快播视频

When Nolen Peterson was asked to be a part of his district鈥檚 design team in support of personalized learning, he knew it was because he鈥檚 a doubter.

鈥淚鈥檓 an experienced enough teacher to know that some things are fads and some things stick,鈥� said Peterson, who teaches middle school social studies at in Oakes, North Dakota. 鈥淚 was very much against another change in our school. I didn鈥檛 necessarily see personalized learning as a fad because I thought we were already doing it, looking for mastery, looking for kids to take ownership of their learning.鈥�

Peterson worried that his district鈥檚 efforts to become more student-centered were just another process that would get in the way of teachers teaching, but a few months into the work, he realized what was at stake.

鈥淚n January, we did some breakout sessions and I thought, wow. This has really got a lot of real-life applications to it,鈥� Peterson said. The real-life applications are powerful for Peterson, and he believes they鈥檙e powerful for parents and community members, too.

鈥淲hat do you want out of your kids? Do you want your kids to make hard decisions? Do you want your kids to know that they can鈥檛 always please everybody? With personalized, competency-based learning, you鈥檙e really teaching decision-making,鈥� said Peterson. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e giving them practice making decisions every single day. You鈥檙e creating life skills over everything.鈥�

For Peterson, the decision-making and critical thinking that personalized learning demands is a perfect fit for social studies.

鈥淛ust like any subject, there鈥檚 not always a right answer. This is what happened, these are the decisions that were made,鈥� said Peterson. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e teaching students to be prepared for a real-world situation, a family situation, a financial situation, that you鈥檝e got make a decision and create your own path. Sometimes it鈥檚 right, sometimes it鈥檚 wrong, but you learn from it and you鈥檙e better for it.鈥�

Peterson is still learning, too, benefitting from regular convenings with his district鈥檚 design team and from changes to the professional development that Oakes staff are receiving. Anna Sell, the elementary principal at Oakes and also a member of the district鈥檚 design team, explained that it was important to the team that everyone feel a part of the work to personalize learning.

鈥淲e wanted the teachers that were with us [on the design team] not to just be the keepers of the knowledge, but the spreaders of the knowledge,鈥� said Sell. Design team educators facilitated one-hour professional development sessions with their peers at the school on things like learner agency and engagement. As an administrator, Sell participated, too. 鈥淚t was a different look at professional development when I was in the audience, getting to learn from them. I鈥檓 just a learner. We鈥檙e going forward as a group.鈥�

Sell, like Peterson, recognized that the first few months of considering a shift toward personalized, competency-based learning required some slowing down and not having all the answers and the 鈥渉ow鈥� of the work right away.

鈥淲hen we started this we just wanted to know, what does this look like? We wanted the whole thing. We just wanted to get to the end,鈥� said Sell. 鈥淏ut 快播视频 has walked us through this slowly. Let鈥檚 get this base, let鈥檚 get our culture, let鈥檚 get the mindsets. I can see now how that鈥檚 very valuable because now that we鈥檝e got those in place, we know where we want to go and why we want to go there.鈥�