Learning Personalized: The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Dustin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_01:

I'm honored to be joined today by my guest. Allison Zmuda. Allison is an international consultant who works with schools and districts to create dynamic learning environments. And she's the author of eight books, including the one that we're here to talk about today, Learning Personalized, The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom. And Allison is also the founder and curator of the online community learningpersonalized.com.

[00:39] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:41] SPEAKER_01:

Allison, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thank you so much.

[00:43] SPEAKER_02:

Great to be here.

[00:44] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I wonder if we could start with some definitions. What does personalized learning mean in your work?

[00:51] SPEAKER_02:

Personalized learning, again, I want to just verify right out of the gate that it can be defined in lots of different ways. And I think that's one of the general problems right now is that personalized learning is used to promote software platforms. It's used to promote tech initiatives. It's used to promote a fair bit of texts and resources and materials. So I want to describe what personalized learning is in a non-commercial way. So let's start with that.

[01:19]

So from my point of view, personalized learning is really a progressively student-driven model where students engage in rich problems, challenges, and ideas. they have an opportunity to co-create learning experiences with the teacher as well as following through on those experiences. And this personalized learning idea is as invigorating and vibrant today as it was in the early 1900s as part of the progressive era movement. So John Dewey, Maria Montessori, those folks are really trying to describe the type of work that is inspiring and engaging the students, not creating artificial work to entertain and not creating artificial work to teach them skills solely out of context.

[02:12] SPEAKER_01:

So we're talking about more than just, you know, decorating your binder with the things that you're interested in. But we're also not talking, it seems like, about the kind of assessment-driven different pathways to mastering a specific set of objectives. It sounds like you have a much more expansive view of personalized learning than what we saw with some of the kind of automated assessment systems.

[02:33] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And again, I think automated or individualized software platforms, for example, have a specific role under the umbrella of personalized learning. But one of the deep worries that I have is that if personalized learning is subsumed or directly thought of as an individualized software platform moment, then number one, the concern is that teachers will become less and less relevant in the classroom culture. And that is something that I think is not healthy and not helpful for both students and adults. And then the second piece is really thinking about the opportunity that an individualized platform provides. And the opportunity only is around students having the space to figure out how fast or slow they want to work through the material.

[03:29]

So the problems don't change on Khan Academy. So it's very helpful to continue to build student knowledge and skills from a declarative and procedural fluency point of view. But at the same time, students need to have an opportunity to engage in more substantive problems that tap into critical and creative thinking, that they're working toward an authentic audience.

[03:55] SPEAKER_01:

Right, right. And I think one of the things that often drives people to pursue personalized learning in their schools is this sense that, you know, our traditional education, especially at the secondary level, is kind of a canned or kind of generic pathway for students that students may choose not to really engage in. It might not particularly interest them to take the mandatory sequence of courses. And we see personalized learning as an alternative to that that still lets us run fairly normal schools, but that allows us to really tap into students' interests, to students' passions, to give students voice and choice and make things better than that kind of generic pipeline that all students pass through. What are some of the exciting examples that you've seen or that have kind of kept you going as you've pursued personalized learning in your professional work?

[04:45] SPEAKER_02:

So there are a couple of examples. So let's talk about some schools and school districts that are blazing the trail right now. So one that immediately comes to mind is the fantastic work that Jill Thompson is doing in Charlotte Mecklenburg schools. Charlotte Mecklenburg is a pretty significant size school system. I think it's in the top 20 largest school districts in the country. And when I was talking to Jill yesterday, she updated me to say that they have close to 50 schools engaging in some type of personalized learning plan.

[05:23]

So the intention here is that trying to think about this systemically, especially in a system as large as Charlotte-Mecklenburg, is happening right now. Another system that is not as big, but pretty close to scale is Douglas County in Colorado. I had an opportunity to visit there two weeks ago and went to two different schools. And what I saw there was absolutely breathtaking. And there was a classroom teacher. Her first name was Jessica.

[05:58]

And Jessica's students met me at the door and they walked me around the different spaces of learning and just were so incredibly engaged in sharing what each station represented, but also trying to really give me a picture of what was happening in that room and why it was incredibly exciting. And at each moment, and this was a math block, so in one space, students were engaged in screencast-o-matic, so they were trying to describe fractions. So they were making a quick video to describe their knowledge of fractions at that particular moment. So they took something that was a pretty dry and predictable skill and, again, tried to add value to it through their explanation, through their examples.

[06:56]

And, again, that was absolutely lovely. There was another station where a handful of students were working directly with Jessica on guided instruction. There was another station where students were leveraging their knowledge of fractions by being in a maker space. And so the intention here is that multiple stations are really trying to tap into different modalities, different instructional models. So there was a station where they were using an individual software platform similar to any kind of math computer adopted model idea. And that was one feature of it.

[07:36]

But the exciting thing is, is that it really represented a whole child environment to teach mathematics, application, direct instruction, one-on-one building a procedural fluency, sharing via creation of video. And that's a kind of magical experience that I want to continue to promote and put out there.

[08:00] SPEAKER_01:

One thing that occurs to me as you describe Jessica's classroom is the math that students are learning is probably not super negotiable in that classroom. It sounds like the standards that students are working toward are as well-defined as they would be in any classroom. Is that correct?

[08:17] SPEAKER_02:

Yes.

[08:18] SPEAKER_01:

So in looking at the definition of personalized learning on your website, a model where students have a central role in what they learn, how they learn, and how they demonstrate learning, it sounds like the emphasis in Jessica's classroom was on the how they learn and the how they demonstrate, even if because of the nature of a math class, they're not necessarily choosing from scratch the topics to focus on. They're working from probably a curriculum guide or maybe even a textbook that's saying, okay, this week we're going to be focused on this topic. but the personalization in this case is coming in in the how and how it's demonstrated?

[08:53] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. I mean, you know, on some level, when you're thinking about the math practice standards, you can start to see that different standards are activated depending on what station you're demonstrating in. So I think the intention is that constructing a viable argument, communicating an idea is would be more in the screencast-o-matic station, but attention to precision would be more in the sort of the Khan Academy type station. Does that make some sense? But I think the idea too is that it's very helpful for folks to see that you can go after third grade content standards like content standards around fractions in ways that are invigorating and exciting.

[09:44]

It was interesting, too, because Jessica and I chatted after I took a tour of a room, and she said that the math design block had frustrated her for several months because it didn't really have the power of many of the other subject areas that she was teaching in her classroom. So she actually treated it as a classroom design challenge. How can we make math become more vibrant and alive because she found that she was doing a fair bit of direct instruction to make it her way through the mathematics. So they basically went through a similar process like these schools recommending and they figured out a better way to re-engage, re-imagine what that math block looked like.

[10:35]

But I think that's also the power that I'm starting to see and become so thrilled about when I'm looking at it in classrooms. Because the students are really the most underutilized resource we have to date. And trying to tap into not just their aspirations, but also tap into their really good ideas about how they learn best. Tap into good ideas about different approaches, different ways of working. Kids are a heck of a lot more flexible than some adults and trying to get them out of a space where they have an opportunity to create and to explore and to figure out what works and what doesn't work. so they can continue to improve the design.

[11:21] SPEAKER_01:

You know, ever since I've spoke with Russell Qualia in an earlier episode of Principal Center Radio, you know Russ and his work on student voice?

[11:28] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely, yes.

[11:30] SPEAKER_01:

I mean, I've really become convinced that we need to see instructional leadership not just as something that principals do, not just something that department heads do, not just something that even that all staff do, but that instructional leadership is distributed not just among the adults who get paid to be there, but among students as well. And, you know, when we see that when we set, you know, class rules, class policy, that students actually have higher standards for themselves and are harder on themselves than we are often as adults. And I think we're only now starting to tap into that from an academic perspective. You know, we felt like. If, you know, deciding what students are going to learn and when they're going to learn it and how they're going to learn it, you know, those those have always been adult decisions because we're responsible, right? We're responsible for what students learn.

[12:13]

We're accountable for planning our lessons. And, you know, we're hesitant to hand that over to students or to, you know, to give them significant ownership. But I think what you said is absolutely right. I mean, they're incredibly creative and resourceful. And the ownership, I think, has so much potential. So I'm really excited to talk more about this idea of students as instructional leaders and instructional designers.

[12:36]

And you said Jessica saw it as a design challenge for her classroom.

[12:40] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Well, and again, from a classroom environment perspective, you know, the idea is that personalized learning creates a space where teachers and students work together as learning partners, as part of the design and also the assessment of learning. So the intention here is that we're trying to create an opportunity where the teachers release a little bit of the reins. And it's fascinating too, because I think I'm seeing more and more examples where teachers That's something that teachers are so unaccustomed to these days because they feel like they're on this relentless pace to make it through the curriculum, dragging their students most times all the way through that experience with them.

[13:32]

So it's very disorienting to stop and reimagine what are the problems and challenges that students could start diving into and And then secondly, what's my role now in the classroom? Because I think that's also incredibly interesting. And that's definitely a design challenge for classroom teachers is if I'm less necessary to manage them through the process, to scaffold them through the process, so I'm no longer doing whole class instruction. I'm no longer doing sort of one-to-one, first you do this, then you do this. What do I do now? And I think that's both terrifying, but also quite invigorating as a space to be in.

[14:21] SPEAKER_01:

So you've written a book called Learning Personalized with Greg Curtis and Diane Ullman. And I wonder if you could give us a little bit of perspective on how you've set that book up to help educators understand what it means to make some shifts in that direction.

[14:35] SPEAKER_02:

So the book is premised on personalized learning, why it's so significant right now. And then the rest of the book is geared around what I call the 12 elements of personalized learning. So from disciplinary outcomes and cross-disciplinary outcomes. So disciplinary outcomes are sort of what the content standards say or describe what curriculum should be grounded in. And the cross-disciplinary outcomes are the contemporary skills like critical thinking, communication, metacognition, The next piece is really thinking through the types of problems and challenges. So we spend a little bit of time talking about task.

[15:19]

And the task piece is something that requires the ingenuity, not only of the students, but also of the educators. So the challenge here is trying to think through what are the rich problems and challenges that are inherently troubling, not just to us as educators, but also to folks in the outside world. So we're taking a hard look at political challenges, things like terrorism and trying to think through to what extent are we relinquishing a certain number of rights in order to have an idea of security. So the notion of security versus freedom is as powerful in the inner circles in Washington these days as it is true in what's going on in Paris right now. So that's the type of task that we're after.

[16:12]

But the second piece is thinking about an authentic audience. So that's another major piece of the book is trying to consider how can we create audiences that aren't just hypothetical. So I'm not make believing you're somebody and you're not make believing I'm somebody. And I'm an understanding by design trainer, have been for over a decade now. And I think the idea is that...

[16:39] SPEAKER_01:

I knew some of this sounded familiar. That was one of the first professional development experiences I ever had as a teacher, was doing some work with UBD. And I saw the late, great Grant Wiggins was a big fan of your book. And yeah, tell us more about that.

[16:52] SPEAKER_02:

Well, it's interesting because Grant gave me sort of the intellectual space to talk it through with him. So this was about a year before he passed. And one of the things that I was deeply concerned about is that from my understanding by design roots, it really was still a very teacher-controlled experience. And so when you're looking at the reality, when you're sort of lining up what you believe to be true and the idea that's evolving, I really needed to think hard and use my mentors of Grant and Jay to think through those challenges and those ideas. So the reality is that when you're looking at audience, when you're coming up with a hypothetical audience, it's still minimally student driven, right? So the teacher is creating the experience on behalf of the student.

[17:45]

And so the intention is that while a hypothetical audience might have been identified, like you're designing a museum exhibit for, um, museum patrons that are going to walk through, but it's all make-believe. So the real question is, how can we move it from that make-believe space into some type of real space? So you're creating a virtual museum exhibit where students are designing, but also getting feedback from patrons that are walking through their exhibit by leaving comments down below on each one of their exhibit spaces. Does that make some sense? So I think the intention is that trying to think about from a backward design point of view, we can think about the what in engagement with the student. So the notion of goal clarity.

[18:35]

We can decide what this type of task is really trying to go after. We can also start thinking about it from an outcomes point of view and imagining what kind of problem or challenge or idea that the student wants to develop. So we can work from either end. But then the backwards process kicks in high gear. So the notion of having an action plan, that having kids have an opportunity to think and to struggle as part of what normal looks like in terms of process, and then continue to make sense from there with a good guidance and feedback process. from not just the teacher, but also the tentative audience members that they have so employed.

[19:20] SPEAKER_01:

So thinking through some of those as kind of foundational design questions, and then it sounds like one of the last considerations is what are the activities that students are actually going to do in this unit, rather than that being the starting point.

[19:34] SPEAKER_02:

Well, and when you're thinking about that, it's just a very different way of working through a curriculum. One of the things that Grant has said for years and years is that we want to have students graduate with a resume of accomplishments as opposed to a resume of marks. And so when you're thinking about accomplishments, accomplishments are rooted in those types of problems and challenges and ideas. So that's the kind of experience that this book is really trying to go after. And I was just so grateful for Grant's influence and the opportunity to think and to struggle shoulder to shoulder with him.

[20:20] SPEAKER_01:

What a privilege to work so closely with such a giant and really to be able to continue the work. I think that's the exciting part is that it's an ongoing evolution and we're actually seeing it really catch on now in ways, I think, thanks in some part to technology that makes some of these things easier, but it's an exciting time.

[20:40] SPEAKER_02:

Well, and when you're looking at Grant's very early work on authentic assessment, And some of that work is cited in the book. He was really moved by the idea of not just the progressive education giants, but also trying to think about how can we create experiences, whether it's problems that the teacher is designing or problems the students are creating. So I think there is a balance of what kinds of tests or exams are better served if we're continuing to reimagine or reinvigorate what a state or a national assessment might look like as well.

[21:28] SPEAKER_01:

So Allison, if this is all sounding like a rather big shift to us, if getting to the point where we really can say that we have personalized learning in all of our classrooms, if that seems like a far-off vision, what are some good starting points? What are some immediate steps that we can take that don't require years and years of planning that teachers can dive into pretty quickly once they understand some of the core ideas?

[21:51] SPEAKER_02:

One of the first recommendations I have is start with a unit or a problem or a challenge that's currently exists in your curriculum and try to reimagine a different way of going after it so part of what we did in the learning personalized book is describing inspiring task ideas the spirit of that chapter is around going personal going local and going global so going personal it can be as easy as having them draft something in the this i believe criteria based on the program that's been going on for years and years that NPR sponsors. So, you know, when you're designing something for the list, I believe it has to be approximately 500 words and focusing on how a particular personal belief was shaped.

[22:46]

The intention here is that it's something that first and foremost that students are designing for somebody else, not you, the teacher, as the sole audience. And that's a really, really, really big deal. It changes the game entirely. It makes kids hesitate before they push the send button in an email. So that's the first piece is having them start moving away from teacher as a primary audience. But secondly, having students see that there are real criteria that any kind of product or project needs to line up in service of.

[23:25]

So That would be the second piece is trying to look around online or be engaged in looking at specific competitions like robotics competition or a poetry competition and clarify those criteria and putting them in front of students. So they don't know you, they're not rooting for you one way or another. So what do you do to make your idea stand out? What do you do to continue to revise so that the prose actually speaks because you don't have the relational context that is a normal part of a teacher-student relationship.

[24:07] SPEAKER_01:

If I could just jump in, I think that's huge because it seems to me that one of the roots of student disengagement and of students just not really being all that into what we want them to do in school is that so much of it seems like it is an inauthentic audience. It's just the teacher and the teacher's expectations. And when you said those kind of external criteria, you know, the contest, the rules that are out there to win something, some kind of real world thing, that seems so much more meaningful and so much more motivating than just kind of whatever expectations my teacher came up with today.

[24:42] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And I think the audience matters incredibly from a student point of view. You get a little bit lazy when you're turning in assignment after assignment to the same individual. And that individual also gets a little bit weary of reading the same type of writing over the course of a given semester or a given year. So I think that starts to reinvigorate it. Now, again, I also want to suggest that you don't have to change everything all at once.

[25:18]

So even if you start with just identifying a task, And thinking about criteria that are coming not just from within your classroom, but outside of your classroom. And then the third piece is let them connect. Let them communicate. Let them publish in an outside space. And that actually continues to inspire them to pursue other ideas, possibilities, or opportunities.

[25:45] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Learning Personalized, The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom by Allison Zmuda, Greg Curtis, and Diane Ullman. And Allison, tell us what you're up to next.

[25:54] SPEAKER_02:

I am absolutely thrilled to be partnering with Benna Kalik. I don't know if folks are familiar with Benna Kalik, but she was the co-author with Art Costa of Habits of Mind. And one of the more magical things that came out of writing the book with Greg and Diane is was she had an opportunity to read a draft copy of it early on and said, I'd be honored to write a blurb on the back of the cover, but you really need to think about using habits of mind and describing what powerful instructional practice looks like in personalized learning. And I looked her square in the eyes. I was like, yeah, that's never going to happen without somebody like you. And she said, well, I'm interested in it if you are.

[26:42]

And so that was how just a beautiful collaboration was born. So Ben and I have the book already in its first draft and should be out hopefully by the end of this calendar year of 2016. But it really is powerful. And so I'll give you a sneak peek that Personalized learning and habits of mind connect in the idea of the four filters. So one filter is voice. And Justin, you and I talked about the insignificance of voice a little bit earlier in the interview.

[27:19]

The power of having students be citizens of their own learning experience, leaders of their own learning experience. Second is co-creation. And co-creation is very much the heart of the learning personalized book. So you can get a good look at what co-creation means by reading that particular text. Third is social construction. The idea that we learn and build and create and problem solve and get better by consulting others to continue to create and engage in the work.

[27:52]

And finally, most importantly of all, is self-discovery. What do I learn about myself along the way? And it's so fascinating because when we were designing the four filters and we were running them up the flagpole to see if they resonated, it pointed out two things. One, lots of people talk about student voice and choice, and choice to me still feels too much teacher directed, too much teacher blessed. But co-creation actually does have that spirit and that vibe of students and teachers going shoulder to shoulder. And then the next piece is that those four filters work as powerfully for kids as they do for adults.

[28:36]

So the idea of creating a culture of innovation, this has an opportunity to revitalize not just classroom culture, but school and district culture as well. So thanks for indulging me on that. But again, definitely take a look at it. Again, the book's untitled as of now, but Ben Akalik and Alison Zamuda. You can just do a quick search on that at the end of the year and something should pop up on ASED.

[29:02] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Alison, it has been a privilege to speak with you today on Principal Center Radio. Thank you so much.

[29:07] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much, Justin.

[29:09] SPEAKER_00:

And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[29:13] SPEAKER_01:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Alison Zmuda about personalized learning? I think one of my impressions as we talked was that this has the potential to be a rather intimidating topic. If we're talking about reorganizing classrooms and rethinking curriculum and rethinking a student's role and teacher's roles in the classroom, that might sound like more than we want to kind of tackle at the school-wide level. And the thought that I want to leave you with today is that that's okay. We don't have to tackle something like this all at once as a whole school. And in fact, if you try to do that, it's probably not going to be terribly successful.

[29:51]

But what I do want to encourage you to do is to look around your school. Look in each classroom and think, what are the opportunities within this classroom to take some of the steps that Allison talked about today? To try some of these ideas in her book, Learning Personalized. And I would guess that you will find classrooms where a lot of this is already a reality. Now, that's very different from saying this is what we do as policy at our school, that we are a personalized learning school. I think that that might be farther down the road.

[30:20]

But I want to encourage you to go into your classrooms with open eyes and really see what of this are teachers already doing and how can I encourage that? How can I help them take that to the next level so that students are co-creators, so as instructional designers and even as instructional leaders. If you would like more on being an instructional leader and getting into classrooms every day and having those conversations with students, I want to invite you to check out our free program, the 21 Day Instructional Leadership Challenge. We have had thousands upon thousands of people from more than 50 countries around the world go through that program, and you can sign up at instructionalleadershipchallenge.com.

[30:58] Announcer:

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