Episode Topic: Ashley Pursley and Danae Acker welcome back David Kelly to share his journey with personalized learning.

Introduction

You'll remember David Kelly from our previous iTalks Episode called The Empowered Educator. He shared his experience as an innovative learning coordinator in Berkeley County School District. Today, we will take a dive into his experience with personalized learning.

Tell us about your journey with personalized learning. How did you learn about it?

I started to explore personalized learning about four years ago. I presented at the ISTE conference with one of my friends who works in Atlanta on personalizing learning for students: Google vs. Microsoft. I started with the ISTE framework and explored the different components. I noticed we were already doing a lot of it, but I wanted to show how to do it using the Google products. In our presentation we shared strategies for making learning more personalized with the different tools from Microsoft and Google. That was the first time I started to dig deep and do some research into personalized learning.

Over the last couple of years, the South Carolina State Department came out with a framework that outlined the different components of personalized learning for South Carolina. That made it a little easier to communicate this idea to teachers. I've been able to work with a couple of teachers throughout my district to slowly but surely start to personalize learning in their classrooms.

This year is Berkeley County's exploration year, so we are just dipping our feet into the waters to figure out what works and doesn't work for our students.

Can you share the story of how you and a partner teacher worked together to implement personalized learning?

About two or three years ago I learned about the State Department's Framework. In July, I emailed the teacher to share this great idea we could do in her class for the new school year. We met at the library over the summer to discuss the idea; she was a little hesitant at first, but she was willing to take chances. Her biggest concern was the administration. She wanted to make sure that when her principal came in to do observations, there was an understanding about this new structure. She didn't want to "get in trouble" for doing this. So, we went to the school together to share the idea with the principal who was like, "I LOVE IT!" It didn't hurt that personalized learning was just shared at the principal's meeting the previous week. This principal understood that this was the direction the district was going, and she was on-board.

We met to discuss different ideas of how to implement personalized learning. The principal even told her teacher to re-do her whole room! The first month of school starting was the roughest because the kids needed to get acclimated to this new structure of how to do school. After the students and teacher got acclimated, she said it made her life a lot easier. She now has the time to meet with individual students and pull small groups. She still does whole group in the form of mini-lessons. After the fifteen minute mini-lesson, the students disperse to work on their own learning pathways. She reflected that she thought behavior was going to be a big issue, but she didn't have any behavior issues. Now the students are taking ownership of their learning. It's no longer, "I'm going to do this because you told me to." Instead, student are choosing to do this because they know what's best for them -- how they learn, what their interests are, and who they are as learners.

As a kid, myself, when I had an adult tell me to do something, it made me not want to do it. I didn't care about a grade! In school, especially in high school, I didn't feel like it worked for me. Sitting in class for an hour, listening to the teacher talk at me, it just didn't work. I knew how I learned and what worked, so I would just end up teaching myself later anyway. I would do well on tests, but didn't do any classwork.

Had personalized learning been the structure for you in high school, do you feel like you would've done a lot better?

Yes. I'm not making an excuse for not taking ownership of my learning, but it wasn't as much of an option. The teachers told me what to do, expected me to do it their way,, and regurgitate it right back to make a good grade.

You said the first month of implementing personalized learning was very challenging for the teacher. Was her mindset the barrier or was it the implementation that was challenging?

It was a combination of both. Those students had been doing school for 5-6 years, so they've been trained in the traditional education system for 6 years. We had to break that training in compliancy where the student waits for the teacher to tell him/her what to do. Instead, the teacher was trying to get the students to think for themselves using that metacognition to figure out how they think and learn.

As far as the challenge of implementation goes, anytime you do anything new, it's going to be a challenge. It wasn't just new for the kids; it was new for the teacher as well. We had to figure out the best ways to implement those different components for her students.

Some of our listeners might be hearing about personalized learning for the first time. Do you have any suggestions for people who are interested in beginning the journey with personalized learning?

I would suggest first to learn who your learners are and allow them to learn about themselves as learners. Most teachers give out a learner interest survey the first week or so of school, and then it goes in a file cabinet for the rest of the school year. I would suggest to actually use that information. How can that data be used during your instruction? How can you implement those student interests into your instruction? How can your students identify strategies to meet their learning needs?

Another piece to the puzzle is reflection. Give students opportunities to look back at who they were or who they thought they were the first day/week of school to compare with who they are now.

What are some of those questions I can put on a survey to collect the best data on my students?

What kinds of things are they interested in? Give them a learning styles survey to help you and them discover their preferred way of learning. Identifying their multiple intelligences is important as well. It's about looking at their strengths and weaknesses. It's also eye-opening to ask your students how they view school, so ask them, "How have your past experiences in school shaped how you view school?" Knowing what's going on at home is important -- it's not just academics, the learner profile is about the child as a whole. This document is not a static piece of paper; it's a dynamic document that you and the student work on together to evolve. The student should not be the same person they were three months ago; that constant reflection will help the student grow.

As the EdTech Coach, can you give us a tool that we could use as a reflection piece?

OneNote is an excellent tool that can be used for reflection. It's a digital notebook that the students can write in, record audio, and share with others. If you use Class Notebook, the teacher can create notebooks for your students and you would have access to all of their notebooks in one place. You can see all of their reflections and they can add more pages as they grow. You can also send out material and content through those notebooks. It's a great tool for just about anything you do. Those of use who are Google Apps for Education districts, can meet the same purpose with Google Slides.

A lot of the strategies you have discussed so far are applicable to elementary, middle, and high teachers. How can our primary grades teachers utilize personalized learning in their classrooms?

It's actually easiest for our primary teachers to utilize personalized learning because they are already doing components of it. The primary teachers already have small group instruction. They already have the students demonstrate their learning in a variety of different ways. So for those teachers, it's about moving from differentiation to personalization. In a differentiated environment, the learning is more teacher-driven with the teacher doing most of the work. In a personalized environment, the teacher looks for places to pass the control to the student so the students can take that ownership.

For our listeners who aren't sure if this is something they should implement in their classes this school year, what encouraging words do you have for them as they begin to explore personalized learning?

Well, I would have to quote the words of a famous philosopher named Ms. Frizzle. Take chances, make mistakes, get messy! You can't be afraid to do what's best for your kids. You have to step outside of your comfort zone so that not only you can grow, but also your students can grow. Students are stifled when teachers are not willing to step outside of their comfort zones. Most of the time our students will go beyond what we imagine they can do if we allow them to. Teachers can expect to grow from this journey as well, not just their students.