It wasn't until I was half-way through giving a wicked long (Go BoSox!) presentation to teachers this fall on how to best personalize learning for students when it hit me - I may bore them to death. I wasn't just worried about being boring - I was also worried about varying levels of readiness, the lack of choice affecting buy-in, and the fact that it was a weeeee bit hypocritical to be talking about personalizing learning in what was essentially a lecture with some turn and talk.
Luckily for me, I get the chance to work with a really talented crack team of learning facilitators. (I am also lucky to be a member of a really innovative department, and I have access to Sara Wilkie's brain.) My team was willing to dream with me about what this professional learning could look like. We have made so many changes, and I can say that our greatest strength is our ability to be responsive to the feedback from teachers, and to continuously evolve. During our more formal learning days with teachers, we limit our talk time, provide essential questions to frame our conversations, offer work time, and have a slew of choice breakout session options with strategies that can be implemented in the classroom the next day. We just had an awesome day with middle school teachers today, where in addition to great conversation, we also welcomed 20 local high school students to share their perspective with us.
With all of this in mind, and in a hope to continue evolving, we have worked on developing a badge based learning system. After picking the brains of talented educators such as Jeff Zoul and Pete Helfers, I knew that was a direction I wanted to explore. While we aren't requiring teachers to earn a badge at this time, we are utilizing the steps in the process, and the resources to allow teachers to explore areas of interest. Some are choosing to earn their badge along the way, and we hope to expand its use in the future.
We have spent a lot of time making this a useful tool for teachers - writing learning targets and rubrics, putting together the best research and resources. I'm proud to share our thinking and work with other educators, and we look forward to continuing down the path of personalizing professional learning.
Check it out! www.D25Learns.weebly.com
Luckily for me, I get the chance to work with a really talented crack team of learning facilitators. (I am also lucky to be a member of a really innovative department, and I have access to Sara Wilkie's brain.) My team was willing to dream with me about what this professional learning could look like. We have made so many changes, and I can say that our greatest strength is our ability to be responsive to the feedback from teachers, and to continuously evolve. During our more formal learning days with teachers, we limit our talk time, provide essential questions to frame our conversations, offer work time, and have a slew of choice breakout session options with strategies that can be implemented in the classroom the next day. We just had an awesome day with middle school teachers today, where in addition to great conversation, we also welcomed 20 local high school students to share their perspective with us.
With all of this in mind, and in a hope to continue evolving, we have worked on developing a badge based learning system. After picking the brains of talented educators such as Jeff Zoul and Pete Helfers, I knew that was a direction I wanted to explore. While we aren't requiring teachers to earn a badge at this time, we are utilizing the steps in the process, and the resources to allow teachers to explore areas of interest. Some are choosing to earn their badge along the way, and we hope to expand its use in the future.
We have spent a lot of time making this a useful tool for teachers - writing learning targets and rubrics, putting together the best research and resources. I'm proud to share our thinking and work with other educators, and we look forward to continuing down the path of personalizing professional learning.
Check it out! www.D25Learns.weebly.com