment.

Some quick nuance here. Compliance isn't always a bad thing. When the fire drill goes off, I want students to comply. Engagement isn't a bad thing. Sometimes I want to engage students in learning something that they will find intriguing and interesting. After all, the highly engaging environment of the pioneer museum led the students to a place where they wanted to own their learning. But too often, students in school remain in a space between compliance and engagement, never getting the opportunity to own their learning.

We Need to Shift Toward Empowerment

So, the following are eight shifts that we need to consider as we shift from engagement to empowerment. You can check it out in this sketch-note animation video:
Subscribe to YouTube Channel
#1: From giving choices to inspiring possibilities

When I first embraced student choice, I would create 3-4 options on each assignment. In some cases, I might even create a choice menu and tell them to pick a certain number of items. This was a small step toward increasing student agency and it increased their intrinsic motivation. However, students were still selecting my choices from my menu. In other words, we had lots of choice but very little freedom.

Eventually, we shifted toward student-generated options for larger projects. This began with things like Wonder Days, Geek Out Projects (our Genius Hour projects), themed blogs, and inquiry-based science projects. However, in emphasizing student ownership, I ran into a problem. Sometimes students didn't know what to choose. They lacked the prior knowledge to know where to begin.

At that point, I began to show examples, provide options, and add resources. I worried this would stifle creative risk-taking. However, it actually increased their self-efficacy and gave them a bigger picture of what was possible. This led to greater creative risk-taking.

For example, when creating visual writing prompts, I made them optional. In fact, I called them writing ideas instead of writing prompts because prompts require writing and ideas inspire writing. Instead of saying, "here are ten choices," I said, "It's your blog. Write what you want. But if you're looking for inspiration, here are tons of visual prompts you can use."

#2: From "making the subject interesting" to "tapping into student interests."

This is the shift from saying "you must learn this" to asking "what do you want to learn?" So, instead of saying, "how do I make _______ interesting?" you give students a chance to tap into their own curiosity. So, students might be into Minecraft or Legos or fashion or drama and you, as a teacher, have the opportunity to let them explore these areas of interest.

Initially, I scoffed at this idea of interest-driven learning because I thought these student interests were shallow. However, as students began blogging about video games, sports, fashion, and food, I realized that no subject is shallow if you're willing to take a deep dive. It's all about the lens you use. I noticed this when a student wanted to explore the history of cartoons in a blog and podcast. Cartoons? Really? What emerged was a deep exploration of culture, gender, and social norms. It blew me away. I saw the results of empowerment.

This sounds great in theory but teachers have standards and curriculum maps. My first thought is that many subjects have content-neutral standards. In language arts, students can explore their own interests while practicing the skills in the Common Core Standards. In other subjects, the standards still provide options for student interests. In science, students might explore forces and motion by studying roller coasters or self-driving cars. Two very different topics but the same standards. In social studies, students might explore various aspects of World War II from totally different angles while still pursuing the areas that they find fascinating.

A little nuance here: There's still a time and a place for teacher-directed topics. Sometimes students don't know what they will love until a teacher introduces it to them.

#3: From taking assessments assessing your own learning.

Go to a skate park or watch kids play Minecraft and you'll see tons of assessment going on. However, no one is waiting for a rubric and a score. They assess in the moment. Sure, they might go to a contest and get a score. They might seek out the advice of an expert. But, the key here is that they view assessment as something you do rather than something you take.

Here students embrace the idea that learning is an iterative process full of mistakes. It's what they do as they set goals, check their progress, and adjust their actions. But even though it's self-directed, it is interdependent rather than independent. They engage in self-reflection, peer assessment, and student-teacher conferences.

#4: From answering the teacher's questions to asking their own questions

Again, there is a time and a place to answer the teacher's questions. However, this is the idea that empowered students are curious about their world and they know how to explore their questions and find their own answers. It's the notion that students should be questioning answers as well as answering questions. This is the idea where they chase the inquiry process and take learning off-road.

#5: From uncritical consuming to critical consuming and creating

I often hear about the need to get students to move from consuming to creating and I see the validity in this argument. I've met way too many adults who don't engage in any real creative endeavors. They watch television in their spare time but never craft stories. They follow recipes but never learn to own the culinary process and truly make their own dishes.

But I actually think consuming matters. Chefs consume food. I mean, I guess we all consume food, right? So maybe that's a bad example. Musicians listen to music. Athletes watch sports. The key difference is that they are critical consumers. They analyze what they consume and they look for ideas and inspiration.

Here students move from critical consuming to inspiration to creativity, where they use the design process to launch their work to the world. In fact, students often work through stages from consuming to creating.
Subscribe to YouTube Channel
#7: From rigid to adjustable systems

There's a fascinating story in The End of Average about what happened when the United States air force based their cockpit design on the average pilot. It sounded like a great idea but the "average" cockpit didn't fit anyone and our pilots continued to die. One-size-fits-all fits no one. However, instead of trying to customize each cockpit to custom-fit pilots, they shifted toward adjustable design, where pilots could change the configuration of the cockpits to fit their needs.

It has me thinking about "teaching toward the middle" in schools. We don't have a middle because we don't have average students. This is why we need to design flexible systems that students can adjust. Students are empowered to own the process. They can set their own pace, choose their own formats, and decide what resources they want to use.

Often, in schools, we focus on a tiered-approach to differentiated instruction. But the adjustable system is a shift from differentiated to personalized learning. Instead of putting students in leveled groups, teachers provide opportunities for students to self-adjust.

This isn't easy. Sometimes students need help with executive function. At the lower grades, students might struggle with setting their own pace or choosing their own resources. Again, there's a time and a place for leveled groups. But still, teachers can design adjustable systems and help students own the process of empowerment.

#7: It's a shift in mindset from compliance to self-direction

We want students to be creative, critical thinkers. We want them to rewrite the rules and to be original. In education, we throw around words like "lifelong learning" and "critical thinking citizens." But this begins with a mindset of self-direction. This isn't a rugged individualism, either. It's often collaborative. However, it's the idea that students feel a sense of ownership over their learning.

Self-direction is a blend of being a self-starter and a self-manager.

Self-starters know how to initiate learning. They don't wait for permission to learn. They simply go out and do it. But self-starting without self-management leads to unfinished work. Self-managers know how to finish work. They are able to manage projects, set goals, and check for progress. However, self-management without self-starting leads to complacency and lacks innovation. We want students to be both.

This Isn't Easy

These shifts are not always easy. The journey toward empowering students can feel confusing and even scary. But if you're waiting for permission, it might never happen. Sometimes, you just have to take the leap.

Empower Your Students with Voice and Choice

Want to get started with student ownership? Check out this page with free articles, videos, and resources. Also, check out the Empower Blueprint and Toolkit below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Making The Shift from Student Engagement to Student Empowerment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We often focus on student engagement, but student empowerment is a step further. Here, we focus on the seven shifts toward student empowerment. Two years ago, I was a chaperone for my son's fourth-grade field trip

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Want to Empower Learners? Ask Yourself These Three Questions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Looking to empower your students? Ask yourselves these three questions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Getting buy-in from students at the outset encourages them to engage more deeply in their learning.

David Grossman / Alamy Stock Photo

We've all been there: In the middle of a class discussion, we realize that only a handful of kids are actually engaging in discourse with us and the rest are off-task. How can teachers ensure that all students take ownership of their learning?

Ask for Opinions

For students to be part of a classroom community, they need to have authentic buy-in from the beginning. Asking students what they think creates buy-in at the outset.

I begin my writing class by asking students to brainstorm the components of a good essay. In groups, they discuss what an ideal final product should include, sharing their ideas on chart paper or a Google Doc. We come back together and compare results. Not only is student engagement increased from having taken the time to develop ideas prior to a whole-class conversation, but also students are able to improve critical thinking and understand rubrics more comprehensively.

Allowing students to be part of the assessment creation gives them ownership in the entire process-not just the outcomes.

Emphasize Growth

Show students how they are becoming better learners on a regular basis, particularly by embracing mistakes. I frequently share my own errors so that students realize it's OK to mess up as long as we learn from it. Last year, I told my class about a major mistake I made while I was leading a department meeting. At the time, I was relatively new to a data program, and when I pulled student performance numbers and downloaded them into a spreadsheet, I accidentally sorted a column incorrectly. The meeting was rough, but I learned from my mistake. Sharing this story helped my students understand why errors can be valuable.

Without the experiences of failure, we don't get better. If we can make mistakes desirable, kids truly experience the value of a growth mindset that encourages a "not yet" approach to learning. Students are more likely to own their growth if they realize that success is a process that involves some struggle.

Gather Student Voices

I met with a team of teachers who were excited about students enjoying assigned reading. After listening to their theories about why students were more engaged, I asked if they could gather student data about this development. Once students shared that their increase in engagement was connected to more relatable reading options, teachers used actionable data to move forward. Rather than creating a series of hypotheses, ask kids what is happening from their perspective.

Responding to feedback and making changes based on their suggestions communicates to students that we value their ideas and perspectives. If students feel comfortable providing input that is informative but not tied to a grade or other consequence, we can better address learning needs.

Laugh With Students

Classrooms are hotbeds of unpredictability, and it is important to welcome spontaneity rather than shut it down. When a student made a presentation on the August Wilson play Fences and accidentally left the n out of the title, I did two things: I reinforced our culture of embracing mistakes, and I shared a time when I wrote an unfortunate typo, so that the laughter would be directed at the situation, not the student. If teachers welcome humor that is free of sarcasm, students will work that much harder to succeed. As a step toward creating student ownership, having a classroom full of laughter and humor builds relationships. When the teacher prioritizes strong rapport with students, kids are more likely to be vocal about their learning needs and take responsibility for their progress and achievement.

Redefine Class Participation

Not every student wants to speak up, while others may monopolize class discussions. Give students a variety of ways to express ideas. They can share thoughts with silent discourse-the process of writing a thoughtful comment or question and passing it to another student. They can put sticky notes on the board with their thoughts and place check marks next to ideas that have appeal. Whatever the method used to facilitate participation and student involvement in course content, vary it daily so that everyone has an opportunity to participate. When more students are involved in the class, their confidence increases, and they will drive their learning proactively rather than passively letting the teacher own the experience.

For nearly 20 years, I taught the same course, but I never taught it the same way from year to year. Even though I have discovered engaging reading strategies, I still experiment with new ways to provide divergent pathways to literacy. In the process, I discovered that students appreciate even a few minutes that are carved out to read a choice text. Responsive pedagogical practices take the end goal into account, enabling the teacher to vary practice. Suppose that students all have to demonstrate proficiency with a set of vocabulary words. Instead of providing one way for them to achieve the standard, such as writing a paragraph, let them own the experience by creating a graphic representation of the words or a podcast to demonstrate mastery of objectives. While changing it up is tricky, encouraging students to take risks pays off not only in content mastery, but also in encouraging student ownership of learning.

Providing choices, being flexible, and building positive relationships are the bedrock of making sure that kids know that they are the most important school stakeholders and that they own their learning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creating a Classroom Culture of Shared Ownership

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Getting buy-in from students at the outset encourages them to engage more deeply in their learning. David Grossman / Alamy Stock Photo We've all been there: In the middle of a class discussion, we realize that only a handful of kids are actually engaging in discourse with us and the rest are off-task.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Giving students some say over what happens in class can promote engagement and a strong sense of community.

Jim West / Alamy Stock Photo (16)

One of the most powerful ways to impact achievement is to actively engage students in the life of the classroom. Although educators know that our students' contributions are vital to the learning process, educator and author Alexis Wiggins was surprised to observe that many students "feel like a bit of a nuisance all day long." As teachers, we have the capacity to change our students' experiences if we design lessons that prioritize student voice and participation.

Elevating student voice is critical for many reasons. For one thing, as Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey write, "The amount of talk that students do is correlated with their achievement." There are strategies teachers can use to elevate student voice in order to strengthen relationships, foster a sense of belonging, increase engagement, and inform instruction.

Begin Class With a Welcoming Ritual

Students arrive to class with their minds swirling about failed quizzes, mounting pressure about homework assignments, and concerns about interactions with their peers. In order to help them clear these distractions from their minds, we might begin class with a predictable routine.

Students might share "breaking news" or "what's on the top of your mind?" in pairs, with small groups, or with the whole class. This welcoming ritual allows students to release their most pressing thoughts and create space for new experiences. It also builds relationships between students as they share a little bit of themselves with their peers. Welcoming rituals foster a sense of belonging as the classroom becomes a place that accepts students not only for who they are but where they are at a particular moment.

This brief share might transition directly into an opening activity that connects to the learning of the day. Together, students might consider an essential question, share responses to a short quote or passage, or take time to reflect on the previous day's learning. Opening class with an emphasis on student engagement rather than passive compliance prioritizes student voice and places students at the center of the learning experience.

Plan Consistent Opportunities for Student Voice

When will students collaborate to problem-solve, devise higher-order questions, contribute to the creation of a product, or otherwise actively grapple with a lesson's meaning?

How often are students offered the opportunity to speak at the front of the room, write on the board, or conduct demonstrations on the document camera?

When are students writing for an audience beyond the classroom?

Do students have choices regarding the work they're doing?

If (and in what ways) are students prompted to connect what they're learning in the classroom to their lives outside of school?

During the planning stage, prioritize active engagement and student voice by asking yourself:

Ideally, our classrooms would be places where students not only gain knowledge but also discover who they are and who they want to be. The only way students will come to these realizations is through both independent and collaborative explorations in which they add their voices to the conversation. Prioritizing student voice strengthens a sense of belonging, as the learning experiences are co-created by students and teachers.

Ask Students About Their Lives Beyond The Classroom

We need to show our students that we value who they are and understand the complexities of their lives. Some students will clearly make themselves known while others will fade into the background if we let them-so we need to intentionally interact with all students. These moments of listening and sharing with students reinforce belonging and build relationships.

We can do this while greeting students when they enter the classroom, while conferring with small groups, and while conferencing with individual students. We can schedule "lunch and learn" sessions or invite students to help us hang student work or otherwise contribute to the logistics of the classroom during their study halls or lunch periods.

When students know we value what they have to say, they're more likely to share their thoughts and insights. It may seem like we don't have time to engage with every student, but we don't have time not to. As John Hattie reminds us, "A positive, caring, respectful climate in the classroom is a prior condition to learning." Strong teacher-student relationships bolster students' confidence to share their voices.

Ask for Student Feedback-and Use It

Another important way to elevate student voice is to ask for feedback. As much as we wish we could, we will never know what it really feels like to be a student in our classrooms, and our students hold many of the answers we seek. We can ask them for feedback throughout the year and (when feasible) implement their suggestions. Student feedback not only informs instruction, it conveys that we value their insight, and that their voices are at the center of the work that we do.

When we listen to and honor our students, we can show them that their voices can be powerful instruments of learning for themselves and others-and levers of change in their classrooms and beyond.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Simple Ways to Promote Student Voice in the Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Giving students some say over what happens in class can promote engagement and a strong sense of community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Online instructors need to be intentional about creating a sense of presence in their courses so that students know that somebody is leading their educational experience. According to Larry Ragan, director of instructional design and development for Penn State’s World Campus, this sense of presence consists of three dimensions:

Persona—This consists of the instructor’s personality, teaching style, and interests—all the characteristics that go into the students’ impression of the instructor.

Social—This refers to the connections instructors make with the students and those that students make with each other to build a learning community.

Instructional—This is the role the instructor plays in guiding students through the learning process.

The need for instructor presence
“In the face-to-face classroom, we don’t actually have to think too much about being present because we’re there—it’s a physical thing. In the online space there is no physicality. I’m not there physically. I don’t see people eye to eye. We may not even be in the same time zone. So how do I convey to the students that there is somebody who is participating, who is a leader in this educational experience?” Ragan says.

A lack of presence can have negative consequences for the learner. As an online learner, Kim Eke, director of Teaching and Learning Interactive at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, experienced a lack of instructor presence. “When professors didn’t seem present, it had a big effect on my satisfaction. I thought, well, they don’t care,” says Eke.

This sense of presence is particularly important for students enrolled solely in online programs, as opposed to on-campus students who take occasional online courses. “For those individuals who are pursuing a degree or certificate in a wholly online environment, the faculty member becomes the connection to that institution. The faculty member is the glue that holds this system together, and so for a student it’s really important to get to know the faculty member at some level. I say at some level because it may vary,” Ragan says. “Maybe the 18-to-22-year-olds aren’t really interested in this idea of learning community. They might say ‘I’ve got that covered. I’ve got my friends. I don’t need my instructional experience to also contain that dimension.’ Whereas the [solely, often adult] online learner may feel isolated from the experience, from the physical dimension of your university.”

Designing for presence
The sense of instructor presence is created through a combination of instructional design and delivery. Videos, photos, narratives—depending on one’s comfort level with the medium—can help create this sense of presence in advance of course delivery. “You can invest a little bit of time and energy in the design phase, say, in the summer prior to putting your course online, developing a nice introduction—this is who I am. Maybe it’s a video. Maybe it’s just a narrative. Whatever vehicle you are most comfortable using. You can invest the time and energy to get the photos right or get a video clip done right and so forth so that when you’re in teaching mode you’re not saying, ‘Shoot, I’d better create something that establishes my persona,’” Ragan says.

Eke cautions against getting enamored of too much technology. “Keep things simple. I would never advocate using all the technologies… The idea is to identify the gaps in your course. Is there something I can do to add a little bit to the community? You don’t have to go whole hog and overboard. Just figure out what makes sense for you and your course.”

Ragan says that faculty members can make technology decisions on their own, but it helps to get input from others, preferably an IT professional or an instructional designer, on what is appropriate for the course and how it might contribute to the learning experience.

Evidence of engagement
When a course is in session, students need to see “evidence of engagement” such as announcements, discussion board posts, and uploads of photos or videos on the part of the instructor, Ragan says. It’s not enough to log in and monitor a course. Instructors need to show that they are active in the course.

Learning management systems can provide some useful data an instructor can use to gauge his or her presence, such as frequency and duration of logging in to a course. Ragan envisions an LMS dashboard that provides instructors (and perhaps a mentor or supervisor) with this data on a regular basis to help the instructor manage his or her presence. “It’s a little Big Brotherish, but I think the capabilities are there for us to begin doing that. I think we’re called as good teachers to be more aware of establishing that teaching presence and making sure that we’re [serving] the need of the students to have us visible,” Ragan says.

Using data analytics in this manner can provide some useful quantitative feedback, but it’s also important to look at qualitative data as well. An indirect way of gauging instructors’ presence is the type of questions coming from students.

More directly, instructors can ask students for feedback throughout the course. “I think in the online environment we have to be more intentional about reaching out and asking those questions, such as ‘How’s it going?’ or ‘How am I doing?’” Ragan says.

You can build in low-stakes evaluation feedback and higher-stakes elements as well. Feedback can be anonymous. For example, at the end of a unit you might ask, “Was this information clear, or were there any points you didn’t understand?”

You also can ask questions specifically about your role as instructor, such as:

Is the timeliness of my responses helpful?

Are the types of responses you’re getting helpful?

Is there anything else I could be doing to help you?

“The students so much appreciate just being asked,” Ragan says.

Excerpted from Creating a Sense of Instructor Presence in the Online Classroom, Online Classroom, 12.10 (2012): 1,3,5.

Post Views: 12,305

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Creating a Sense of Instructor Presence in the Online Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Online instructors need to be intentional about creating a sense of presence in their courses so that students know that somebody is leading their educational experience. According to Larry Ragan, director of instructional design and development for Penn State's World Campus, this sense of presence consists of three dimensions: Persona-This consists of the instructor's personality, teaching style, and interests-all the characteristics that go into the students' impression of the instructor.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The thought ended almost before it started: "This is so overwhelming." It was all one teacher managed to type before she stopped short, vexed into silence, perhaps, by the sheer size of the problem. In the pregnant pause that followed, undoubtedly, every teacher tracking the unspooling thread-about the dizzying, rapidly escalating viral crisis that was closing schools across the country-recognized the chasm they were all facing as well, and took a deep breath.

In the next few hours, over 500 teachers joined two Facebook conversations about teaching during the coronavirus pandemic, spilling out their concerns and anxieties: What will we do if the schools close for months? How can I shift to online learning if we're closing tomorrow, or even in a few hours? How will special education students be cared for, and IEPs administered? What about children who have no internet access, or who will be required, as Keith Schoch thoughtfully noted, to "become de facto babysitters" for their brothers and sisters. "There is no digital divide, but there is a digital abyss, and America's rural poor are living at the bottom of it," said Anne Larsen, with devastating concision. What if, in the end, the school systems decide that online learning is working just fine, and never reopen?

The panic was all perfectly understandable.

But there were plenty of teachers in the mix who had weeks of crisis experience under their belts by that time-several in Hong Kong and Italy and the state of Washington, for example-and others who had long careers in online and distance learning. In the end, too, there were many fantastic, highly creative teachers providing strategies as fast as the obstacles appeared.

At the highest level, a shift in mindset would be required-even the most optimistic educators conceded the point. There are plenty of strategies and tactics we're covering at Edutopia-and we'll continue to-but here are the crucial emotional and psychological scaffolds that our audience agreed would be needed to teach in this new paradigm.

Expect Trial... and Plenty of Error

Start by being reasonable with yourself. It is, in fact, impossible to shift to distance learning overnight without lots of trial and error. Expect it, plan for it, and do your best to make peace with it.

"I can tell you, now that we're in week 7 of online learning, that much of what you will do will be trial and error," wrote Stacy Rausch Keevan, who was teaching in Hong Kong. "Don't stress about that-it won't do you any good. For my middle school English and humanities classes, I'm offering the same lessons I would normally do live, but in smaller doses."

Acknowledge the Extraordinary

Reset your baseline. We're all operating in the shadow of a global pandemic, and it is disorienting and limiting. Business as usual is unrealistic.

The real "points to consider" are not "the strict adherence to 'regular' conditions and norms," wrote Amy Rheault-Heafield in a reply to a question about how to structure distance learning like more typical learning experiences, "but how to provide a rich experience to all learners who are now without 'traditional' teachers standing beside them in classes."

So while you should try to provide "meaningful activities," cautioned elementary teacher John Thomas, "we should remember that on short notice-and because many of us have limited PD utilizing these tools-we can't tackle everything immediately. In other words, we should give ourselves the time and the permission to figure this out."

Reduce the Workload (for Yourself and Your Students)

If your district allows it, you should plan to do less. Students won't be able to work as productively, anyway-so if you can't scale back you'll be sending them work they cannot do-and your own life and family need added care.

"Feedback from students and families over the last 10 days in Italy is 'less is more,'" commented Jo Gillespie. "Consider that parents are trying to work from home, and siblings are vying for computer and Wi-Fi time. Try Google quizzes using Forms, a reading log, some short live sessions with teachers and classmates, maybe vocabulary extension, maths and geometry problems (but not too many). And that's probably enough."

And Keevan, the teacher in Hong Kong with weeks of experience, confirmed that time and distance play funny games during a crisis: "What would normally take you one class period to teach in the classroom will probably take you twice as long."

No Person Is an Island

Humans are social animals. Working from home, or worse, from quarantine, is isolating and often depressing for both teachers and students.

Make a concerted effort to speak to other colleagues and trusted professionals to provide emotional and psychological context to your work. Teaching at this moment is extraordinarily hard, and you'll need the virtual company of people who are experiencing what you are.

And don't forget to "reach out to students as often as you can," said Keevan, who still teaches classes live despite a (slightly inconvenient!) 13-hour time difference. Or you can facilitate peer-to-peer communication. John Thomas assigns pen pals in his first- and second-grade classes, so that kids with no internet can feel like they belong.

Everyone Thinks They Can't-Before They Can

Some degree of pessimism and self-doubt comes with the territory. Teachers in the Facebook thread advised more perspective-taking and being more patient with yourself: You know how to teach, and you will figure this out in time.

"We are in week 7 and I have three children of my own at home," wrote Salecia Host, a teacher in Tianjin, China, reflecting on the arc of her emotional response to the crisis. "Just take it day by day. It gets less overwhelming and more routine."

Try to remain calm-though you'll have a few moments where that goes out the window-and keep plugging away: "Being open-minded and flexible is key," said Kaz Wilson, who also works in China. "Everyone thinks you can't until you pause, talk it out with folks who are doing it, and know that you'll get through it."

Mind the Gap

Your work will be hard, but there are students facing more severe challenges. Students with no internet or no computer will need support, as will those with learning differences or other circumstances that make distance learning especially difficult. Supporting these students was on almost everyone's mind-it came up dozens of times in the Facebook thread.

"I'm in Italy. Our schools closed a few weeks ago without any previous warning. We shifted to online immediately. It is hard and exhausting," admitted Eleonora Borromeo, before providing a ray of hope. "Equity is an issue. Assessment is an issue. But the students are doing their best and giving us the strength to go on."

Solutions from our audience of teachers focused on the old analog approaches: paper-and-pencil tasks, workbooks and activity packets that can be mailed home, and updating parents and students via phone calls daily.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching Through a Pandemic: A Mindset for This Moment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The thought ended almost before it started: "This is so overwhelming." It was all one teacher managed to type before she stopped short, vexed into silence, perhaps, by the sheer size of the problem.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
15 Strategies for Online Learning When School is Closed

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We have outlined 15 strategies to help guide your thinking in creating online learning environments for students when the physical school building is closed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
GOA's Leadership Roundtable gathered a panel of experts and 65 school leaders to discuss a post-COVID education landscape.

School leaders need to connect with and empower their teachers.

This is the time for leadership to capture how educators have navigated this experience and broadened their classroom resources, teaching strategies, and creative communication practices. Michael Nachbar said "the role of the administrator as a pollinator and as a catcher of ideas" is critical.

Teachers have been called on to design for learning and build relationships with students in a distinctly different way in a short amount of time. They have become the face of the school for families, as both a partner for parents and the primary resource and advocate for students in the learning process. As teachers continue supporting their students online, fostering faculty connections and the opportunity to hear firsthand what is working online and what new ideas are emerging requires a more deliberate approach on behalf of school leaders.

Developing a "continuity of learning" plan is critical to the stability and success of schools.

Mark Milliron said one of the major conversations taking shape in education right now is centered around accreditation, regulation, and licensure. The continuity of service standard will likely be a focus for accrediting institutions in the next few years, requiring schools to expand online learning operations and build on learning management systems, digital resources, and communication strategies. "We're going to be pushed, as leaders, to start showing our work around whether or not we have the digital capacity to continue learning and to continue supporting our students."

It's time to shift and design for equity.

The issue of equity has intensified in the wake of COVID-19. Schools have had to evaluate how to increase access to learning for students, or they have had to determine how learning can be achieved offline and without digital resources. Nicole Furlonge said she was "struck by this moment where things that are just taken for granted have become the center of the conversation." This is an opportunity for school leaders to determine how to increase access by evaluating financial capacity, build on their digital infrastructure, and address the needs this crisis has heightened. "We've been treating digital connections as a private luxury, as opposed to a public good," Mark Milliron said. "This is a public good issue much like the rural electrification project or the interstate highway system. We, as educators, need to sound the call on that and be part of the larger conversation."

"How do we assess?" needs an answer, now more than ever.

The conversations surrounding pedagogy, best practices, and equity for students all revealed the critical need for rethinking assessment. "Assessment is taking the stage front and center," Nicole Furlonge said. "It pops up in every conversation I've had, whether you're a lower school educator or a head of school." At every division and age level, teachers have to discover new ways to measure learning and new methods to determine each student's level of engagement and understanding. The question, "How do we assess? " is essential to the conversation now and when we return to brick-and-mortar school.

Recent events highlight what can be done if we work as a collaborative community.

Both Nicole Furlonge and Stephanie Rogen spoke about the need for educators to shift from an autonomous mindset to a collaborative one, where teachers work together to enhance learning experiences for all students. "Teaching has not normally been seen as a team sport," Stephanie said "Until we learn as educators to share in the design and facilitation of learning experiences in a very deep and authentic way, we are limiting what we can do." The move online is the result of a proactive, collaborative push during a crisis. School leaders can now take the opportunity to drive forward this shared work and practice across departments and divisions for the long-term, and, as Nicole highlighted, this may be the way to dismantle silos that form in schools.

Image courtesy of Kawai Lai.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The New Normal: Five Insights from GOA's COVID-19 Leadership Roundtable

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
School leaders need to connect with and empower their teachers. This is the time for leadership to capture how educators have navigated this experience and broadened their classroom resources, teaching strategies, and creative communication practices. Michael Nachbar said "the role of the administrator as a pollinator and as a catcher of ideas" is critical.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Students and teachers too often fall into the trap of cranking out work, earning or awarding grades and moving on. Unfortunately, this leaves all parties feeling more urgency than agency when it comes to the work they do and the way they do it. In the worst cases, school becomes about completion and compliance rather than engendering the sense of empowerment and exploration we long for.

Liz Coleman has contrasted this kind of "treadmill" education to what she calls "education as an adventure." One of the tools that GOA teachers keep near at hand for dismantling the urgency treadmill is reflection. Let's look at three features of outstanding reflective learning experiences from our online courses.

Embrace metacognition: Ask students to think about how they think.

We know that reflecting on our own thinking (metacognition) and our approach to learning is among the most powerful paths to deeper learning. According to Dutch psychologist Marcel Veenman, metacognitive skills are an even better indicator of learning success than IQ. What's more, by designing opportunities for reflection, teachers invite students to hold themselves accountable for the learning and for charting their own path forward. We should be asking our students what a given learning experience was like for them, how they thought through a particular problem, and what approaches have been successful (or unsuccessful).

David Peabody (GOA & University Prep teacher) leverages metacognition to its fullest in his Power Lab course. Becoming an independent learner is a heavy lift for a lot of adolescents. David asks students to reflect on their approach to the learning using a weekly self assessment of their online presence. By requiring a self-assessment rubric with a video narrative, David shepherds students toward thoughtful, honest reflection that deepens learning. Among other things, students ask themselves if they have been using data to substantiate their claims, if they have effectively applied power frameworks to the world around them, and how they would compare their current learning strategies to those they have used in the past.

Promote Linkage: Ask students to connect ideas to their lives.

Carey Pohanka (GOA and St. Christopher's School teacher) takes a similar approach in her Advocacy course, though she explicitly asks students to consider relationships between and among course concepts. Strong reflective experiences (like Carey's) ask students what patterns they see developing, how what they are learning now relates to what they studied last month, and what overarching systems of thought can they see in the discipline. Carey asks students to think about key ideas from the first five weeks of the course, thus inviting them to draw connections and seek patterns.

The idea that both Carey and David seize upon is to use reflection as a tool that encourages students to pick their heads up, take a step back from the requirements of a particular assignment (aka, "the treadmill"), and think about the course, their work and their goals in a broader context. After all, if it's instructructive to articulate relationships between concepts, it's doubly important for students to anchor those concepts in their lives. As Advocacy student Jaclyn, a 12th-grader at Lake Highland Preparatory School, said: "Being able to understand ourselves is the first step in being able to understand others."

Reflect Forward: Ask students to set goals based on feedback.

It's both counterintuitive and plain-as-day that the main purpose of reflection in learning is to project students forward toward their goals. Jamie Suzuki (GOA and Greens Farms Academy teacher) asks students to do a mid-semester reflection and goal-setting activity. Jamie's Organic Chemistry students analyze the feedback she has given them and then post a public reflection articulating a learning outcome on which they hope to improve. Jesse, a 12th-grader at Hong Kong International School is clearly using the reflection designed into this course to effectively set and attain his goals. Jesse says:

Looking back on the last month, I think my initial goal to improve my independence and organization has worked. In our most recent module, I was able to complete all the assignments and projects on time. My next goal [...] is to improve my collaboration with other students. I plan to do this by contributing earlier in discussions and communicating with my group partners as soon as possible.

Not only does the experience require Jesse and his classmates to digest their feedback, but it's forward-looking and inspires a sense of community and agency as they give supportive advice to help one another attain their goals.

By focusing on the learning process, recognizing patterns and connecting their reflections to their personal learning goals, these teachers are pushing beyond compliance toward deeper, more personalized learning. The reflective cultures each of them has created routinely encourage students to step back from the day-to-day work of the course and think about where they have come from and where they are going. In Learn Better, Ulrich Boser observes:

There's an odd thing about rethinking our learning: It makes learning a type of endless process. If we're always reassessing what we know, we're never going to stop deliberating. We're never going to stop reflecting.

By thoughtfully incorporating reflection experiences into our classes, we invite our students into the "endless process" that is life-long learning. In Liz Coleman's terms, GOA teachers ask their students to step off the treadmill and chart their own learning adventure.

To explore further, visit our Resource Library for Blended and Online Teachers.
Global Online Academy (GOA) offers high quality online, blended, and in person learning experiences for students and educators. Professional learning opportunities are open to any educator. To sign up or to learn more, see our Professional Learning Opportunities for Educators or email hello@GlobalOnlineAcademy.org with the subject title "Professional Learning." Follow us on Twitter @GOALearning. To stay up to date on GOA opportunities, sign up for our newsletter here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
3 Ways Online Reflection Promotes Learner Agency in an Age of Urgency

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Students and teachers too often fall into the trap of cranking out work, earning or awarding grades and moving on. Unfortunately, this leaves all parties feeling more urgency than agency when it comes to the work they do and the way they do it. In the worst cases, school becomes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
CBL in Action: Heather walks through how she sets up choice for an inquiry-based project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What does it mean to be a successful online student? How do you know if you've designed a successful online learning experience?

Online environments have transformed education. The ease and sophistication of technology have put more control in the hands of individuals when it comes to making choices about what, when, where, and how we learn. This new environment demands we develop new learning habits, habits that might look different from those we developed in more traditional environments where the time, space, and pace of learning was defined for us.

GOA's focus on relational, learner-centered design has taught us a lot about how we learn online. Whether you're an online student or a designer of online learning experiences, these habits should be at the forefront of your mind.

Be steady and reliable

The flexibility of online learning is one of its most appealing features: you can design your own routine. What's critical, however, is that you have a routine. Online courses often fall victim to "out of sight, out of mind" syndrome: more visible, more pressing obligations can keep pushing online learning to the bottom of our to-do lists. Especially in interactive, collaborative courses, where classmates and teachers will be counting on you to complete your share of group projects and keep interactions lively, your ability to "show up" often and with purpose can play a role in the overall quality of the experience.

Ensure course notifications go to the device you use most (computer, phone, tablet) in the format you prefer (email, text, alert).

Leverage your digital calendar to designate times and reminders to engage with your course. Each week, set at least three "check-in's" of 15 minutes or so just to respond to messages and interact with others. Set two longer, focused blocks of time to complete project work.

Post a colorful reminder on your computer or in your workspace (maybe the above infographic!) as an everyday reminder of your online learning work.

Be active

It's easy to "lurk" when you're online; in fact, most of our online behavior falls into the lurking category: we scroll through a few websites, maybe click on a few links, watch a video or two. Two problems with lurking in online learning: it's passive and it's invisible. Well-designed online courses will ask you to do more than consume knowledge, they'll ask you to make it. Not only will your work contributing to discussions and sharing your work help you and others learn better, it will make you an active member of the course community. Set a simple goal for every time you log in: leave an artifact to make your presence known. Participate in a discussion, send a message, or share an assignment or project.

Download the mobile versions of online tools to ensure you can communicate and participate from anywhere, at any time.

Use browser bookmarks to make sure your online course is visible and easily accessible every time you go online.

Be playful

Learning can be - and should be - fun. The increasing sophistication and versatility of digital environments make creative, imaginative work not only possible, but necessary. The best online learning experiences should be immersive and multisensory: you're not just "doing work," you're interacting, sharing, collaborating, and creating.

Learn the multimedia capabilities of your course. How do you share video, audio, or images? Learn how to integrate media and links into your course submissions to enliven your argument, raise a new point, or just make a classmate smile.

Leverage a mobile device to add variety to your course contributions. Submit a discussion post as a video recorded in your favorite place. If you prefer analog tools like pen and paper for thinking and brainstorming, take photos of your notes and share them with the class.

Leverage social media and chat tools to connect personally with your classmates and instructor.

Be resilient

You'll face challenges. Successful online learning demands a different set of skills than traditional classroom environments, with the added challenge of not sharing the same space (or maybe even the same time zone) as your teacher and classmates. Online courses should provide you with clear and varied pathways to find help. Familiarize yourself with them. Make time and a sincere effort to help yourself before asking for help. This is how you build the resilience to successfully learn and master new technology.

Bookmark help resources for your course.

Do not fear the Google search: it is very unlikely you are the first person to face a tech issue. See if others online have shared and solved your issue.

Find a "buddy," either someone in your course or in your life who can be a reliable source of support, both technical and personal.

Many online courses fail because they don't acknowledge or provide the time and space for learners to build these habits. Whether you're participating in, leading, or designing an online learning experience, your ability to build these habits could be the difference that makes the experience meaningful for all.
Global Online Academy (GOA) offers high quality online, blended, and in person learning experiences for students and educators. Professional learning opportunities are open to any educator. To sign up or to learn more, see our Professional Learning Opportunities for Educators or email hello@GlobalOnlineAcademy.org with the subject title "Professional Learning." To stay up to date on GOA opportunities, sign up for our newsletter here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Four Habits of Successful Online Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What does it mean to be a successful online student? How do you know if you've designed a successful online learning experience? Online environments have transformed education. The ease and sophistication of technology have put more control in the hands of individuals when it comes to making choices about what

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this series, James M. Lang argues that simple changes in our pedagogy - in things like course design, classroom practices, and communication with students - can have a powerful impact on student learning.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
[Shared] Relationships by Design Playlist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
[Shared] Relationships By Design Slide Deck [Learning Design Summit 2019]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
[Shared] Tips for Student Support in Online Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
All data is a snapshot in time, but that is especially important to keep in mind for this set of data, when most respondents said their policies are in flux. Compared to their online schedules, schools had fewer documents and samples of grading policies to share, in many cases because those policies have not yet been written.

Prior to moving online, 80% of respondents reported letter or numeric grades,. A number of schools cited other modes of grading and assessment (International Baccalaureate's 1-7 scale, standards-based grading, etc.). Only one school reported not giving grades before moving online.

Of the 89 respondents, 14 (16%) reported a definitive adoption of a Pass/Fail, Pass/No Pass, or Pass/Incomplete system once they moved online. Twelve of those schools are high schools or have high school divisions. Eight of those schools said they would use the policy for the time the school is learning online, while six said it would be their policy for the entire term, whether or not the entire term is spent online.

While most schools (66%) said their current plans involve reporting grades of some kind, a significant subset of those schools said they 1) had made adjustments to normal grading policies given the sudden move online and 2) were open to changing their grading policies as they spend more time learning remotely. Three of these schools said that they were waiting for more guidance from scholarship providers and college admissions offices before finalizing their policies.

Key Trends

When asked for the rationale for their grading policies, schools shared responses that fell into three main categories.

Compassion

Among schools who plan to report letter or numeric grades, many are adjusting internal practices to what one respondent called "compassionate grading." Six schools said they have adopted or are considering adopting a "do no harm" grading policy where students' final grades from the previous term are set as a floor, and students can only raise those averages through work done while learning online, not lower them. For one example of what this policy might look like, see Lakeside School's March 26, 2020, letter to Upper School students. The Lovett School is taking a different approach: offering the option to move from numeric to letter grades.

For schools who have not officially changed how they are reporting or calculating grades, there is still an overall effort to lower the stakes with assessments. Three schools said they have canceled or are considering canceling final exams. Others have made the general request to teachers that they be flexible with assignment deadlines. Other schools have adopted language similar to St. Christopher's School's directive to prioritize formative assessment.

Equity

Schools that have made the shift from numeric/letter grades to a Pass/Fail or similar format cited equity as a concern.

"We did not wish to hold students accountable in a high stakes way when even our most experienced faculty are, with respect to distance learning tools, novice teachers and designers. Also: we are working hard to provide every student with what they need to learn but cannot guarantee equity in resources and access. Finally, we expect high levels of stress all around as families are packed in small spaces, face economic insecurity, and deal with illness directly or through loved ones. No students or faculty need more stress than that!" said Dana Kooistra, Director of Teaching, Learning, and External Partnerships at The Lawrenceville School.

Citing similar concerns about the "newness" of the format and circumstances, Oregon Episcopal School sent this letter to students and families about its pass/fail policy.

Justin Cerenzia, Dean of Teaching & Learning and Director of the Merck Center for Teaching at St. George's School, focused more specifically on the relationship between assessment and grading: "If we grade students now, we're not measuring learning. We're measuring their home environment-and that's inherently inequitable. And, we've worked hard to limit those barriers (sending hot spots to families in need, etc.) but we have international students in quarantine at home with no access and firewall issues. It would be ridiculous to suggest grades reflect learning at this point."

Rigor

Rigor and motivation came up in rationales for keeping a letter or numeric grading system while learning online.

Jen Sciortino, Director of Academic Excellence at Metairie Park Country Day School, said the school was reporting grades "to keep with a routine and to keep our students motivated... however, we are granting leniency with due dates and expectations because we recognize this is not an equitable learning situation for all."

"We want to preserve both the rigor of our program and motivation for students to work hard even though it feels like they are 'not at school' anymore," said Gregory Cooper, Upper School Dean of Studies at Ransom Everglades School. "Our teachers are largely working to replicate our in-school curriculum as much as possible, and although some of our assessment approaches might differ slightly, we did not see a need to alter our approach to grading."

Dean Van Doleweerd, Assistant Head-Academics at Lakefield College School, said his school's decision to keep reporting grades but with more flexibility and forgiveness achieved six goals: "1. Maintain community as the central element of the school experience. 2. Minimize change for students, parents, and teachers. 3. Maintain high expectations 4. Recognize that valuable and excellent work will still be completed at this time, while also recognizing that individual circumstances will make this more and less possible (for everyone in our community). 5. Create a sense of opportunity about the weeks ahead. 6. Remove as much threat from the process as possible."

What's Next: A New Normal?

Reviewing the schedules and grading policies of 89 schools didn't offer a clear, singular approach to remote/online/distance learning, nor should it have. These schools are based around the world, serve a variety of students and families, and are facing an unprecedented global health crisis. Improvisation, responsiveness, and customization are to be expected.

It's impossible, however, not to notice that many of the design elements schools are adopting right now align with pre-COVID conversations about learner-centered shifts in education: creativity about use of time and space, expanded notions of what and how to assess, leveraging online spaces for personalized and student-led learning, and institutional decisions driven by flexibility, wellness, sustainability, compassion, equity, and rigor. Whereas before COVID-19 these were changes we hoped for or were experimenting with, they are now actions many schools believe they must take, can take, and are taking.
Recommended Resources This is the second post of a two-part series on scheduling and grading during COVID-19. You can read Part One, on schedules, . Visit GOA's COVID-19 landing page for our latest resources, offerings, and events. To learn more about our approach to online learning, explore our Student Program and Professional Learning offerings.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Compassion, Equity, Rigor: GOA's Review of Grading Policies for Learning Online

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
All data is a snapshot in time, but that is especially important to keep in mind for this set of data, when most respondents said their policies are in flux. Compared to their online schedules, schools had fewer documents and samples of grading policies to share, in many cases because those policies have not yet been written.