All or Something?

Most supporters of progress tend to fall into one of two main camps. In one camp, you'll find the group that believes that progress needs to be dramatic and wholesale, revolutionary. In the other camp, you'll find the group that believes in incrementalism, the idea that change should happen in small steps over a necessarily lengthy period of time, evolutionary.

The same is true in the world of customized learning. There are those seek revolutionary, structural change. Most of these folks see the need for a complete restructuring of the way public education works - no grade levels, flexible scheduling, and schools that don't look, sound, work the way they do today. There are also those who seek incremental change at the school or classroom level. Most of these folks accept the practical need for maintaining some if not all of the policies and procedures that exist in today's schools, largely for administrative convenience.

What makes this a great debate is that both camps are correct. (Isn't that always the case?) There is a need to completely restructure the way American public schools and school systems do business. The American approach to school is simply not up to the task of 21st century education despite the heroic efforts of those who work in the field. On the other hand, successfully implementing such dramatic change is likely impractical due to the required micromanagement from state Departments of Education and fragmented interpretations/approaches at the local level. Seems like a no win situation.

However, what we may have here instead is a no lose situation. Revolutionary change toward customized learning (what I would refer to as mass customized learning) is a worthy goal which can move the effort forward without requiring the immediate, wholesale changes that could potentially lead to educational anarchy. Meanwhile, there's no excuse for schools, or at very least teachers, to not take smaller, immediate steps toward greater customization. This is doable and is reasonable to require of current educators. I know this because my classroom features many of these steps already, despite being  just a year into customized learning implementation. (To learn more about this, read some of my earlier posts.)

While that progress alone is worthwhile, another product would perhaps be even more significant. Requiring incremental progress toward customization with the ultimate goal of mass customization could bring a critical mass of educational stakeholders on board the customization train. While not every teacher is willing to do everything, every teacher should be able to do something. The key to this is one of the necessary producers of motivation. People (not just students here, but teachers as well) are more likely to engage in a task if they feel that it is attainable. Mass customization may be too much to ask from most educators in the short term. However, smaller scale customization is reasonable to ask for  and results in the intrinsic rewards that come with a job being well done. I am in a unique position to make this claim as I have found that my move toward customized learning has resulted in a more positive teaching experience. Despite the shortcomings that plague me and the rest of us mortals, I feel like I'm doing more good than was possible before. I give much of the credit to the change of approach at the classroom level.

Therefore, I would suggest that there's room for both camps under the big tent of customized learning. Mass customized learning is a worthwhile goal; incremental customization is a worthwhile immediate measure. By recognizing the value of both camps, the entire conversation is shifted from the moot question of "Should we do this?" to the more progressive, "How should we do this?"

Who Benefits?

In a conversation the other day, I was asked to share my thoughts about the impact of a customized learning approach on different groups of students. After further reflection, I have identified the following groups.

• Students With Learning Disabilities: This is one group that has benefited mightily from a customized approach. One reason for this is that a customized program emphasizes what a student has done and can do rather than what they can't yet do. In this growth model, students are more accepted in all their limitations and perfections, as long as they are learning. This creates a more positive atmosphere for many students with learning disabilities, in part, because there are so many things that students with LDs can do, and in many cases, do well. The customized approach provides what these students need in order to be successful on a regular, and surprisingly independent basis. The resulting, more positive atmosphere lends itself to more effective teaching and learning and a dramatic reduction in behavioral issues. Students with LDs also benefit from a radical shift in how they are taught. These students are no longer merely trying to survive a class (with modifications built in to help them do only that), but they are actually receiving instruction that is targeted to meet their unique needs. In a customized classroom, students and teachers are free to step away from the common Learning Targets to focus on specific areas of need. This is a huge step at the middle school level, where it becomes increasingly difficult for teachers to provide more elementary based instruction in fluency and basic reading skills. In a customized classroom, the student isn't missing a thing if he/she steps away for these interventions. For these students, a customized approach has been a game changer.

• Traditionally Higher Achieving Students: This group has benefited from the customized approach, but there is still a piece of the puzzle that is missing for some of these students. These students would have done well even in a traditional classroom setting, and they are doing well in the customized setting. The first major benefit for this group is that they can move on once they have met a Learning Target rather than having to wait for the other students to catch up with them. This allows these students the freedom to learn a greater quantity of content. Indeed, I have students who are on pace to at least meet the middle school Learning Targets, which will open the door to more advanced (high school based?) learning. I've seen positive behavioral effects from this group, in part, because they no longer find themselves being bored or doing meaningless work. The second major benefit for this group is the option to take their learning to the highest of levels. The sky is the limit. They can attempt tasks that their peers may never be able to reach. Unfortunately, an option for learning at the highest levels doesn't always lead to students taking advantage of the opportunity. Too often, I've witnessed these students be satisfied with merely meeting a Learning Target that they are likely able to exceed. How to push them? That's a tough one. It seems unfair to require them to attempt the almighty "4" but a waste to allow them to pass on the chance. Giving me some comfort, one high achieving student told me the other day that he wanted to move on to more learning, but that he might return later to "shoot for the 4". That seems reasonable, and is much more realistic in a customized program. Still this group clearly benefits, just to a lesser degree, from a customized approach.

• Traditionally Lower Achieving Students: In some ways, this group is like the students with learning disabilities. Indeed, many students in this group do have LDs. However, not all of them do, nor are all students with LDs lower achieving. Along with the LD group, this group benefits the most from a customized approach. For many of these students, this is the first time in years that they have been actively engaging in meaningful academic tasks. Customized supports allow these students to tackle grade level content using appropriately leveled readings and tasks. The growth among this group has been astounding, and I am eager to see how that translates on district and state assessments. Even if the scores don't translate well to norm referenced tests (they may or may not), the pool of evidence indicates that students in this group have benefited the most from a customized approach. Interestingly, I have heard many reports from parents and the students themselves, claiming to enjoy school like they never have before. That is a direct result of a customized approach.

• Traditionally Middle Achieving Students: This group is in the middle, yet again, when it comes to the benefits of customized learning. While I haven't seen the astounding engagement, growth, and joy of the traditionally lowest achievers, this group has been holding their own. The difference is that success has not always been out of reach for many of these students. Many of these students learned how to "do school" over the years, and did just fine. These students continue to do fine as enough elements of the traditional approach remain for them not feel out of their element. To better grasp how customized learning impacts this group, one really needs to break it into subgroups that are constantly changing. As one might expect, these students are not of average ability in all that they do. Therefore, they do reap the benefits of their lower and higher achieving peers on more of a task by task basis. They also face the challenges faced mostly by their higher achieving neighbors. This group is benefiting, and I prefer to think of them as not a group at all. Rather, they are an area of overlap between the higher and lower achieving students, playing each role as required.

• Boys, Girls, Cultural Groups, and Learners of Various Learning Styles: I have witnessed few significant differences based on any of these factors. I suspect this is in part based on the variability built into a customized approach. Let's face it; everyone is unique, so a customized approach benefits all of these groups by offering targeted approaches to learning. Perhaps one area where there is some difference now, but only temporarily, is the realm of interest. Being in its early stages of development, the pool of readings and activities that are built into the program are still a bit limited. Ideally, the day will come when students are able to choose readings and tasks from a larger pool of appropriate selections. It is a fact that more boys in my classes are interested in sports and cars. It is also a fact that more girls in my classes are interested in horses and fashion. In the future it will be important for the program to feature readings and activities related to both areas of interests in order to offer interesting instructional content and opportunities for students to step outside of the traditional, sometimes stereotypical cultural expectations.

Educating the Family

As my school goes through the ups and downs of transitioning to a standards based system, I have become increasingly aware of a need to educate parents. I am in a unique position to do this as I have taken a bit of a head start in the standards based effort. With all of this in mind, I have started developing  a set of video lessons for my team web page that are designed to inform parents about how things work in my classroom.

This makes sense as I've heard several questions like the following:

• What do scores of 1, 2, 3, and 4 mean?
• What are Measurement Topics, Learning Targets, and Assessments?
• How can I find out how my child is doing at reporting times?
• How can I find out how my child is doing at any time?

While the video lessons will address all of these questions and more, I'll briefly address them here as well. (It's important to note that these explanations reflect the inner workings of the Davis Language Arts class and not necessarily classes taught by other teachers.)

• What do scores of 1, 2, 3, and 4 mean? These scores can be used to report achievement levels on individual Assessments of Learning Targets and for Measurement Topics. They are defined as follows:

• 4   Proficient With Distinction (aka - Exceeding the Standard)
• 3   Proficient (aka - Meeting the Standard)
• 2   Partially Proficient (aka - Partially Meeting the Standard)
• 1   Not Yet Meeting (aka - Far Below Meeting the Standard)

• What are Measurement Topics, Learning Targets, and Assessments? These are three levels of content being assessed.  Think of them as a boxes.  The largest box is the Measurement Topic. Inside that box is the next size smaller box (actually 10 of them) representing Learning Targets. Inside each of those ten boxes are Assessments. There are 1-3 of these smallest boxes for each Learning Target.

• Measurement Topic (e.g. - Reading Informational Text)
• Learning Target (e.g. - Students will identify the author's purpose.)
• Assessment (e.g. - Moodle Assignments 6-1 and 6-2)

• How can I find out how my child is doing at reporting times? The school reports scores on a midterm and trimester schedule. At these reporting times, language arts scores are reported on report cards and in Infinite Campus by Measurement Topic. As expected, most of the scores are usually 2 for some time. This is because a student has only met some of the Learning Targets. This doesn't necessarily mean a student is doing poorly. Let's face it; a student can't learn everything at once. Over time, a successful student will meet or exceed all of the Learning Targets within each Measurement Topic, earning a score of 3 or 4. Some scores may also be left blank for a similar reason. Since a student can't learn everything at once, some Measurement Topics may be saved for later in the school year.

• How can I find out how my child is doing at any time? This is one of the great parts of standards based scoring. At any time, parents can look within Infinite Campus and see exactly how their child is doing. They can do this because listed under each Measurement Topic is a series of Assessments. If a student has at least a 3 on all of the Assessments to date, then the student is doing well. If a student has yet to earn at least a 3 on an Assessment that has become past due, that student is behind the pace. (For parent's benefit, this Assessment is labelled "MISSING" once it is past due.) If a student has earned at least a 3 on Assessments that have yet to become due, that student is ahead of the pace.

If all goes well, the parent support video lessons will prove helpful. More importantly, if parents get in the habit of looking for explanations on line, a line of communication is opened. If a parent needs further clarification, each video lesson will end with the same point: "If you have questions and/or want more information, please contact Mr. Davis at the following email address." Transparency is what parents want, and transparency is what I'm trying to provide.

Reporting Time

Okay, the end of Trimester 1 has arrived, and it's time to push out those T1 scores. This seems simple enough; I've been doing this my whole career. However, there's now more behind this task than one might think. Here are some things to consider.

I am reporting the current progress for each student in relation to the following Measurement Topics:

• Reading Informational Text
• Reading Literature
• Writing
• Language
• Speaking and Listening

The key terms in the statement above are "current progress" and "Measurement Topic". First of all, I am reporting the general amount of knowledge/skill that each student has demonstrated so far in relation to the entire Measurement Topic. Most Measurement Topics consist of ten Learning Targets. Therefore, it makes sense that for quite a while, students will have at best demonstrated Partial Proficiency (2). Students can not be declared Proficient (3) in a Measurement Topic until all of the Learning Targets within have been met. This is quite different from the traditional approach which has always been more focused on "how a student is doing so far"without pointing out the knowledge and skills that still have yet to be demonstrated.

This might be a bit startling for some parents because their child can be "doing" just fine while receiving a current score of 2 (Partially Proficient). However, this score is quite logical (and need not be alarming) as the student who is doing just fine may have only met a portion of the Learning Targets that make up the Measurement Topic. For a closer look at exactly how the child is doing, a parent need only look deeper into Infinite Campus (our online score reporting software). Within Infinite Campus, the parent can see exactly how proficient their child is in each Learning Target. This is far more informative than the general Measurement Topic score. For example, the score of 2 for the Writing Measurement Topic reveals that some writing Learning Targets still need to be met. A closer look will reveal exactly which of those Learning Targets have already been met and to what level of proficiency. That's a little more work on the parent end, but the information is worth the dig!

Is that digging too much to ask of parents? Perhaps. The math teachers at our school are reporting by Learning Targets at Trimester's end rather than Measurement Topics. This presents an extensive workload challenge for teachers (that's a ton of reporting!), but presents the information in a much more straightforward fashion. Students obviously meet individual Learning Targets as a means of meeting the requirements of a Measurement Topic. Therefore, the up front data presents a much clearer immediate picture to parents without as much digging required. This may be the way ELA reporting goes in the future, but that's yet to be determined in this pilot year.

For now, it's important to report student data as accurately as possible. It's also important to guide parents through this data. It is an unrealistic expectation to think that the typical parent is going to fully grasp the details of educational data. (Some of us teachers even struggle sometimes!) I'm hopeful that I will have taken some action to help parents, prior to the publishing of my next entry. My thought is to make use of simple online video lessons to help parents grasp the important information that is being provided for them.

Another way that we as educators can help parents is to make extensive use of comments when reporting scores. There is a big difference between the two reports below:

• Writing: 2 (Partially Proficient)

• Writing: 2 (Partially Proficient): Some Learning Targets within this Measurement Topic have been met and/or exceeded.  Student is making better than adequate progress through the Learning Targets.

Certainly, it takes a bit more time and effort to add comments. However, it is worth it if parents are better informed about the progress of their children. It might even save time in the long run as a teacher will less likely have to field a phone call or email from a parent concerned that their strong student of a child is only Partially Proficient.

For public education to work, schools need to inform parents effectively. While still a work in progress that is requiring extra thinking and effort on the part of educators and parents, at least progress is being made in this area. We simply haven't solved all the problems yet.  I'd give us a 2 (Partially Proficient).

Two Dimensional Scoring

Though shortened by Hurricane Sandy's approach, the Experts Down the Hall conference provided me with some new and old ideas to ponder. One session I attended focused on the connections between standards based education and RTI. The presenter (Ann Cutten) showed an interesting model for her presentation. While this was helpful enough, I have adopted the format of her model as a means of understanding standards based scoring. My version of the model is shown below.

This two dimensional diagram is different from the typical one dimensional approach to standards based scoring. I have to say that I prefer this model as it reflects the two major factors in scoring student work - the content level and the product level.

Content Level refers to the rigor of the content skills and/or knowledge being assessed. Content that is more challenging than the grade level expectation shifts a score upward into the purple, "4" zone. Content that is more grade level based doesn't shift the score as far up and winds up in the green, "3"zone. Content that is below grade level falls into the yellow or red, "2" or "1" zone.

Product Level refers to the rigor of the assessment form and the quality of product. Some also might prefer to consider the Product Level as a level of Blooms Taxonomy. Products that require higher level thinking shift a score toward the right into the purple, "4" zone (if done well).  Products that require a lower level of thinking don't shift as far to the right and wind up in the green, "3" zone (if done well). Tasks that are rudimentary would fall into either the yellow or red, "2" or "1", zone (if done well). Of course, if a task is not done well, then a (hopefully temporary) shift toward a lower score zone would be appropriate.

When scoring, it can be helpful to consider both dimensions of an assessment. By treating the two factors as a coordinate pair, one can get a rough idea of what a student's score on an assessment should be. For example, a student who produces a higher level thinking product involving higher level content would earn a 4. Sometimes, this easiest of cases will occur and both the content and product levels will be the same. Where it gets a bit more tricky is when the two dimensions are not the same. This is where using a .5 system can be helpful. In the .5 system, a student who produces a moderately higher level thinking product (3) involving higher than grade level content (4) can receive a score of 3.5.

While far from perfect, this two dimensional approach to standards based scoring bears some consideration. It allows for students to reach for the almighty "4" while more accurately reflecting the two main factors of any assessment.

Experts Down The Hall Conference Notes

Go to the following link to download the PDF of the presenation:

http://cln.msad40.org/~Mark_Davis/FOV1-00023747/?Plugin=Loft&OpenItemURL=S0177F6ED

Ups And Downs Of Midterm Reporting

My school recently published midterm reports. Normally, a routine task at the midpoint of a trimester, this was a bit more challenging for us this time around. This was the first time we reported standards based scores in ELA and math. As with anything new, there was plenty to observe.

• Too Soon To Report?: Because of my customized approach, I had more to report than most teachers. Yet, even I found the data to be too limited to report meaningfully. One reason for this is the fragmenting of content into Measurement Topics. Previously, I would have had a mass of scores that would have been run through a formula, resulting in a single score. Now, scores are assigned to one or more of the five ELA Measurement Topics. The result for me was that each Measurement Topic score was based on fewer data points, some as few as just one or two scores. With this in mind, I qualified scores with comments, explaining which scores were based on limited samples. However, will this be enough to clarify the matter for families? I'll soon find out, as Parent Teacher Conferences are next week.

• Validity/Reliability Check Required: When I ponder assessment systems, I need to remember two key components, validity and reliability. Validity refers to how much an assessment actually assesses the targeted content. For example, if an assessment of a students addition skills focused entirely on coloring rather than addition, the assessment would have very low validity. Reliability refers to how repeatable an assignment is. For example, if the results of an assessment were inconsistent over time while a student's skills did not improve, there might be outlaying scores that skew the data. As I prepared midterm reports, some red flags were raised for me. First, my students take assessments at different times, days, weeks, or in some cases years. While I like to think that I know what a 4, 3, 2, or 1 looks like, my perspective is vulnerable to my ongoing experiences. My perspective is also warped by my personal attachments to students. While I fight the urge to give a Meets score to a student who has struggled mightily against the odds to meet a Learning Target but fallen just short repeatedly, I need more support for this painful ethical dilemma. This clearly indicates the need for rubrics and anchor samples for ALL assessments. To be fair, I've just been too busy developing and implementing to develop a full bank of these. Yet, it needs to happen, and soon. (By the way, this also might be an argument for instituting a .5 system that results in scores that show if a student has just barely met a Leaning Target or is knocking on the door of exceeding the Learning Target.)

• Telling It Like It WAS: Perhaps the most troubling observation of this year's midterms is the fact that the resulting reports became out of date moments after the scores were posted. Things can change a great deal in a very short time in the customized classroom, usually for the better. Target due dates arrive periodically, rendering a midterm score rather useless. Even more frequently, students submit assessments in a surge of work ethic (we all have them), again rendering a midterm score useless and very inaccurate. These surges can happen within a single class meeting; imagine the impact of the full week of class meetings that passes between the posting and printing of midterm scores. At the upcoming conferences, this will become apparent to families as I will repeatedly need to point out how things have changed over the last week of school.

• Electronic Reporting: The most positive observation of this initial midterm reporting relates to the value of electronic score reporting. Our school uses Infinite Campus. While it's far from perfect, the system allows students, teachers, administrators, and families an inside look at specific assessment scores. Best of all, this data is far more accurate than a midterm score as it is updated whenever a teacher enters a score. There are two requirements for this to work well. First, teachers need to be committed to consistently enter scores. (This is easy in a customized approach as assessments are scored in the moment with a score often being entered just minutes after a student submits the assessment.) Second, families need to take regular looks at a student's scores. Perhaps we can be more helpful to parents by showing them how to access scores during conferences. (It's hard to believe that a conference would not involve a close up look at those scores anyway.)

Spreading the Word

I'll be presenting at the MDOE's Experts Down the Hall conference in Augusta on October 29. The title of my session is "Customized Approaches to Standards Based Teaching and Learning".

This should be interesting. Will folks show up ready to learn about customizing classrooms, or will they show up with loaded questions? I'll hope for the former but be ready for both! It's perfectly understandable that some folks are ready to dive in now while others are less than enthusiastic about this kind of change.

Here's the tentative plan:

• Why Customize?

• What To Customize?

• Customizing Tools & Tips

• Customizing Method

• Next Steps...

Liberating the Classroom

I had two interesting classroom experiences last week. Both left me with questions and hope for the future of education.

The first experience arrived as students were working on their Learning Targets. As per usual, the students were working independently to meet various standards with periodic electronic/personal interactions with each other or me. Then, a young man (new to my classroom) approached me with a question. I could tell by the tone of his voice, his hushed volume, and his shrinking presence that he wasn't entirely sure if this was a good idea. His request? He wanted to know, since he was up to speed with all of his Learning Target work, if he could read his book. We checked his Learning Record together to verify that he was indeed making acceptable progress, and I sent him off to read with a smile on his face. He read intensely for the next thirty minutes.

Afterward, I found myself wondering how it was that a student reading could be considered a bad thing? True, it makes sense that students have a broad range of content to learn, and not all of it can be addressed by settling in with a good book. However, what a blessing to have a student ask, almost plead, to be allowed to read his book and then be thoroughly and happily engaged for much longer than the typical young adolescent can bear. This bears further reflection.

The next experience was similar, though it didn't involve reading. A small group of students asked me for permission to work for a bit on a petition letter they were preparing for the administrative team. The students were seeking permission to use a sandbox computer "game" called Minecraft that is currently banned at school. Given their progress, and the real life civics experience their request involved, I granted permission. This weekend, I took my own journey into the world of Minecraft. It's actually an excellent game that features simulated environment planning and building. Like most interesting games, Minecraft is really about creating things and solving problems. There's a lot of that in the violence laden games that seem to be very popular right now, making me think that the challenge of problem solving is more of an intrinsic draw than the actual violence and graphics. When you first look at Minecraft, the graphics appear quite poor, intentionally boxy. Yet, there's much more than meets the eye. I found it interesting to use, and I admit to having a good time exploring.

Afterward, I found myself wondering why it is that us educators feel the need to restrict the classroom environment, especially in a 21st century where physical location becomes less and less relevant? We have no problem with extending the classroom environment into the "private" worlds of our students (aka - homework). Do we really need to lock students away from the world when they are in school?

Perhaps there's an opportunity revealed by both of these situations. Perhaps, we as educators should try reducing rather than raising the barriers between school and students' real lives. Perhaps there is a future for students where they can electronically check in on a friend in the middle of class as long as they are not distracting others from their pursuits. Perhaps there is a future where students are not only allowed but encouraged to explore, create, and problem solve using modern media. (Those are the highest levels of learning on the pedagogical scale, by the way). Perhaps in this future students will learn to make choices by, heaven forbid, making choices in a classroom that looks, sounds, and feels more like real life.

I find that future worth considering.

No Teacher Required? WRONG!

From time to time, I hear people jokingly suggest that a teacher isn't really needed in a customized classroom. Often that odd claim is made in a conversation about a teacher being absent.  No sub needed, right? That's way off target! In the customized classroom the teacher is an even more critical component than in the traditional classroom.

One of the benefits of a customized classroom is the opportunity for constant communication between teacher and student. In my classroom, this sometimes takes the form of an oral conversation. However, more frequently, indeed scores of times during any class, the conversations are electronic. This shouldn't be too much of a surprise. After all, that form of communication is a major part of students' lives today. Something has to replace this communication during a teacher's absence. Even a substitute is unlikely to be able to fully provide that key ingredient.

True, where appropriate, fully independent learning activities should take place, activities that require no intervention from the teacher at all. Yet, the reason to provide those truly independent activities isn't to put teachers out of work. Rather, the purpose of that strategy is to liberate teachers from unnecessary instructional tasks, making them available for instructional tasks that actually do require their direct or electronic involvement. It takes a real person to do this.

It also takes the actual classroom teacher to do this as most substitutes simply don't have the skills, knowledge, and/or access to accomplish the task. At best, a substitute in the customized classroom is holding the place, keeping the ship afloat (thank goodness!), until the captain returns...and the sooner the better! Substitutes do great work, but there really is no substitute for the classroom teacher in a customized classroom. At a minimum, a substitute is required, and even then, things will likely not go as smoothly with a different leader at the helm. Teachers are just that important, even more so in a customized classroom.

In short, the misguided notion that customized classrooms are fully independent, teacher free zones is simply incorrect.

Interest Customization

There are many ways to customize learning. This year's program includes many of them. Here are a few:

• Leveled readings help students access the middle school content, standards that are based more on what authors and readers do with selections than learning how to read those passages. (Of course, reading pieces at an appropriate level also supports reading development as well.) 

• Target due dates, as opposed to all or nothing deadlines, allow students to learn in their own ebb and flow pattern (we all have our own). These "deadlines without the death" keep students from giving up and are more in tune with the realities of day to day life, especially for young adolescents.

• Student selected projects allow learners to show what they know and can do using the method that works best for them.

• Flexible work sessions allow students to tackle the content that will work best for them at that time. 

These are definitely improvements to the traditional classroom model. Yet, I plan to add another piece over time, and it relates to student interest. The two year Personal Research Process has been a good start in engaging students by linking content with their individual interests. Next up will be to add to students reading options. Currently, students benefit from leveled readings, an important customization of the reading classroom. However, I have made little attempt to address students' interests to reading topics.

That's going to change. Instead of a single reading available at a student's level, the student will now have a pool of leveled reading from which to choose. This will add another layer of student choice and most importantly will go a long way to ramping up students desire to read pieces. A student who is interested in cars will be more likely to have a related reading available to him/her. The same will be true for students who are interested in music, science and nature, history, and more.

This will have to start slowly. I'm only one man, and it takes a while to gather resources and make them available to students. However, this should be a positive step forward on the path to greater classroom customization.

PRP - Ramping Up the Enthusiasm

Amidst all the craziness that accompanies the start of a school year, my 8th grade students have begun their Personal Research Projects (PRPs). My assessment so far? "Wow!"

The customized standards-based approach that I have been developing in recent school years has resulted in a clear increase in student engagement. However, I was interested to see how things would go if I opened things up a bit more for students.  Thus, the PRP was born.

The PRP is based on pedagogy I saw in action at a Providence, RI high school called The Met. As part of the school's program of study, students undertook ongoing research projects of their own choosing. Periodically, students presented their learnings to peers, teachers, administrators, and family members. The audience members were more than just listeners. They raised questions of their own, revealing the next steps of the research journey. As time progressed, so did each student's research as the cycle continued to repeat itself. In this way, a simple research question became a long term research program.

My students are still in the early stages, but their enthusiasm for PRPs is through the roof. I've already witnessed multiple cases of students setting aside their other work from my class to do some work on their PRP when they thought nobody was looking.

Also, check out some of these research questions (remember, these came from the students):

• Could Mayan apocalypse predictions prove accurate?
• Is nursing a worthwhile career to pursue?
• Which dogs make good sled dogs and why?
• Will slavery ever vanish from the planet?
• How do people become famous?
• How does someone become a professional athlete?
• What will the features of the Earth be like in the future?

I look forward to working with the students as they explore these questions along with the correlating questions that will arise along the way.

And They're Off...and Crawling

The start of a new school year is always exciting. However, late August and early September can also be a frustrating time of year.

When I last worked with students, everyone knew how to readily access the customized program, and my focus was almost entirely on students and content rather than how to access that content. Of course, I took it all for granted.

When the school year began, I had done much of my summer homework. My program was largely in place, at least enough of it to give me a comfortable lead over my fastest moving students. However, I soon learned that I had not done all that was needed.

• ID/Passwords: As I ease closer to two decades of working with young adolescents, I should remember that memory/organization challenges can be a big part of the young adolescent mix. So, as I welcomed my returning 8th grade students back into the customized program, I shouldn't have been surprised that some of them did not recall (or have recorded) their key IDs and/or passwords to access my delivery systems. Oops. A wise teacher will record such critical info from returning students before they walk out the door for the summer. That way, veteran students can hit the ground running rather than being held up by password resets and calls to the already busy tech crew for assistance. For incoming students, the more tangible and less complicated the ID/Password process can be, the better. This is not the time to be overly concerned about security. (Remember, most of these students may not even be able to access their own account, let alone someone else's.) A simple layer of protection should be adequate during the first few weeks of the school year. This is not the time for upper case, lower case, symbol, sixteen character passwords. Once students have settled in, passwords can be enhanced for greater security.

• Application Testing: If there is one thing that software developers seem to like as much as developing new software, it is updating current software. I ran into this when my students began using a great web-based application called Word Voyage. Things started well as one of the benefits of this application is that the classroom teacher has full access to user IDs and passwords. Yet, the progress began to slow when students encountered tasks that were not part of last year's programming. This all came as a surprise to me as I had not taken the time to review this regularly used application for any changes. Oops. A wise teacher will quickly test out key software for little changes that can act as speed bumps for students as they race to access content. This is especially helpful to bear in mind if new students are entering the mix. They may not have any experience with the software and may need assistance from their teacher. It's hard to help them if you don't know your way around.

There are, of course, other things to keep in mind when wrapping up or starting a school year. However, these two simple tips should save me and my students some valuable time and lower our stress when the next school year begins.

Life on the Continuum

No matter where you are on the customized learning continuum, there's always more progress to make. This is a healthy reminder for when I feel like I've got it all figured out. The other day I had one of those reminding moments.

I subscribe to a few blogs including that of Bea McGarvey, Maine's foremost customized learning expert/advocate. In reading some of the comments following a post, I was struck by the apparent progress that had been made by some contributors, teachers mostly. They were really customizing, going well beyond flexible time and independent study of standards into the world of content based on student interests yet somehow linked directly (not just by a thread) to required standards.

Personally, I don't know how they do it. The traditional structure of a school, even a progressive middle school like Medomak Middle, doesn't readily lend itself to customization to that extent. I clearly still have a lot to learn.

However, I was also struck by the callousness of one teacher's blog comments, comments that carried a tone of disgust for programs like mine that are not as far along the customized continuum as hers apparently is. This raised a red flag for me as I know that at times I become enamored with my own progress and frustrated with the progress of others. While it's important to be proud of one's progress, it is equally important to be ever mindful that all teachers live their professional lives on a continuum that never ends. Continuums are lines not line segments; they are designed to continue. In the teaching profession, there is always more one can do and always more progress to be made. Yet, change doesn't happen overnight, and educators need to be patient with each other, validating each others success steps along the way. I'll try to remember this.

Telling It Like It Is

One of the benefits of a standards-based, customized approach to learning is the emphasis on telling it like it is. This can be refreshing for teachers who have long felt the push and pull of a system that muddies the waters of academic reporting.

The blessing of a standards-based approach is that it can produce clear evidence of where students are in their individual journeys through the standards. If there are four standards to be met within a Measurement Topic, and a student has met two of them, then that student has met half of the required standards so far. That's quite clear.

The challenge arises with reporting. Just how does one report a student's Measurement Topic progress using a 1-4 scoring system? (Some schools report a general content score. Others report a score for each Measurement Topic. A third option, the one I will likely use, is to report both.)

Having tried a few variations, I've found that there are two principles that need to guide score reporting.

• Students must have all the time they need without penalty.
• Student progress must be reported honestly using a progress standard.

Students must have all the time they need without penalty.

Time is the great variable in a standards-based, customized approach. As human beings, students will experience ebbs and flows in their progress. Puberty, relationships, health, and a number of other factors can influence a student's rate of progress. Let's face it; even us adults have our good and bad times. Add content into the mix, content which may or may not peak the interest of a student, and an irregular developmental pace is to be expected. With this in mind, it's best to not penalize students for lagging behind general progress expectations. If a student is behind the expected pace, that student should be able to move forward without fear of a closed educational window. Opponents of customized learning often claim that students are allowed to slack off without consequence. This, of course, need not be the case. There should be consequences for a progress lag, more appropriately interventions designed to assist the student, but the student should never face a lost cause.

Student progress must be reported honestly using a progress standard.

Learning is not an all at once activity. Students do not even encounter, let alone meet, all standards simultaneously. Therefore, it is critical to report student progress using a progress standard. A progress standard indicates how many standards a student should have at least met over a given time frame. It's important to understand that this does not violate the previous principle! Students have all the time they need without penalty, but this does not discount a school's responsibility to honestly report each student's progress at any given time. Honest reporting gets all the information out in the open, so that all those involved can maximize student progress using the most appropriate methods for each student.

By applying these two principles, educators can breathe the fresh air and experience the clarity of telling it like it is.

Motivational Lessons at a Starbucks Counter

So, here I sit at a Starbucks counter, pondering the next blog entry. To be honest, I am less than motivated. However, there may be something to learn in my state of sloth.

Why am I not motivated?
Well, first of all, I am quite sleepy. Yesterday was my 24th wedding anniversary. My wife and I went out to dinner, and I stayed up a bit later than I should have. Secondly, I'm feeling no pressing need to get anything done. Nobody is going to tap me on the shoulder and tell me to get moving. Third, I'm not feeling that my work has any immediate relevance. Anything that I accomplish today will not be implemented until September at the earliest.

I wonder if students ever feel this way. They probably do.

I am sleepy.
I know for a fact that many of my students are groggy when they arrive before 7:30am (no bankers' hours for them). Others seem to fade as the day goes on, becoming gradually less productive. I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is, but it seems a good starting point to acknowledge it as reality. Yet, some things are beyond my power to control; some students will not get enough quality sleep and will be groggy at school. Silly entry music and humorous surprises seem to have a positive effect but are by no means the solution to this motivational problem.

I'm feeling no pressing need to get anything done.
A colleague once told me that if you give students a week to complete a week long task, most of them will complete it in a week, but if you give them two weeks, most of them will take two weeks to complete that same task. I think this is accurate within reason. Deadlines, or at least target dates, can be a motivator for some students. I know that I would not even consider avoiding this blog if my boss was checking in each week and evaluating my progress. Some would argue that target dates should not be a part of a customized program and that students should be allowed to work at their own pace. I agree in part. However, my students have shown me that their "own pace" adapts to the task and expectations at hand. Therefore, deadlines will continue to be a part of my customized program, though still without the "death" of past due penalties and definitely without the "sudden death" of acceptance cut off dates.

I'm not feeling that my work has any immediate relevance.
Immediate is the key word there. I don't think students are as dismissive of school content as adults would prefer to believe. For the most part, students seem to accept that at some point, something as trivial as grammar may prove useful to them. So, it's worth learning just in case. However, it's often the immediacy of that usefulness that is lacking in school. Let's face it, it's tough for us humans to do work that will not reap rewards until some time in the distance, unforeseen future. Much school content is not designed to benefit students in the short term. Rather, it is designed to be a means of reaping future rewards. For some students, that's simply not going to cut it motivationally. Here's where Learning Target Projects may prove beneficial. Culminating, student-centered projects that require students to apply prior learning should give some students the motivation to tackle the preceding, and sometimes less interesting, lower level prerequisite learning. In short, "Do this, because you need it to be able to do the next thing." It's a bit of a simplistic strategy, but isn't that how the world often operates? You learn the rules and features of a video game in one way or another, so you can meet the goals in the game. One could call this Object Based Learning. Regardless of it's label, it is a means of adding relevance to a temporarily irrelevant task.

Success!
And so, I've done it. I've written my latest blog entry despite being unmotivated. How did I do it? Well, first I acknowledged that I was sleepy, so I set myself up with a Grande coffee instead of just a Tall. (A short term solution to be sure, but a solution nonetheless.) Secondly, I motivated myself using a self-imposed target date. I'm trying to maintain a schedule of one blog entry per week. Having routinely met this target for months, it is giving me a bit a of nudge to keep the ball rolling. Finally, I found the relevance to this task. I realized that I was experiencing a phenomenon similar to that experienced by some students. In short, this was an opportunity to learn lessons about motivation. The lessons are learned, and the entry is finished. I wish the same success for my students!

Comfort for the 21st Century Teacher

I'm yet to meet a teacher who doesn't agree that every student should have his/her academic needs met in the classroom. However, trying to meet those needs using a customized approach can be a scary proposition. One reason for this is grounded in the false perception that every student needs to have a 100% unique educational experience in a customized program. This is simply not true.

In many ways, educational programs are like cars. As in the pizza analogy from my previous entry, people tend to favor cars that are more customized to their needs and taste. For the right price, one can now buy a car that is highly customized, or at least customizable. You want to save the planet? Buy a hybrid. You want to know where you're going? Buy a car with a built in GPS. You favor security? Buy a car with built in remote security support. You hate parallel parking? Buy a car with an automatic parking system.

Yet, despite all this customization, cars are still cars. They still have power systems, transmissions, steering mechanisms, braking devices, and of course, they still have wheels.

The same is true for educational approaches. I have seen that a greater level of customization leads to a greater level of engagement. (As long as students are engaged in the right things, this is a fantastic outcome.) This, along with my recent survey data, indicates that students favor more customized approaches to learning. Students favor varied forms of assessment, readings within their individual instructional range, a pace of learning that is not boring yet is reasonable, the ability to switch content within a class period, and other aspects of customized learning. Yet, despite all this customization, learning programs are still learning programs. Students still listen to lectures, read, write, make projects, play games, work alone and with peers, receive feedback and guidance from teachers, and of course, they still are learning (though hopefully more than in a traditional "one size fits all" program).

In other words, teachers can make their educational programs more customized while still applying the traditional methods from their training and experience. The learning activities in a customized program simply don't need to be much different from those in a traditional program. (Though, they can be very different.) The key is to identify and/or develop ways to make traditional activities available in a more customized way and to tweak those activities to enhance their suitability to individuals. An example of this is the use of on demand video lessons. Another example is the use of electronic classroom management tools like Moodle and Studywiz. Customized learning tools are either out there already or waiting to be developed by innovative teachers.

While it is true that there is a customization continuum, teachers can take comfort that their profession is currently moving in the direction of greater customization, and 100% customized learning is not the short term goal. The latter would be a transformational result and may come some day, but for now, a worthy goal for teachers should be to add more customization to their classrooms each year and pay attention to what happens. A customized car is still a car, a customized learning approach is still a learning approach, and when it comes to learning approaches, experienced teachers already know more than they realize.

Customized "Dining"

On a recent episode of a morning talk show, a host was rating different kinds of pizza when he made an observation that caught my attention. The host claimed that the reason why so many people identify pizza as their favorite food is because of its customization. He stated that people probably like pizza, in part, because  they can personalize it to meet their tastes. My first thought was, "Hey, that is just like the customized classroom! Students tend to prefer it because it is personalized."

I saw this play out in my customized classroom this year. As the school year progressed, I observed varying levels of engagement. More personalized learning tasks led to greater levels of student engagement. Less personalized learning tasks led to lesser levels of student engagement. While this observation wasn't always present (due to other factors in play for students), it did apply most of the time.

Some students made this connection as well. One young man told me that he prefered the, "...way we do things." Another student, amid a conversation about being able to choose the content of the moment,  said with relief, "I like that." In an end of year survey, 97% of my students rated "our" approach (meaning the "customized" version of a standards based approach) as being Very Effective or Somewhat Effective. (I was actually surprised by this result, given the questioning/counterculture nature of young adolescents.) When asked to identify the unit of study that resulted in the Least Learning, the majority selections were units from before the customized approach was fully implemented. While there was a measure of customization in play during that phase, students were still working on the same tasks at the same time.

Now, before you award me the Golden Apple Award for Teacher Perfection, the pizza-classroom connection does raise some red flags for me. While my class has a higher level of customization than most traditional classrooms, there are still so many areas that I have been unable (or perhaps unwilling) to personalize. I'm interested to see the growth of two new features that will be fully implemented in the fall. The first is the Personal Learning Profile.  The second is the Personal Research Project. (To learn more about these, see prior entries.) These two undertakings may open the door to more intensive customization. We'll see.

Regardless of where we are on the customization continuum, there is always room for more personalization in pursuit of the educational experience that is as engaging and enjoyable as a delicious slice of pizza! Like the students who I work with each year, this program isn't done cooking yet.

Customized Homework

I've recently been pondering the role of homework in a customized learning approach. Too much, too little, too hard, too easy, I've heard them all over the past sixteen years and probably said a few about my own children's homework loads. Perhaps this is because there is no one answer to the question of homework. Possibly, in a customized program, homework also needs to be customized.

In the past, I assigned a weekly homework assignment to my students with the intent of giving them the freedom to schedule their homework efforts around their often hectic lives. The motive for assigning homework at all was to extend the school day, maximizing the learning for each student. Last fall, when I began using a more customized approach, I shifted to a new homework strategy. Instead of assigning homework, I regularly reminded students that they could (and likely would need to) work on their learning standards outside of school at times. As a result, the overwhelming majority of my students opted to do little to no standards work at home. Was I letting students off the hook, or were students learning how to better manage their time to avoid having to work outside of school?

Perhaps both. A cornerstone of customized learning is that students are individuals with their own needs and motivations. Some students, no doubt, did practice good time management skills that resulted in their having an enhanced learning experience despite doing little to no homework. Yet, other students may have used my homework policy as an avoidance tool. This result seems to cry out for a greater degree of homework customization.

There are students who will benefit from a flexible homework approach. With those students in mind, my approach from last year appears worthy of repeating. However, there needs to be a complement to the approach that better suits the needs of other students. With this in mind, I'll likely require a homework assignment twice each week focused on supporting skills rather than direct standards work. If a student chooses to do more, he/she can always tackle the standards work from the customized program, but no student can do less.

Perhaps this will be the happy medium that will solve the problem of homework once and for all,.......but I doubt it.

Summers ON

One of the greatest gifts given to teachers is the gift of a summer on. Nope. That wasn't a typo. Most teachers I know relish the time granted each summer not just to recharge but also to reflect on school years past and consider plans for the future. It does seem a bit odd to think of such free time (and to be clear, it is for the most part unpaid time) spent working as a gift, but that's what it can be like working in a service profession. This year's gift arrives in just a few days.

This summer should be particularly busy as I prepare for the next evolution of customized learning for my students. I've been working on next year's approach for some time now, but there's still plenty to do.

Here are a few customized learning items on my gift list:

• Solve the problems of video lesson file sizes. One of the challenges of on demand video lessons is the need for storage and easy retrieval. In the past year, I have primarily used the district server as I added video lessons to my team webpage within the district website. While I haven't been told directly, I get the impression that this is not going to be a realistic long term solution. One alternative is to store the video lessons directly in Moodle. This doesn't really solve any problems the district might have with my mammoth file storage needs, but at least Moodle is likely to be around for a few more years unlike the district's First Class generated website that may soon be heading in a different direction. If youtube access is granted to students (it is currently blocked on student machines at school), I can easily make my video lessons available that way. Even better, I would no doubt be able to find excellent videos produced by others that meet or even exceed my needs. Still, I can't rely on youtube access being granted, and access would always be just one student scandal away from being shut down. Google docs would be an option, but there are storage limits for non Google files that can only be exceeded at a cost. My last option (so far) is to use one of the free apps available on the iPad that record simultaneous drawing and speech. The resulting video is available by simply visiting a URL. This may be the answer. I'll find out this summer.

• Prepare new and revised content for student access. One of the keys to customized learning is making content available to students on an independent basis. This involves some serious developing, formatting, organizing, and uploading of content into Moodle, my district's management software of choice. There's even more to do this year than last due to content revisions (with the adoption of the Common Core) and my school's movement to dual grade teams. Instead of leaving most of the Level 7 content for next summer, I now have to be ready for students who will begin by accessing either Level 7 or Level 8 content, and in some cases, both.

• Add to my pool of rubrics and anchors. Rubrics are a critical part of a customized learning approach, but they only represent half the rigor equation. As a rule, any rubric tends to be too general to stand alone as an assessment tool. Rubrics are populated with terms like moderate, little, adequate, more, and extensive. Hence, most rubrics require anchor support to prevent variations of subjective assessment. This presents an even greater challenge in a customized learning environment because there can be so much variation in learning evidence. In short, I need to spend some significant time locating and developing rubrics and anchors this summer.

With all of this to do (plus a lot more work and battery recharging camping, hiking, and fishing), I may have a hard time getting to sleep on Summer Vacation Eve! Perhaps that's why I couldn't wait to open some of my summer gifts and have already begun tearing away more wrapping paper.

Myths of Customized Learning

Like most initiatives, there can be a lack of clarity about what customized learning is and isn't. Here are a few that deserve debunking:


MYTH: Customized learning is a chaotic free for all.
REALITY: Customized learning requires significant organization. It requires careful short and long range planning, ongoing assessment, and the development of an organized set of classroom routines. As a plus, I've been seeing students develop organizational skills of their own by following these classroom routines and developing personal auxiliary routines that work best for them.


MYTH: Customized learning doesn't hold everyone to the same standard.
REALITY: All students are held to the same standards in a customized learning classroom. Instead sequence, pacing, context, supports, and methods of demonstrating proficiency in those standards are what can vary. For example, all of my students must be able to identify an author's purpose in informational text. However, there is nothing in the curriculum that requires all students to identify an author's purpose using the exact same text.


MYTH: Customized learning, with its focus on the individual, is impersonal.
REALITY: Customized learning should result in increased and higher quality dialogue. With students scattered about working on independent tasks, casual observers may think that there are few instructional conversations between students and their teacher. In reality, I've had far more (and more meaningful) dialogue with my students this year than I have in the past. Every assignment a student submits requires direct feedback from me, and when needed, direct instruction. One reason why this dialogue is hard to spot at first is that it often takes the form of 21st century electronic conversation, in the chatting arena where most students live. There are students who engage in this sort of dialogue with me off and on for entire classes as they work their way toward meeting or exceeding a standard. There are times for whole class direct instruction (more of a monologue than dialogue), but in a customized learning classroom, it becomes the exception rather than the rule.

MYTH: Students can get away without doing work in a customized learning classroom.
REALITY: Students are held more accountable in a customized learning classroom. When one thinks of student accountability, the image that often appears is of a student not getting his/her work done. In a customized learning classroom, content doesn't simply go away based on a school calendar. Standards need to be met, period. I've had some students test this, but eventually, the realization sets in that the standard isn't going anywhere. Some of my students will begin their second year with me by meeting the remainder of their first year standards. There's simply no opt out. Also, what is often missed in the consideration of student accountability is the student who in the traditional program earns a grade of "C" or "B" by doing very well on some work and putting little to no effort into other work. I would argue that a student who is allowed to pursue, and perhaps even be rewarded for that record of "achievement" is not being held as accountable as the student who is expected to at least meet all standards, even the hard ones, no matter how long it takes.

There are, of course, many other myths about customized learning to debunk. What's the best way to get a real understanding of this approach?

• Visit a customized learning classroom for more than just a class period.

• Do some professional reading. There is an increasing library of books and articles about the approach.

• Try it out yourself! I've learned more from this year's pilot than I ever could have in any other way!

Personal Research Projects (PRP)

Several years ago, while attending the annual NELMS conference in Providence, RI, a few of us spent some time at a cutting edge school known as the MET. For me, one of the most interesting features of this school was the emphasis on an ongoing personal research project. Students conducted research on a question of their choice, periodically presenting their latest findings to an audience of teachers, classmates,  and on this one day, me. While intriguing, the resumption of middle school business led me to set this novel approach on the shelf.

It's finally time to dust the idea off.

This spring, I have been planning next year's customized learning program, applying things I've learned the hard way this year and heard or seen from others as well. Along the way, I've found that one of the challenges of working in a classroom heavily grounded in standards is that those standards tend to isolate content. One of my colleagues, who coincidentally visited the MET with me way back when, referred to these separate content groups as "silos".  The point that this silo-ization was never the intent behind standards based initiatives was well taken. If only something could be found to bridge these content barriers. One answer, that I plan to employ starting next fall, is to have students engage in Personal Research Projects (PRPs).

PRPs should be a good way for students to apply a fair measure of their learning from the ELA Common Core, be even more fully engaged in our individualized classroom, and be another catalyst for a positive learning culture. The keys to PRPs that I have identified so far are as follows.

• PRPs need to be based on students own higher order questions that require them to do something interesting (for them) from building the perfect theoretical Major League Baseball team using players throughout history to predicting the next must haves of the fashion world.

• PRPs need to be presented regularly. This was my favorite aspect of what I saw at the MET.  First, a young man shared his learnings and evolving insights about caffeine as a potential performance enhancing drug. Then the magic happened. Members of the audience shared their views, raised connecting questions of their own, and shared their own insights. Then the principal concisely packaged the questions that had been raised and laid out the rough plan for what the student needed to do prior to his next presentation. It was clear that the principal guided his recommendations using statements from viewers and required academic content. For example, I remember the student being asked to investigate the chemistry of coffee to a greater degree.

• PRPs need to be ongoing, long-term efforts. I love this aspect as students rarely have the opportunity to really dig deep in school. Not only should a PRP provide this opportunity in a way that helps the student meet required standards, but it's a perfect fit for our middle school's two year looping cycle. Imagine the wealth of insight a student should be able to share after engaging in two years of research!

I'm hopeful as I look toward a future of PRPs as a part of our customized learning approach. It makes me wonder if someday I will look back in wonder at how PRPs gradually became the program itself. In a way, that is my own Personal Research Project that I have the rest of my career to pursue.

Planning The Path: The Role Of Sequence

One of the difficult decisions I still need to make for next year is whether or not I should prescribe a curriculum path for my students. In this year's MCL attempt, I have used a preplanned curriculum sequence for students. Students have had the option of working toward meeting the language arts or social studies standards, but within those content areas, there has been little choice when it comes to what to do next.

The question is, is this okay?  And, even if it's okay to prescribe a curriculum sequence, is it the best way to engage young adolescents?

At worst, a prescribed curriculum sequence hasn't done much if any harm. It certainly has been convenient to follow the classroom spreadsheets as they have filled one box/chart at a time from left to right. It has also been convenient to analyze the progress of individual students. I could just note the target dates for each standard to be met and see where each student was sitting on the curriculum path at that particular moment. Some students benefited from the ease with which they could note exactly what the next step should be. In short, students weren't really any worse off than they would have been in the years before MCL.

There was one point in the year, however, where the prescribed sequence presented a difficulty. For much of this school year, a prescribed curriculum sequence seemed of little consequence.  Students worked at a reasonable pace, some faster some slower, but all relatively engaged with the content. The first hints of a problem arose when the majority of my students found themselves simultaneously locked into two major undertakings. The first task was the reading of a teacher selected novel, often a challenge of focus for sporadic young adolescent interests. The second was a rather lengthy and brain wrenching Civil War unit. This was an error on my part as I failed to realize the likelihood of these two tasks falling together. It was an even greater error on my part to fail to realize that this perfect storm was likely to take place in the unfortunately month of March, the month where all exciting curriculum goes to die. The result was predicable - slowed progress, an increase in behavior issues, and all of this had to have a negative impact on the learning of my students. Perhaps this all could have been avoided had I allowed students to self select their curriculum sequence. That might have allowed some students to step away from a piece of content, returning to tackle it at a more beneficial time. Students did resume a better pace after they had fought their way through those two tasks which would seem to indicate that the two tasks and the month of March were largely to blame.

This is another one of those issues that can be looked at through different lenses. A narrowly focused lens would reveal the benefits of presequenced curriculum within each unit of study. This is a bit of a no brainer as the whole idea of a unit of study is for related content to be developed and unified into greater understanding over time. However, a different picture is revealed when using the wide focus lens of unit sequencing over two years. In  many cases, the units do not necessarily need to be tackled in a common sequence.

At this point, I am leaning toward opening more of the sequencing decisions to students. I will likely present a curriculum path with optional detours available for students. There is definitely more thinking to be done about this before next fall arrives!

(Not So) Quiet, Please

One of the challenging aspects of middle school teaching is that each day is filled with so many contradicting expectations. One that I've wrestled with this year is the ambiguous expectation for classroom quiet.

In education circles, it is often viewed as a positive if a classroom is quiet.  Indeed, there are times when a quiet classroom is evidence of engaged learning. However, this is not always the case. There are times when the presence of classroom clamor is actually a sign of learning rather than off task behavior.

This legalization of noise is especially applicable to the MCL classroom. At any given moment there are individual students who may each be working on a completely different task if not standard. Since not all tasks are created alike (some require conversation and physical activity while others require silent reading and written response), it is reasonable to expect varying levels of noise in the MCL classroom.

It took me awhile to sort this out this year. At times, I have pushed a little too hard for silence as students have worked through the standards. After awhile, however, I came to realize that the vast majority of the few conflicts I was having with students involved the issue of silence. My excessive expectations for silence were actually a big part of an evolving classroom climate problem. Eventually, I realized this and pondered the real issue more carefully.

The first question I asked myself was why I felt it was so important for students to be quiet. There were two answers to this question. First, I was still hanging on to the old adage that claimed, "Children should be seen and not heard." I simply had to make the choice to let this outdated view go. Aiding me in this effort, was the wealth of pedagogical research indicating the value of dialogue and movement in the middle school classroom. This made sense to me.

However, I found that there was a second and more noble reason that I had become the Quiet Czar of Room 108. While it was true that some students needed to converse and move about to best meet certain standards, there were also students who required quiet to complete selected standards, particularly those requiring reading. If the volume spigot were to be opened, would this type of student learning be a casualty? Obviously, I needed to do more than just taking my iron hand off the volume knob.

It was then that I considered the school, rather than just the classroom, as a place of learning. I began offering students the option of working in the library if they required silence. Some took me up on this; others hadn't minded the noise at all and were able to engage in focused tasks despite the ruckus. The hallway was another oasis of quiet, though not quite as distraction free as the library. A third option was the local community of classrooms that made up the wing. I knew the teaching schedule of my neighbor quite well, and he was more than willing to accept some silent workers from time to time.

While the jury is still out, I have noticed a shift back toward a more positive classroom environment. The key seems to have been that I needed to work WITH my students rather than AGAINST them. And so my students have taught their teacher another lesson!

The Impact Of High Stakes Testing on MCL

Testing time is here again. The idea of gathering more data is a noble one, but unfortunately, high stakes testing can have some negative impacts on the MCL classroom. Here are two that I've found particularly troublesome.

Curriculum Sequencing: In a utopian scenario, students would have the freedom to move through groups of standards in the order of their choice.  In other words, a student would be allowed to tackle the Measurement Topic of Informational Reading in September, November, May, at any time of year. Unfortunately, high stakes testing puts pressure on teachers in an MCL classroom to adhere to a tighter sequence of instruction. For example, if there are certain skills/content that are stressed in a mid-fall assessment, a teacher might feel pressure to ensure that students engage in that content just prior to the testing. This makes sense because, even if two students have learned the content equally well, if only one of those students engages in the content immediately prior to testing, that student is more likely to have easy mental access to the knowledge/skills that are being tested. Another way to think about this is that a student might know what he/she had for dinner last night, but that same student might not remember what he/she had for dinner last month even though the student did know the content (the menu) in those few weeks after eating. Like an old phone number, content is simply harder to retrieve as time passes. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for teachers to focus on tested content just prior to testing. However, the result is that a layer of student choice is stripped away which in turn can negatively alter engagement.

Curriculum Stratification: Back in the utopian world, all content is equally valued in general, with some content being valued more or less by individuals. In the reality of high stakes testing, some content is given higher value than others. Teachers know full well that math and English are at the top of the heap when it comes to national priorities, followed closely by science.  The rest, including social studies (the study of which was ironically one of the primary reasons that public education began in the United States), are valued less. How is this message sent to schools? Through testing requirements and the lack thereof. I faced this pressure this year in my MCL classroom. I found that several students were spending "too much" of their time focusing on social studies content instead of spending more of their time and effort in their study of English. I resisted the temptation to force a redirection on the students but can't help but worry that their reading scores on spring assessments may be negatively impacted. For now, the best I can do is try to merge the literacy and social studies content to the extent possible without turning off to social studies those who struggle with literacy. In other words, I'm feeling pressure to work the system instead of having the system work for me.

Catalysts For 21st Century Learning

Too often, educational technology is more about the technology than about education.  This is unfortunate because technology can be a powerful catalyst in the pursuit of educational progress.  Here are two ways that technology can assist the classroom purpose.

• Learning Profiles (ePortfolios): With the wide range of media available to students today, there is little excuse for not having students electronically create, sort, store, and present examples of and reflections of their learning. Google Sites is a fantastic tool for this! As part of Google Apps, Google Sites allows users to generate their own web pages. These pages can be kept private or shared in a variety of ways, depending on the goals and security needs of the user. Perhaps best of all, Learning Profiles can take on some of the features of Facebook profiles pages. Students can upload photos (or themselves and/or projects) and other files. They can also author their own blogs within the moderately protected environment of a Google Apps School District Account (helpful for districts that are required to archive and limit access to student content). To ramp up the interactive aspects of this, students can share their Learning Profiles with their teacher(s) and in some cases with each other (again mimicking the familiar format of Facebook that is so much a part of adolescent life these days). It is even possible for students to view and comment on each other's Learning Profiles. Finally, students can use their Learning Profiles as a resource to drive parent conferences at any point in the year. With students learning all over the map in a Mass Customized Learning classroom, this individualized tool makes the record keeping, reflection, sharing, and feedback of the 21st century classroom more practical. (Note: I am in the early stages of implementing this with my students. I'm hoping to have Learning Profiles fully implemented in the fall!)

• Classroom Management Software: Useful tools like Moodle and Studywiz are changing the way some teachers and students do business in the 21st century. These software packages allow teachers and students to deliver and receive content in a variety of forms. As a simple example, a teacher can post a document for students to read and an assignment for student response. Students respond electronically and then receive prompt feedback from a teacher responding to their response, and the process of learning continues. Videos, documents, links to resources, audio files, embedded games, models, and more can all be delivered using Moodle or Studywiz. Perhaps, "delivered" is even too limiting of a term.  This content is not delivered like a worksheet from a teacher; rather, it is on demand whenever the student needs it. Also, as this use grows, so do the available options. The makers of Infinite Campus, a widely used grade reporting software package, have introduced advancements that now allow students to submit content. (Note: This software has been one of the keys to making Standards Based and Mass Customized Learning a practical reality in my classroom.)

Cousins With a Common Purpose

Classroom teachers spend their entire careers being presented with one initiative after another.  Often times these initiatives have little to do with each other and may even work against each other.   However, sometimes initiatives work hand in hand with a common purpose.

Both situations above are the case with three current educational initiatives: Common Core (CC), Standards Based grading (SB), and Mass Customized Learning (MCL).  These are three separate initiatives that don't necessarily come from the same folks.  However, these initiatives are actually related.  In short CC represents the latest set of content standards that students will soon be expected to meet.  SB is an approach that requires all students to meet the standards of the Common Core and requires schools to report each student's progress toward that goal.  MCL is an approach that allows the theory of Standards Based grading to become a more practical reality.  Thus, MCL is also an approach that helps students meet the standards of the Common Core.  Though separate, the three initiatives are related, like cousins.

The difficulty arises when targeted experts, people who are rock solid in one initiative but lacking in understanding of other related initiatives, give well intended advice that is counter productive in the long run.  For example, some of these experts make claims about how best to address the Common Core, despite having apparently limited knowledge about how Standards Based Learning and/or Mass Customized Learning work.  This serves to fragment educational progress and undermine pedagogical growth.

It is far more effective to look at CC, SB, and MCL as cousins working toward a common family purpose.  When combined, these three beneficial initiatives are more likely to take the giant leap from theory to reality.

A Question of TIme

I've had a question arise recently that has given me pause for reflection.  If students appear engaged in the classroom, yet some are not meeting target dates for meeting standards, is this okay?  Is it okay to let this go, focusing solely on interventions for those students and not the fact that they are "behind".

In a fully implemented MCL system, my answer would likely be, "Yes, learning is the constant; time is the variable."  However, when the MCL classroom exists as part of a traditional school system, there are time limits placed upon teachers and students that are hard to ignore.

The irony is that the overwhelming majority of students may be learning far more and achieving to a higher level than before an MCL implementation, including those who are not working at an expected pace.  The dominant concern could be the time it might take some students to progress, not the progress itself.

Perhaps it is okay to "note and nudge" in this case.  In other words, I could make note of each student's current status (I do this anyway) and nudge those who need it in some ways that don't disrupt the positive feel of the MCL classroom.  Putting student names on the board as a special caution flag along with the suggestion that those students work during break or after school as they see fit seems a good step.  I had tried this as a mandatory step, and it really felt like I was dragging mules, not my intent!  I much prefer the offer as opposed to the command, and the students appear to feel the same way.  I'm yet to have an empty room during break since I made that switch.

Another way to nudge is the parent phone call.  Some students find an extra gear when they learn a call home is imminent (noted by their name being written in a different color on the board), making the call unnecessary.  Others benefit from the extra nudge at home.  At very least, the parent becomes informed of the situation and the opportunities for assistance available.

What gives me great comfort is the reality that being "behind" doesn't mean what it used to.  Being behind used to mean missing work along with a assessments that could include very low scores that were indicative of a student failing to meet not just the standards linked to the missing work, but potentially even the work that was "complete".  In the standards-based classroom in which I am implementing an MCL approach, a student may be a few standards behind.  However, the difference rests in the prior standards.  ALL of the prior standards will have been met or exceeded.  That's not just work completion but work completion with an appropriate level of quality.  That's a huge difference and I'll sleep easy because of it!

Direct Instruction in the MCL Classroom

In the earliest days of my MCL pilot, I had several classroom visitors who noted the lack of whole class direct instruction.  This was an accurate observation as I needed to learn the best ways to use this valid instructional method with my students.  Here are some strategies that I have tried or hope to try in the future.

• Whole Class Direct Instruction: Aside from occasional status of the class check ins, this was largely absent from my initial implementation.  The absence didn't exactly break my heart as I've found that many young adolescents do not favor this type of instruction.  After some consideration, I realized that the problem with direct instruction isn't with the teaching method.  Rather, the challenge is with the readiness of the student, half of the direct instruction equation.  Previously, I had used whole class direct instruction to introduce content and to share the most important information.  This was riveting for me but boring for most students despite my best jokes, bells, and whistles.  A month ago, I started using direct instruction in a different way.  Rather than using the method to introduce content, I used it as a means to review and expand upon learned content.  In short, whole class direct instruction now takes place when I feel a critical mass of students have acquired the knowledge based needed to participate in a discussion, rather than to just absorb my sleep inducing wisdom.  For example, students who know the details of the Constitution are more likely to be engaged in a discussion about current constitutional issues like the Supreme Court review of the health care law.  This method is still at the bottom of the favorites list for most students, so I try to keep these discussions rare and brief.  However, when we do have the discussions, they have more purpose and merit.

• Direct Instruction By Video Lesson: Let's face it.  Students are living in a point and click world.  It seems only natural that on demand multimedia play a major role in the 21st century classroom.  This is the primary way that I share new content with students, rather than the cat wrangling of whole class direct instruction of new content.  Students are required to access video lessons that I have created and other media that I link for them within our Moodle course.  What makes this more effective for students is that they have full control of the instruction.  Play, stop, pause, replay, all are available to students.  There's no excuse for missing anything.  Another benefit is that this form of direct instruction is available anywhere, anytime.  If a student has internet access, that student can access video lessons.  If a student is going to need a video lesson but will be without internet access, the video lesson can be downloaded directly to a laptop for offline play.

• One-To-One Direct Instruction: One of the benefits of students working in an MCL classroom is the freeing effect of independent student learning.  If students are working independently, the teacher then becomes free to assist as needed, one of my favorite parts of teaching.  If a student seems to be struggling, I am free to provide assistance.  I am also much more free to field questions from individual students.  Finally, students seek me out when submitting content, which provides an excellent opportunity for me to reinforce the most critical understandings of the content and to explain how their work measures up against the standard.  Many students sincerely desire to exceed the standards.  They just need to know how.  A little one-to-one direct instruction is just what they need.

• Small Group Direct Instruction: This is one area where I need to make more progress.  I have found that I am much more in touch with where individual students are in their learning than one might initially expect in such an independent, diverse learning environment.  Since all work funnels through me, I have a much better viewpoint of this than I did when collecting 40 identical worksheets.  I have read about how some MCL teachers temporarily group students for direct instruction.  I admit, I haven't made this a focus so far, but I definitely see the merit.  I have grouped some students for projects and some checklists require students to play learning games together.  However, I haven't taken advantage of the opportunities to bring students together for small group direct instruction.  It's on my "To Do" list.

• Seminars: In my happy dream world, I would advise a group of students for several years and facilitate their learning using an MCL approach.  On scheduled occasions, I would present seminars to students (my advisees and/or others) who have signed up on an as needed basis.  The fact that the seminars would not be required for students would undo some of the hazards of whole class direct instruction, as volunteers tend to be more engaged than those who are forced to participate.  This would require a system-wide change to the educational system, but even teachers can dream!

Tools For Independent Learning

One of the best features of MCL is it requires independent learning on the part of the student.  This, of course, has educational merit, but my observations have indicated that independent learning tends to lead to higher levels of engagement.  Here are some tools that have proven helpful.

• Video Lessons: These can take a couple forms, but they all have the same outcome.  Students can point and click to view a direct instruction video on the topic of study.  Video lessons can be homemade (I make mine as self-playing Keynote slideshows that I export and upload as Quicktime files) or from public sources.  The benefits of homemade video lessons are that you know they will remain available, you know they won't be blocked by internet filters, and most importantly, students receive the exact, word for word content that you intend for them to receive.  Using videos from other sources can be a time saver, plus they sometimes include higher quality content/images than a homemade video lesson.  Regardless of which you use (I use both), students have access to the content you wish them to engage in and can review the direct instruction as much as they want, when they want.

• Checklists: Most students thrive in an environment where they know exactly what they need to do on a step by step basis.  As my students work toward meeting standards, they work through multiple series of checklists that include required tasks selected by me.  Built within the checklists are opportunities to work alone, work with partners, receive direct instruction, play games, complete worksheets, create teacher/self selected projects, and more.  Students get to choose which checklists they are working through which is a big plus.  The other day, I was talking with a student about the option to move from one series to another.  He just let out a sigh of relief and said, "I like that."  This is no surprise.  Some students get in a zone and need to keep working with a single focus while others need frequent shifts of focus to maintain their engagement level.  The shift for students is as easy as viewing a different checklist.

• Electronic Classroom Management: The folders, files, cabinets, and trays of the 20th century classroom are being increasingly replaced with electronic tools like Moodle and StudyWiz.  In my class, Moodle is used as a platform for sending and receiving the majority of educational content.  Students download checklists and other documents, click on links to multimedia resources, complete and submit assignments/quizzes/projects, receive prompt and specific teacher feedback, and more.  What really makes this a tool of independence for students is the ability to access "classroom" content in the library, at home, anywhere there is an internet connection!  With organizational difficulties being one of the typical challenges of young adolescence, Moodle is a lifesaver for many students.

• Progress Charts: Even in the traditional model, where all students are roughly working on the same content at the same time, young adolescents at times forget where they left off.  This is even more an issue in the MCL classroom.  Students will likely be working on content that is entirely different from their neighbors.  This is where progress charts are very helpful.  Students need only walk to the wall of charts to view their current progress.  Set up in spreadsheet form, these charts allow students to see what they are currently working on.  The charts take two forms.
• Standards Met Charts: As standards are met, the correlating boxes are marked with an X or filled.  This works well with standards that are largely knowledge based.
• Level of Skill Charts: As students develop a skill (that correlates to one or more standards), boxes are gradually filled to show this development.  This works particularly well with content that develops over the long term, like writing.  A student might begin the year writing narratives of a quality that only partially meets the standard.  Over time, the student develops his/her writing skills, producing higher quality narratives that warrant filling in of more boxes.

Using these tools and others, students are becoming more and more independent.  It has been noted by some that this is excellent training for the online courses that will likely play a major role in the future of higher education.  Most importantly, students working independently appear to feel a sense of freedom that leads to engagement.