Written by Thanks to everyone in the Cohort for a valuable day of sharing and feedback during our third face-to-face session. Our action plan support group discussion about the planning process for personalizing a unit of study was extremely helpful as I grapple with the parameters of my action plan. I left with plenty of resources on personalized learning (step one – check!) and more importantly, I was able to speak with people who have been on a similar path and could guide me away from some common pitfalls before I even considered them. I feel that further reading and discussion is going to bring a lot of focus and clarity to my next steps.
I hope that what comes out of this action plan is something that I can share with my modern languages department just before we break for the summer, including students’ outcomes, feedback, and examples of their work. My ed-ventures in personalized learning are already leading to a change in how I plan to teach courses in their entirety next year, but I’m happy to be starting with a smaller-scale project.
Good for you Jen,
I really like how your thinking ahead to how you can scale your learning from Cohort 21 to gradually implementing and infecting your department with the same joi de vivre for learning as you!
Your timeline is key as well, because sometimes we, as educational leaders, can get a bit caught up in our endeavors and really push others along at a pace that they are not ready for.
In this vein, you should check out what Marcie Lew is looking at in terms of how to get teachers on board with change: http://cohort21.com/marcielewis/2013/01/08/collaboration-and-contrived-collegiality/
Take a read a leave a comment for her!
garth.