,It was with subtle pleasure (at the beginning) that I digested the Dervin article. I jumped right in, my laptop fully charged, back-lighting shining brightly, photocopied pages ready to be read yet again from a hungry thinker - the words dark and almost jumping off the page at me. I had my lined notebook and pen ready to take notes and my phone on standby in case I needed to look up academic vocabulary.
After about 40 words read, I experienced my subtle pleasure kind of melt away. This is when my angst dropped in for a visit. I, like all of us, read this article with the best of intentions and high hopes of really and truly understanding it. I struggled. A lot. Making sense of this text meant one thing - reading and re-reading. It almost felt like I was in a boxing ring and as soon as I received a blow, I knew I had to get right back up and try a different strategy. I did not want the article to win the match! By the second page, I found myself envisioning chunks of paragraphs in little, neat, categories. In fact, this was my primary, if not winning strategy: re-read the sentence twice - look at the wall somewhere - and picture what she is really saying - in phrases that were understandable and compartmentalized. I pictured text, away from this article and in a series of boxes, complete with main ideas, supporting details, and some form of conclusion. I guess in my brain - my own meta-cognitive process - I need to see things in a graphic organizer type format. This is my own fault for having taught elementary for so long. Understanding much of it really took a lot of time and energy, and "manipulating" the information in my head. It had to look and feel organized and symmetrical for it to make sense to me. I would teach this to my students in small chunks to be sure! I learned quickly that I did not know what to expect, so I had no pre-conceived opinions but also was greatly lacking in the process of tapping into my prior knowledge. This article is worthy of being digested in small segments, with lots of front loading, opportunities to take chunks of text and fill a sort of graphic organizer so that one could better see what the main ideas are. In addition, if students were presented with some sort of graphics -circles or boxes or Venn, that cleanly introduced some of this tricky academic vocabulary, students might have a better chance of understanding this level of text.
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I absolutely love the idea of personalized learning. Students moving along at their own pace and owning their learning? Yes! Am I confident in how this all plays out? No! I have a unique position in that I am a resource specialist. I feel that after my 10 years in this position, it might be challenging for me to switch my methodologies and go to or even, BEGIN to go to, personalized learning. I will be honest here - it scare me. I love it but it scares me. I understand and agree with Katie Varatta when she insinuates that families love the idea but teacher are worried. Let's talk practicality, shall we? I have 28 kids on my caseload and they ALL have different goals. Of course I want my kiddos to collaborate and "see each other" and THEN see me. Maybe not in a resource room though. I loved the Education Week video. It made more sense to me than the articles - it made me want to make this happen! And I think one can, but I would need some serious guidance and counseling to be clear on how this works with children with very special needs. I too, want "authentic learning" and for children to engage in the 5 C's. It makes sense. In the article from Herold, I agree that personalized learning is going to vary wildly across schools, across methodologies, and across cultures. For my own teaching, I can dream of making this happen but would hope for very specific models to learn from and yes, a little hand-holding. I am accountable to teach to my student's IEP goals, to show progress, to use research-based district approved curriculum, to adhere (to a degree) to a pacing calendar that the gen ed. teachers enjoy, and very importantly, to engage students and to assess and show mastery. How does this happen in a Personalized Learning environment?
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