Personalization Won't Work without Standards: Time to Pause for the Cause?
After
a good decade of teaching hard, Epiphany #1: Learning—the enduring, meaningful kind—almost always gets messy fast,
going the way of the unexpected, regardless of how hard I work, how well I prepare, and how many resources my learners and I command.
So
I began to plan, and put time aside for, the inevitable: my learners and I
needing, from time to time, to slow down and determine where we were and why, before we decided what to do next. We
came to depend on these time outs to reconnect with each other and re-orient
ourselves to where we were headed. Over time, we referred to these time outs as
taking a pause for the cause.
When
my learners and I first started pausing for the cause, everyone felt relief, but
then it wasn’t so clear what it was we should be doing to reconnect and
re-orient. Make up missed homework? Revise a paper? Catch up on reading? Time,
once again, evaporated, and though it had been nice to slow down for a day, we never
made enough progress. Epiphany #2: There must be clarity about the cause to
make the pause worthwhile.
Slowly
(the multiple-years kind of slowly), I realized that my knee-jerk resistance to
standards had blinded me to their power to personalize instruction—to determine
with learners what particular paths they would find or make to travel to the
desired destination. Without wisely-chosen
standards as our glowing beacon, my learners and I, no matter how many times we
slowed down to regroup, inevitably found ourselves wrecked again on the shoals
of confusion and fatigue.
Accepting this counterintuitive finding—that
learning targets pointing to a well-chosen standard provide the clarity that
enables personalization to become feasible—challenged an idea I’d previously
clung to: standards cause standardization. Over time,
though, I’ve changed my mind; without the rudder of explicit learning targets,
aligned to a standards’ glowing beacon, learners and teachers are doomed to
lose each other and their way while crossing the sea of learning experiences.
And
then, finally, Epiphany #3: Most days should include at least a few moments for
these types of time outs. Waiting weeks or even months to pause for the cause
is a sure way to lose the cause. While at first these regular pauses may seem like
they’re slowing down learning, over time they create a culture of coherence,
which builds confidence and stamina in learners, who begin to find the feeling
for the learning, which enables them to sustain and manage longer periods of
practice because they can see that glowing beacon getting closer.
Going
the way of the unexpected—following our learners where they need to go to get
to their destination—can feel chaotic and downright scary at times, especially
if we’re not clear about what matters most. And even when we think we are clear
about what matters most, we continue to find at least a few confused and
fatigued learners still struggling to find their ways. At least I do.
I
thank my lucky stars that early in my career my mentors insisted that I get
clear about what mattered most in my setting, not to standardize learning, but
so I could then communicate this to my learners, and begin an ongoing dialogue
with them about what they and I could do to help them find and make their ways
to those vital outcomes. Trying to personalize instruction for classrooms full
of students without first establishing the explicit and measurable learning
outcomes that matter most, would be like trying to sail hundreds of ships
across the ocean, without a single rudder or compass.
While
it’s never tidy, how far and fast and to what end my learners travel depends on
how well—or in some cases, how poorly—I’ve applied this principle: Enduring, meaningful learning almost always
gets messy fast, going the way of the unexpected, so expect the unexpected;
create time and structures that enable learners and educators to regularly
reconnect with each other and re-orient themselves to the explicit learning
outcomes that matter most.
Is the learning you’re leading going the way of the
unexpected? Of course it is. Perhaps it’s time to pause for the cause.
Thanks for your post! I'm just saying YES YES YES! It's SO important to have reflection time that we build in regularly! Think about our PD when we just get info thrown at us with no think time- or pause for the cause- then nothing comes of it... or at least much less than could because to ACT upon the ideas, we have to weave them into our current thinking and set their place in our minds. That's what that time out does for us and kids! :D You'd LOVE our books on Guided Inquiry & Guided Inquiry Design - not to be silly- but just to connect you to my work and writings on a reflective practice in inquiry ed.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your reflection and taking time to share with us! :D Leslie
a link to one of the books I mentioned above for your reference. Cheers! http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A3689P
SELLY not silly! haha
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing! Awesome information! It reminds me of Steven Covey's habit -"Sharpening Your Saw."
ReplyDelete