I am a fighter for what I believe is right for our kids and all learners of all ages. I fought the university system that doesn’t honor work experience and expertise. I’ve been trying to encourage a system that allows for challenging what you know. Demonstrating that you understand something already instead of being one more number for the bean counters. The whole system is designed around Carnegie Units (seat time) and paying per ADA. I believe if all of us work together and look at Finland, British Columbia, Big Picture, and more we’ll find some ideas that will work in the US, in our state, in our district, in our school, in our home. It’s all about the learner and we forgot that. The term “No Child Left Behind” was framed to leave more children behind. We focused on accountability, tests, paying for expensive textbooks that become outdated as soon as they’re published. This is all changing. Our voices will be heard.

This is an exciting time to be in even though it is scary, not working, and changing so fast. We are in the middle of a transformation with everything — business, government, schools. We can be a big part of that change if we pull together and help each other.

Thank you Deven for sharing your story!!!
Barbara

I am a great believer in self directed individual learning and it seems to me that if one is practicing self-directed learning there needs to be an option of not attending school when school is not the place where one’s particular inquiry can be satisfied. That is what happened to me: I left school not because I was not a good student but because I was so curious, so inquisitive that time spent sitting in school was interfering with my learning. Mandating seat time, and especially mandating additional seat time — until one is 18 — as President Obama has proposed, is a great threat to the increasing numbers of students for whom schools are incapable of providing sufficient learning opportunities.

It was interesting to read the comment that in one Wisconsin district there is an effort to practice personalized learning in a kindergarten program. Perhaps these students will continue to demand the system support individualized learning as they move up through the grades and continue to force schools to realize that almost aspect of the modern American school is in place for the convenience and benefit of the school and system and not for the benefit of any individual student.

« I am in Wisconsin and we are part of CESA 1 NxGL. I team teach with 42 kindergarten kids and we are using personalized learning. We are working through the tangles of being able to personalize with kids who are just learning to read, write and compute. It has always been a struggle to be able to differentiate the difference between true personalized learning vs. differentiation and individualization. You have done a beautiful job of creating a chart that makes this clearer for all stakeholders. This chart will be useful for helping colleagues, administration and parents see the true definition of personalized learning and the potential that it holds. »