Scaling personalized learning at the district level may seem like a daunting task, and it is. But when the right conditions are put in place, schools can move beyond pockets of excellence to a truly personalized approach for every student. Building a vision with district stakeholders and creating a culture of innovation where everyone is encouraged to try new things and learn from failure while ensuring the transparency required for each person to understand their role in pursuing that vision are the foundation for aligning all aspects of the system behind your district's vision for personalized teaching and learning.

Drew Schantz, Associate Partner and Blog Author with EdElements leads the meeting and share the diagnostic “needs assessment” tool to help identify professional learning opportunities, consulting services, and other supports that might help their learning community move forward with personalized competency based learning.

Today, we expect every student to be ready for the challenges of the 21st century – to learn more, to master new technologies, and to apply what they have learned in authentic/real-world contexts. The phrases “deeper learning” and “critical and creative thinking” have generated varied descriptions of the skills, knowledge, and dispositions students must possess to be able to sit at the table of opportunity and succeed in life after high school. Deeper learning happens when students become actively immersed in challenging tasks that require them to critically examine information, transfer what they have learned, and expand upon that learning to creatively experiment and construct new knowledge and insights. This does not happen in classrooms where the primary focus is getting students to comply with the work we’ve assigned and get correct answers to problems with known answers.

High school students benefit from meaningful relationships with adults at school, and teachers can foster those ties in little ways every day.

Teachers can create positive learning experiences for students that combine assessment with agency, opportunity, and community building.

When students link clear learning intentions to “implementation intentions”—or plans to overcome expected obstacles—they are more likely to achieve their goals.

This article from ISTE explains how teachers can create a Makerspace at their school. A Makerspace is a place where learners can come together to create or invent things|either using traditional crafts or technology:.

Portrait of a graduate bulletin board with grade level I can statements|in student-friendly language.

Curiosity is the urge to explain the unexpected, to resolve uncertainty, or the urge to know more (Meta X Learning). Cognitive scientist Elizabeth Bonawitz suggests it “acts as a kind of filter you put over the world to help the mind decide what information to attend to. It’s a physiological response that helps drive action and decision-making to support learning.”

Two of the most important questions in designing, or redesigning, learning environments
are: How does learning happen? and How can we best create environments that support
learning? While empirical research has unearthed important insights and established agreedupon
models to help answer these questions, this research base is extensive, complex, and
often not honored by the design of traditional schools. To that end, our Designing for Learning
Primer aims to summarize the essence of what’s known about how learning happens in a way
that is digestible and actionable.Two of the most important questions in designing, or redesigning, learning environments
are: How does learning happen? and How can we best create environments that support
learning? While empirical research has unearthed important insights and established agreedupon
models to help answer these questions, this research base is extensive, complex, and
often not honored by the design of traditional schools. To that end, our Designing for Learning
Primer aims to summarize the essence of what’s known about how learning happens in a way
that is digestible and actionable.

Finding Your Path: A Navigation Tool for Scaling Personalized, Competency-Based Learning is designed to help learning communities understand the conditions for sustainable systems change and to develop and advance a strategic plan for district-wide transformation to personalized, competency-based learning.

“We’re at a key moment in human history that demands transformation|and transforming how we educate young people must be at the top of the list,” said Timothy Knowles|who became the 10th president of the Carnegie Foundation in 2021. “If it takes us 30 years to catch up to where we were before the pandemic|the United States is arguably in not just serious educational trouble|but serious social and economic trouble as well.”

Schools aren't that different from companies when it comes to the innovator's dilemma. The entities in their value networks may be different—consisting of parents, employee unions, voters, and government regulatory agencies instead of customers, suppliers, and investors—but the influence of their value networks nonetheless make it hard for them to adopt certain types of innovations.

There have been many debates in education I’ve been exposed to including those about blended learning, personalized learning, push-in interventions, block scheduling, math strategies, etc. With each of these debates, it’s too common for one group to try to debunk the evidence or practices of another group. Consistently in these debates, we hear caveats about the need for highly skilled teachers, better job-embedded professional development, and changes to teacher education programs. Once there’s some agreement about wanting to make a change, then there’s further discussion as to why it’s impossible due to bell schedules, lack of prep time, or change occurring in leadership and state policies. These common arguments often block the ability to make real transformational instructional shifts, but they are a way to overcome these barriers.

This post is the third in a five-part series on Lake County Schools in Florida. Begin with the district overview and follow along at these schools: South Lake High, Lost Lake Elementary, Sawgrass Bay Elementary, and Lake Windy Hill Middle.

A playbook for school administrators to engage their students and staff in consistently deep learning experiences aligned with Utah's Personalized Competency Based Learning initiative.

Over the years we have learned that PL myths seem to be a barrier. That’s why this year we went myth-busting. At our first all-day training, we decided to get out ahead of common concerns by addressing the top myths we’ve heard over the years. We did this by placing myths around the room, then asked staff to discuss and draw on their knowledge of best practices to bust myths. If we had identified something as a myth, we were setting it up for teachers to debunk the myth. We then asked various staff members to share which myths they were happy to bust. Below are some of the myths we came across during our workshop with teachers.

From the article - "Did students lose learning during the pandemic? Or did they replace the learning of facts and methods, the sort of rote learning that might bring success on a test, with knowledge and insights about the world, health challenges, global upheaval, exponential growth, technology and ways to help their families and navigate complex social situations?"

Slidedeck created by Drew Schantz, EdElements, for presentation at The 2023 Magellan Summit.

This document was created to build understanding and goals as the district continues to move toward the vision of “personalized learning for all”. This is not an evaluative document but rather one that recognizes the many small moves required to provide a personalized learning experience for all students