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!