Teachers Learning From Each Other

Last May, I wrote about "Homeschooling, Big Picture Learning and the Met," because I was excited to see some overlap between Big Picture Learning ideas and homeschooling. I wrote, "As public schools begin to offer more interesting educational opportunities for students, homeschoolers may want to take a closer look at their local schools. Perhaps there's some common ground that hasn't been explored, some mutually beneficial ideas we can share with each other.  Hopefully, those of us who feel we've learned a thing or two about education will feel inspired to ask, 'How can we work together to improve the educational alternatives for all the children in our communities?'"

If we were to aggregate all the experiences of home educators, teachers, mentors, coaches, and other types of youth leaders, imagine how much we would learn from each other. We have a wealth of experience from which to draw, but too often doors are closed and people are unwilling to subject themselves to public scrutiny. As a home educator, I certainly understand and respect the desire for privacy. I also recognize the risks of exposing ourselves to criticism—or worse—especially when our methods are unconventional. Yet, as scary as it may be to show others exactly how we do our jobs, I'm beginning to think it's perhaps the best way to illustrate a new way to learn. 

Minnesota New Country School

As a participant in the Deeper Learning MOOC (DLMOOC), I had a wonderful opportunity to take a virtual glimpse inside the Minnesota New Country School (a public charter school serving grades K–12).  It was enlightening for me to see how teachers were offering personalized learning experiences and taking student choices seriously within their school setting.

If you would like to see for yourself, watch "Deeper Learning Through Personalized Learning Plans," one of many Vimeo videos available from TeachingChannel.org.

This on-the-spot glimpse into the Minnesota New Country School shows how teachers and students use personalized learning plans for their projects. What I find especially interesting is how much overlap there is between the Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach and what I would describe as child-led learning, or "unschooling." Specifically:

1. Students are encouraged to choose their own projects, which increases their level of interest and sense of control.
2. Students select an adult advisor with whom they can establish a longterm (more than a single semester or year) connection, which leads to a greater sense of continuity, familiarity, mutual understanding and trust.
3. Students work at their own pace, uninterrupted by bells.
4. Adult mentors assist with planning and record-keeping. 

As you may have noticed if you've been reading this blog, I've always believed in involving kids in decisions about their learning. Even though I wouldn't allow my kids to avoid entire disciplines (math or writing, for example), I could still talk to them about why a particular subject was important enough to merit their consideration. I could also help them find ways to connect topics to their own interests. At a minimum, they could choose the specific topics within a general subject to be explored. They've always had a voice—a say in what they were doing—and a range of choices.

Along with seeing the similarities between child-led homeschooling and project-based learning, I noted some obvious differences:

1. Standards. Teachers in an accredited school must consistently evaluate the work being done by students in terms of mandated standards (state curriculum frameworks, Common Core—or whatever comes next). In contrast, even in "The 8 Strictest States for Homeschooling" (as of 2012), home educated students generally have more freedom to deviate from the norm than their schooled peers. 
2. Documentation. Students in a school prepare extensive formal documentation to demonstrate what they have learned; students in a home setting keep records but tend to rely more on dialog and informal assessments (with formal evaluations typically conducted once a year to satisfy state requirements).
3. Resources. I should probably state the obvious here: I envied the equipment and materials those students had at their school. Although homeschoolers have virtually unlimited access to an astounding variety of craft and science supplies sold by hundreds of vendors, there are still budgetary and practical limits to what makes sense in a home. A school, by comparison, can obtain large or expensive equipment and (potentially dangerous) lab materials. Overall, I think my kids did a great job of cobbling together what they needed for various projects, but how wonderful it would have been to have everything at our fingertips day after day! 

Our experiences don't have to be identical to be worth sharing. By observing the interactions between teachers and students at New Country School with an open mind, I have been able to evaluate what I do as a home educator from a different point of view. I have also gained a more optimistic outlook on how schools are striving to meet the needs of their students. Although a teacher in a classroom may be working with different constraints and resources than I am, I can still learn from watching how he or she teaches. Reciprocally, as I present the experiences I have had as a home educator, I hope I will help someone who is interested in exploring a different approach to teaching.

If you're a teacher, have you been willing to share your work openly with others? Tell me, what has that been like for you? In what ways have you been able to learn from your students and other teachers?

Personalized Learning and Student Choice

"It is frankly difficult to understand how anyone can talk about school reform without immediately addressing the question of how students can be given more say about what goes on in their classes." —Alfie Kohn, "Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide"

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment and ask, "Why talk about school reform at all?" The old school model of "I teach, you learn" works—sort of. During the twelve years or more when students are in school, a large percentage of them manage to learn. If not everything, at least something. Most graduate and eventually get jobs.

It isn't a perfect system, but what is? Why not continue to teach our children in the same way that our parents and grandparents learned?

If this doesn't strike you as absurd, then you may be the type of learner for whom the system was designed. You might like following instructions, knowing what to expect, and having everything planned in advance for you. Perhaps you learn well from books and lectures and are very good at recalling what you have read or heard. Maybe you get high marks on standardized tests. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with learning in this way; in fact, I happen to be one of the people for whom this old-school model works pretty well. It simply isn't optimum for all people, all of the time.

There's another problem with doing things the same way we've always done them: it doesn't result in progress. To improve upon an idea, we have to be willing to try something new. Even if we acknowledge that the old model "worked" well enough to provide an adequate education for large numbers of students, no one would describe our current educational system as flawless. There's always room for improvement. No educator deserving of the title would be satisfied with "good enough," so we have to keep asking ourselves: How can we do a better job?

Here's where I agree with Alfie Kohn: one way we can do a better job is by giving students "more say about what goes on in their classes."

I'm familiar with Kohn's books (Punished By Rewards, The Case Against Standardized Testing, The Schools Our Children Deserve) and was pleased to see his article listed among the course materials for Week 4 of DLMOOC. Kohn summarizes the benefits of including students in the decision-making process, such as an improved sense of well-being, better self-discipline, greater academic achievement, avoidance of burnout (student and teacher), and democracy in action. He writes:

"There is nothing new about the idea that students should be able to participate, individually and collectively, in making decisions. This conviction has long played a role in schools designated as progressive, democratic, open, free, experimental, or alternative; in educational philosophies called developmental, constructivist, holistic, or learner-centered; in specific innovations such as whole-language learning, discovery-based science, or authentic assessment; and in the daily practice of teachers whose natural instinct is to treat children with respect."

The theme for Week 4 of the Deeper Learning MOOC has been personalized learning, student voice, and student choice—topics I have written about in several earlier posts (see, for example, Choices: Too Many, Not Enough, or Just Right? and Treating Students as Equal Partners). I'm delighted to have been introduced, through the DLMOOC, to many people who are working hard to create opportunities for students in schools to have a say in what and how they learn. The panelists for this week's discussion were inspiring.



Keven Kroehler, Executive Director for Edvisions Schools, talks about creating a "level playing field" in schools, where the contributions of students and teachers are equally valued and respected. He comments that "students think of things that teachers hadn't thought of," which reminded me of a few situations I faced last year (When Your Students Know More Than You Do, and Lessons Learned). Kevin also emphasized the importance of offering students authentic choices—the ability to make decisions about things that matter to them—rather than false choices, as in, "Which of these two preselected, mandatory activities do you want to do?" Kids know when they are being manipulated.  

Likewise, I appreciated panelist Kathleen Cushman's perspective on student voice. She talked about students being "citizens, not subjects," and described student voice as an "equity issue."She asks teachers to consider: "Whose voice gets listened to? Who gets to speak?" She recommends what I call "The Smorgasbord Approach," exposing students to a variety of things and allowing them to choose what interests them (as I describe in my post on Nurturing Interest-Based Learning). 

Panelist Brandon Wiley, Director of Asia Society's International Studies Schools Network (ISSN), talked about the importance of "recognizing students as key constituents, clients, customers," and giving them "a seat at the table," and I nodded my head in agreement. If students are the "key constituents," then it's inconceivable for them to be left out of the planning, implementation and evaluation of their work. This requires us to change how we think about everything: what students learn, how they learn it, and how they demonstrate their learning.  

I enjoyed hearing the DLMOOC panelists describe their iterative design process (similar to what I blogged about in Kindergarten-Style Planning), and it was interesting to me to see how this approach works in a school setting. Teachers collaborated not only with their students but with other teachers, parents, and members of the community. They developed a student's plan of study incrementally, continually learning and building upon what they discovered as they went along. During each stage of the project (planning, implementing, assessing), all the people with a vested interest were consulted and given opportunities to provide feedback. While this must have complicated the decision-making process, it also helped everyone make new connections, personally and cognitively.

The students who were on the "Lens into the Classroom" Student Panel for Week 4 were engaging, too.


Allowing students to have a say in how they learn is a school reform that has clearly made a big difference in the lives of these students. While this doesn't prove that all students' learning would necessarily be deepened in a High Tech High type of school, it seems likely that it would. Even the students who prefer a more traditional approach would benefit, because they could choose that method for themselves.

When my youngest daughter was fourteen, she said she wanted to attend the public high school in our town. Up until that point, she had always been homeschooled and free to choose what, when and how she learned. Why would she want to give that up? There were a variety of reasons—she wanted to see what school was like; she was interested in meeting more kids her age than she could find in the homeschooling community; she wanted to learn in a classroom setting. Ultimately, what mattered most was that she had a choice. She could return to homeschooling at any time, and she knew that was an option. That made all the difference in how she approached her education. She evaluated her own needs, assessed what the school had to offer, and figured out how to make the best use of her time there.

Giving kids choice doesn't mean deciding what that choice should be. It means we allow kids to figure out who they are and what they need to grow and thrive. A structured classroom with a teacher lecturing in the front isn't necessarily going to prevent deeper learning, but it shouldn't be the only option.

What Is Deeper Learning?

I am currently participating in Deeper Learning MOOC (DLMOOC), a free online course that lasts for nine weeks. It will be the second, massively-open online course—or MOOC—for me. The first one was Learning Creative Learning, which I blogged about last year (starting with the post "The Biggest Class I've Ever Attended"). Once again, I am excited to be sharing ideas and learning from others who feel as passionate about education as I do.

The first week has been spent on introductions and setting up subgroups, but online discussions are already getting underway.

So, what exactly is deeper learning? For a definition, I began by referring to the suggested readings for Week 1. According to an infographic on Deeper Learning:

"Deeper Learning ensures that students master core academic content, think critically, solve complex problems, work collaboratively, communicate effectively, direct their own learning, and develop an academic mindset." 

Two phrases contained within that definition—core academic content and academic mindset—require additional explanation, but allow me to return to them later. Scanning the rest of the infographic, I see cute cartoons that represent four types of (presumably, deeper) learning:

1. Learn! Personalized Learning
2. Do! Project-Based Learning
3. Apply! Work-Based Learning
4. Show! Competency-Based Learning

I imagine the exclamation marks after the commands (Learn! Do! Apply! Show!) are intended to convey excitement, but I feel as though I'm being issued directives. I wonder how students will feel if they are told to "Do!" or "Apply!"without being given much choice in the matter?  

Also, while I'd like to think that "personalized learning" means students will be allowed to learn at their own pace and make meaningful decisions regarding what and how they learn, the mention of "core academic content" makes me skeptical. I'm not sure exactly how much personalization will be permitted if learning is core-driven rather than student-driven. No doubt, there's value in learning from projects, real-world experiences, and student demonstrations of competency, but I feel what is most important is for the students to be the ones asking for those activities. If they are mandated by teachers, how might that impact the students' opportunities for deeper learning?