Picking a style

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Hamlet

Every year around this time schools across the country buzz with excitement and activity. Students return to campuses and teachers anticipate great years ahead. New classrooms are placed together, extensive planning is undertaken and innovative ideas begin their implementation.

Regardless of whether classrooms are blended or not the majority of teachers exemplify innovation. I’m sure that in every school building you will find at least a few teachers taking on new ideas.

Why is this?
1) we need to maintain interest in our work
2) the summer “off” is usually used to seek out Professional Development and learning
3) each year we have new students with new needs

Point 3 really exemplifies one of the things I’m increasingly noticing- I’ve always been a personalized learning teacher. So have you. And you.

Most (not all) teachers are. So there we have it job done.

Well not quite. Students are our lives and we work to meet their needs. The idea of personalized learning is not new. It is being packaged as if it is but pedagogically and philosophically it is not substantively different. As such it does not need to be feared by teachers.

What is a shift is the explicit focus on how we can not just differentiate learning for students but more fundamentally to direct students to their own learning path. Personalized learning is about student independence and autonomy rather than bending a set lesson to fit a student. Personalized learning is focused on the ways in which we can move emphasis from teacher to student.

In my opinion personalized learning suffers in part because of it’s aims. In focusing on the student it becomes challenging to create a pedagogy. In the book “Switch” Chip and Dan Heath describe the importance of shaping the path in any institutional change. However it’s challenging to shape the path for teachers when in theory there are infinite possible personalized plans.

This is where we have to take pause. We have to merge what is idealistically our goal with what is realistically possible. And in the confulence of these two things I find myself trapped. I’m not sure how to personalize without making my job nigh on impossible. I’m not sure where differentiation ends and personalization begins. I am no longer certain if I am working in a new world or a slightly modified version of the past.

Change is incremental and school have changed massively over the course of their existence. No matter what the twaddle peddled by others, schools are markedly different than in 1900. They just don’t undergo radical change as it is incredibly different to shift overnight.

With this in mind, I’m focused on scaling back change this fall. I’m among those innovative teachers but I’m worried about the world of the possible not the world of the hypothetical.