Rationale

In my three years as a teacher, I have been constantly searching for and experimenting with new strategies for greater student engagement and meaning. With the passage of Act 77 in 2013, the same thing was mandated of all Vermont teachers. In order to prepare our students to be productive and successful citizens in a constantly changing, globalized society, Act 77 calls for each student’s educational experience to be personalized. The Three Pillars of Personalization outlined by Act 77 call for Flexible Pathways (greater student choice and voice both inside and outside the classroom), Proficiency-based grading (teaching and assessing transferable life skills), and Personal Learning Plans (meaningful goals set by each student, with a plan to achieve them). “As a result, Vermont has become a veritable laboratory of different modes of personalization” (Bishop, Downes, and Nagle, 2017). This fall, my classroom will function as a laboratory of personalization. The experiment: How can the Three Pillars of Personalization increase engagement in an interdisciplinary unit?

Upon introduction, the Three Pillars of Personalization are clearly components of a meaningful educational experience. Only a skillful, thoughtful, and versatile educator can synthesize all three into an effective unit. I have integrated each of the three pillars, but never all at the same time. For this project, I plan to create a unit that does just that. Last year, I taught an Ethnography unit inspired by The Vermont Folklife Center’s Summer Institute. While the students seemed to enjoy the unit and get a lot out of it, I feel that it could have been a little more meaningful and far-reaching. My plan is to rewrite this unit, and teach it again this fall. However, there are a few key differences I plan to implement. In order to provide for a high level of student engagement, this unit will have:

• Interdisciplinary Teaching - In speaking with the English teacher on my team (Jon Potts), we found there was a lot of overlap between his curriculum and mine. This unit will be taught in both my Social Studies class as well as the English class, with instruction that is complementary
• Proficiency-Based Assessment - meaningful skills-based grading
• Personal Learning Plan integration
• Flexible Pathways - various options to show proficiency

Interdisciplinary Learning

In a nutshell, life on Earth is interdisciplinary. For a variety of reasons, modern education should be as well. Perhaps most importantly, “there are pressing social problems (crime, poverty, AIDS) that cannot be resolved by a single disciplinary perspective” (DeZure, 1999). As far as students are concerned, something is only worth learning within the classroom if it goes beyond the classroom. As a teacher, it is my job to help build those connections between my curriculum and the real world, as well as other disciplines.

The Ethnography unit I plan to teach this fall fits perfectly into a twenty-first century Social Studies curriculum. However, it will involve students going into the community to interview people about a variety of issues. These issues could be either locally or globally significant. They could be historical or modern. In any case, they will be interdisciplinary. For example, if a student chooses to do a project on the importance of the ski industry to the Mad River Valley, this project may include history, economics, and earth science, all integrated through the use of English and communication skills. They may use their understanding of ethnography and historical inquiry--learned in Social Studies--to reach out into the community, then interview a variety of people using communication skills learned in English and Social Studies. They may then catalogue and storyboard audio recorded during those interviews into a nonfiction narrative in English class. Then, they may edit it all together into a podcast using previously-learned skills.

Jon and I have a moveable wall between our classrooms. In the beginning of this unit, we will teach complimentary lessons within our own classrooms. As the unit progresses toward the technological portion of the summative project, we will open this wall into full Humanities class. Not only is this practical, but this co-teaching will provide students with a model of interdisciplinary collaboration, a model that parallels the student-community collaboration we hope to foster. In the end, a high level of student engagement will be the desired result of this interdisciplinary collaboration.

Proficiency-Based Assessment

In the past, a student would earn credit for the time they spent in the classroom, often told to do very specific things for a very specific outcome. With the advent of Act 77, Vermont educators are making the shift to proficiency-based assessment. Now, students work is to be “assessed through a proficiency-based assessment system that evaluates achievement on selected Vermont Transferrable Skills and Education Quality Standards for personal and academic development” (Bishop et al, 2017). While many once assessed trivial things that had no bearing on future outcomes, we must now assess skills that will transfer between disciplines and to life after graduation, an approach that makes education more meaningful.

At Harwood Union Middle School, we have been assessing based on proficiencies for one school year. The shift into this new system has required a lot of time, effort, and a major shift and mindset for all involved. I myself have struggled with choosing from and interpreting some of the performance indicators. Fortunately, we have culled all the performance indicators from the Vermont Transferable Skills, content standards, and Harwood’s Habits of Work into ten proficiencies, all a part of the new Harwood Learning Expectations. In this upcoming school year, I will only assess around ten performance indicators (at least three times each to show progress). This will allow students build those connections between social studies and other present and future disciplines. One of the performance indicators I plan to assess is “demonstrate organized communication”. This indicator is clearly transferable, and can be shown in a variety of different ways.

Flexible Pathways

The principle behind Act 77’s Flexible Pathways is the idea that there are a variety of different paths toward a desirable outcome. “A student’s choice of his or her individual pathway will be built upon individual goals, learning styles, interests, and abilities” (Beattie, 2015). At the high school level, this means providing students with a variety of means toward graduation. This could include work study, internships, technical education, online classes, dual enrollment in college-level classes, and early college programs. In the middle school, the same principle follows with a little more structure. The emphasis is on choice.

For this project, every student will “demonstrate organized communication” based on at least one recorded interview they conducted with a community member. The topic they choose, the people they interview, and the format of presentation is entirely up to them. For example, many students will choose a topic related to the Mad River Valley since it will be scaffolded in a way that is community-based. However, this is not required, and if for instance a student wants to speak with their grandfather about their experience during the Vietnam War, they may do so. Once the audio (or video) is recorded, students may then choose from a variety of formats and levels of technology integration, all of which can demonstrate proficiency in communication. One student may do a nonfiction narrative audio piece with just their voice in the style of “The Moth” podcast. They may edit the audio in the style of an NPR news segment, either with or without their interview questioning, with or without a narrator. They may play this audio over a photo slideshow, or graphic novel style pictures they have drawn. They could create a whiteboard animation video or a documentary in the style of Ken Burns. They could do a full video interview with B-roll audio, video, images, and sound effects. They could combine some of the above approaches or come up with their own. Students will make these choices based on what interests them the most, and I believe that this emphasis on choice will make the project all the more engaging.

Personal Learning Plans

The third pillar of personalized learning, Personal Learning Plans, “complements [the] commitment to building key skills for lifelong, self-directed learning,” (Bishop et al, 2017), a commitment my team and I have taken on. Through this process, each student considers the person they want to become and the life they want to live, then they think about what goals they could set to put themselves on the path to getting there. Working with their parents, teachers, and other community members, they set goals and create a plan. Ideally, progress on these goals can be demonstrated in the classroom with evidence and reflection. In the end, each student ends the year having honed their self-direction skills, with an appreciation for the relevance and importance of what they have learned--at least in theory.

At Harwood, PLPs are something that we can do better on. In fact, while Jon is a part of my action plan, his action plan is to implement PLPs in a meaningful way, and I am a part of that as well. His plan, titled PLPs integrated into a Humanities model with the three pillars, seeks to link PLPs into our combined curriculum in a way that increases relevance and buy-in. To accommodate this, Jon also plans to experiment with negotiated curriculum, which means that students will focus their attention on work that is meaningful to them. As part of our plan, Jon and I will discuss how to integrate PLPs over the course of this unit.

Works Cited

Beattie, Helen. "Act 77: Flexible Pathways - Amplifying Learning in Vermont." Vermont General Assembly. State of Vermont, 5 Nov. 2015. Web. 13 July 2017.

Bishop, Penny, John Downes, and James Nagle. "How Personal Learning Is Working in Vermont." Educational Leadership 74.6 (2017): Educational Leadership: Getting Personalization Right:How Personal Learning Is Working in Vermont. ASCD, Mar. 2017. Web. 13 July 2017.

DeZure, Deborah. "Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning." Essays on Teaching Excellence 10.4 (1998-99): The Professional & Organizational Development Network in Higher Education. Web. 13 July 2017.