research is clear about the importance of a guaranteed and viable curriculum, and personalization is not intended to distract from it. Institute for Personalized Learning senior advisor and personalized learning author Jim Rickabaugh refers to this and other non-negotiable items as “load-bearing walls” (J. Rickabaugh, personal communication, September 21, 2016). To do this work, you need to identify the non-negotiable walls (standards, indicators, district assessments) and those you have the ability to alter (small-group work, intervention and extension time). Interestingly, load-bearing walls in one district or school can look different from those in another. In fact, our research for this book finds that tolerance for personalized learning looks very different from one building to the next. We want to make sure you are fully aware of your circumstances as you begin this work. Identify the most flexible places, or non-load-bearing walls, in your curriculum map and instructional model (see figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1: Identifying load-bearing walls.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/PLCbooks for a free reproducible version of this figure.
In one district, we reviewed a language arts map, which included standards, indicators, suggested materials and resources, common assessments, and pacing available for all teachers. Within the eighty-six-minute block, there were items recommended for the whole group which may take fifteen to twenty-five minutes per day and would not be considered as prime for personalization. The rest of the allotted time had room and flexibility for personalization. In this example, there was a great deal of time for personalization, while also providing guardrails for what is required and non-negotiable. In another school, this one a gifted focus school, teams found that extended learning for students needed to be built around the district-mandated and time-sensitive common standards and assessments that occurred after each four- to six-week unit of instruction. Around this load-bearing wall, the school could build its teaching strategies that would best suit the many question 4 students in an innovative way that worked for them.
The last thing we want is for readers of this book to be in a position where they have to defend the use of personalization. We contend that by being very clear about load-bearing walls with others in your environment, your success at implementation will be far more likely. Consider the guaranteed and viable curriculum, required assessments, school and district tolerance for trying new things, and other mandatory components to your position when identifying load-bearing walls.
Reframing the Teacher’s Role
For some, the teacher’s role may be the most difficult area of reframing we discuss in this chapter. It seems everything we have been taught in our profession has put us, as educators, at the center of the learning process. We think back to our own formal teacher education training and reflect on the phrase we heard repeatedly, which was intended to be a guide for how we—as teachers—should develop lessons: from sage on the stage to guide on the side (King, 1993).
Alison King (1993) uses this phrase to challenge college professors to instruct differently. In her article, King (1993) states that the day and age of the instructor being the sole source of knowledge and pouring information into the empty vessel of the learner is no longer effective. She then provides specific examples of how educators should change to being the ones who facilitate, orchestrate, ask questions, and provide resources in order for the learners to think up their own answers (King, 1993).
Sometimes, when we authors were new teachers, we felt guilty when the class was engaged in learning but we were not specifically lecturing or at the front of the class and leading the lesson. We privately wondered if this was cheating. However, with this “guide on the side” way of thinking, not only was it acceptable but it was also encouraged. We should intentionally and deliberately think about ways to promote active learning and facilitate activities such as think-pair-sharing, generating examples, developing scenarios, concept mapping, flowcharting, predicting, and developing critiques.
While we still support the “guide on the side” thinking, personalized learning adds yet another wrinkle. Many of these activities to promote active learning that we have mentioned are still very teacher driven and developed, even when the teacher is not lecturing from the front of the classroom. Rickabaugh (personal communication, September 21, 2016) describes the next shift and transformation in learning: “Don’t just be the sage on the stage or the guide on the side, be the mentor in the middle.”
We love this quote as it relates to personalized learning. First, we appreciate the use of the words don’t just. What that tells us is there is a time to be the sage on the stage and a time to be the guide on the side, but don’t be just that. Also be the mentor in the middle. It reminds us that in a personalized learning environment, it isn’t always going to be one way or the other. There will be times when it is most appropriate for a teacher to stand up and be the sage on the stage. When students are misusing potentially dangerous equipment, for example, we want the teacher to provide very specific knowledge and content for safety’s sake. We don’t want our students to learn in a self-directed way. There will be other times when being the guide on the side is the most appropriate. For example, if the standard calls for using mathematical representations of Newton’s law of universal gravitation and Coulomb’s law to describe and predict the gravitational and electrostatic forces between objects, the classroom activities may look more facilitated than personalized. Most students aren’t going to know this on the first day of class. However, if this teacher has students in class who, for some reason, are well familiar with these laws and can prove this understanding on a preassessment, the teacher could allow these students to conduct an experiment they find interesting that proves the laws to be true. Or perhaps a team of students work together to develop a video clip of movie scenes that demonstrate Newton’s laws that they could later share with the class.
Rickabaugh’s quote also reminds us that when you aren’t just being a sage or a guide, you are stretching yourself to do more. To be the mentor in the middle, you are taking on a very different role. Mentors, by nature, are experienced and trusted advisors who support mentees on their personal journeys. When we authors think of our own mentors, our relationships with them started with the mentors being good listeners and co-developers of the necessary actions and steps to meet our goals. To us, this role is much different from guiding or facilitating because it makes it personal, which is what all learning is.
Being the mentor in the middle can be a little uncomfortable. As the teacher, you are letting go of some of the responsibility and shifting it to the learners. If you are starting to fidget a little bit while reading this book, remember this is why we are discussing mentoring in the context of reframing, and we are advising you to start slow. We think the following example helps illustrate the mentor in the middle, as this teacher was literally in the middle of the classroom as students worked on the perimeter and he gave immediate feedback to support their work.
A fifth-grade science teacher shared that, for the most part, before he began using personalized learning, every day he arranged students in neat rows. Because he taught the one elementary grade level in which students are assessed on the state test in a three-year band, he felt a great deal of responsibility to make sure the students not only were proficient at what they learned in fifth grade but also remembered what they had learned in the previous grade levels. At the start of each class, he followed a pretty familiar pattern for his lessons. He wrote the objectives of the lesson on the board, and students would start with a short quiz on the previous night’s reading assignment. He would lead a lecture or discussion, and an activity with some sort of hands-on feature would follow. Last, he grouped students in teams and assigned a sort of review game for them to play, which would include items from third and fourth grade that might be on the state test. When asked what students
