The Teaching and Learning Continuum was designed to support changing teaching practice. Teachers may not have the tools, resources, and support to change teaching practice on their own. The main challenge for teachers is time.
Schools are looking at strategies to empower teachers to take control of their personal professional learning. That is tough for some especially if the system doesn’t support them. The Stages of Personalized Learning did not address some of the concerns teachers were telling me. Schools reached out to me asking about the contents and why we didn’t include traditional models. They also felt specific criteria were missing. When I started working with Rose Colby on personalized, competency-based education, I realized how much I didn’t know. I interviewed Rose in Episode #43, read her book, and have presented with her twice at iNACOL. It’s not just about personalizing learning. It’s about changing the system to address competencies, skills, and dispositions. I got it that there is still so much more to do.
CCSSO (Council of Chief State SchoolOfficers) along with QED Foundation’s Transformational Model created a CSSR Best Practice Continua in 2012 that I saw when it was in the draft mode. I’m not able to find it now. I saw the potential within that document as a starting point and worked with several schools who were looking for classroom observation forms, coaching tools, ways to identify and monitor progress, etc. So in working with different ideas and models, I co-developed different tools including several ideas similar to this chart. When I shared several iterations with teachers in focus groups, we came up with different criteria and approaches across the continuum. This chart is a general overview with criteria for support moving to a personalized, competency-based system and learner agency.
My focus has been on supporting teachers as a coach for almost 30 years. I see how difficult it is for teachers in traditional systems to be innovative. Yet, the teachers I’ve met and know are amazing. They are my heroes. They do the day-to-day work to make a difference in children’s lives. They have demonstrated to me how they can take an existing lesson and look at areas where they can bring in voice, choice, and autonomy so students start developing learner agency. However, I get questions and see requests on social media for ideas, tools, resources, and other strategies to support teachers and systems. It really is more than just changing one lesson but sometimes starting small opens doors to magical learning.
You can download the chart from the link above in SlideShare and use it. Please let me know how it is working for you in the comments below, contact me here or with my email barbara.bray@gmail.com
I’m so fortunate to have worked with Winston at St. Andrews School and with so many awesome educators. After learning more about all the innovation that is happening in Hawaii and at his school. I really wanted to share his story with you. Aloha!
Dr. Winston Sakurai has distinguished himself as an innovative educational leader at the state and national level for over 25 years. He was recently named by the National Association of Secondary School Principals as a 2016 National Digital Principal of the Year and by the Hawaii Association of Secondary School Administrators as the 2015-16 Hawaii State Principal of the Year. He currently moderates a national education chat for school leaders, #PrinLeaderChat, on twitter. 
I grew up in a family of makers. My husband, John, is a maker and artist extraordinaire.. He went to the University of New Mexico but then started making jewelry and working with silver. Included a picture of some of his beautiful jewelry to the right. John built our timber frame house we live in and he’s a wonderful dad. Despite the fact that he is wheelchair bound, he is still someone who is active and interested in so much. Every day, my son, Jason, who is a digital media director in New York City, calls his father and they have wonderful conversations. 
I was born in 1971. Growing up in the late 1970s and 80s, magnet schools were part of my public school experience. I went to a Science and Technology Magnet School in the late 70s where there was a planetarium at my elementary school. That was the first time I was on an Apple IIe where we learned turtle logo and Olympics of the Mind. The power of these experiences enriched my learning. All of these were great roots of gifted education infused into the public schools so everybody had access to it. 
Allison Zmuda is going on 17 years as a full-time education consultant specializing in curriculum, assessment, and instruction.
Dr. Jim Rickabaugh serves as the Senior Advisor to the Institute for Personalized Learning, an education innovation lab dedicated to the transformation of public education. The Institute serves a growing number of member school districts engaged in personalizing learning and is a part of the multi-state Innovation Lab Network coordinated by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).
Those were very, very challenging years. Books were my reprieve because I didn’t have any friends. I lacked self-esteem so I made a lot of poor choices in high school. As a student, I realized I needed to get good grades so school became important to me. In grade 11, I had a teacher, James Stewart, who absolutely enthralled me because he was so passionate about literature. At one point, I had to make a choice between becoming a teacher or expand my part-time job at McDonald’s that I really enjoyed because of the social aspect. I was offered a company car, benefits, and the opportunity to go to the Hamburger University in Chicago. That’s when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to give opportunities to kids who are disadvantaged in a way that I kind of felt I was. I was a good student from then on and went to university and teacher’s college.
Jennifer Casa-Todd is a Teacher-Librarian in Aurora, Ontario Canada, and author of the book, Social LEADia, published by Dave Burgess Consulting. Before this, she spent six years at the District level as a Program Resource Teacher for Literacy and Literacy Consultant, respectively.
We found in our research 
Hans Appel has been a Counselor in the Richland School District, for the past 17+ years and at Enterprise Middle School since it opened in 2005. He’s passionate about school culture, servant leadership, and kindness. In 2018, EMS was awarded the ASCD Whole Child Award for the State of Washington, for creating a culture of excellence through kindness, service, and empathy. 
I was born and live in Texas my whole life. I taught for seven years and now in my fifth year as campus principal. I love teaching and working with the underserved families and kids. I have found a passion in reading and writing over the last couple years which led to the creation of Kids Deserve It, Stories from Webb, and now Sparks in the Dark with my best friend, Travis Crowder. He is a secondary teacher in North Carolina and we just published our book about reading and writing instruction. I love what I do which means getting to work with kids and adults and, yes, I do a little traveling and speaking too. I do balance my life though and make sure I spend time with my wife, Lisette, in the evenings, read a book, watch a movie, or sit and talk with my family. 
The moral is that all of us play a role in somebody else’s life, and all of us are important, have a job, and have to figure out what it is. The professor had us read all of the stories (over 150) and choose the best. Mine got voted the best by the class. The teacher helped get it copywritten my junior year, and didn’t do anything with it until my wife years later found it. She encouraged me to self-published it, sell it online, but I read it to my students every year. Then I tell them how I wrote it, struggled with the writing process with hundreds of drafts, but the more you practice at it, the better you get. 
Todd Nesloney is the Principal/Lead Learner at a PreK-5 school in Texas. He is an award-winning author for his work in co-authoring 
According to Eric Toshalis and Michael J. Nakkula in their toolkit “
The teacher invites students to take surveys and polls for a consensus on issues. The students consult with the teacher to share how they learn best and have conversations about their strengths, interests, and challenges. During the consultation, the teacher and student determine the most appropriate tools, resources, and learning strategies to support their learning. This is where the teacher starts developing the relationship with each student that changes as they learn. The student discusses how they plan to meet their learning goals and the best way to assess what they learned with the teacher. These conversations validate them as a learner. The teacher then designs the lesson from the feedback, surveys, and opinions to determine the best instructional strategies based on the diverse students at the extremes based on 
Students define their learning targets with the teacher, how they plan to meet learning goals and articulate how they will demonstrate mastery with evidence of learning. The student’s voice is encouraged because now they are more invested in how and what they learn. They are encouraged to attend meetings and participate by brainstorming ideas. Each student working alone or with others where they use the design thinking process around different topics either individually or in groups. They are responsible for how they design and meet their learning goals. They demonstrate evidence of their learning and their participation in a group.
Students take on roles in decision making in the classroom and school, i.e. committees, clubs, student council, etc. As part of a member of a project or group, they are learning together and how to collaborate. They learn from and teach each other and designing and creating together. Students contribute to the design of lessons and projects based on their interests and questions. You will see students in multiple areas in the room working in pairs, small groups, one or two students in a corner of the room, or a student working one-on-one with the teacher. Some students are sharing information virtually. You may even notice a group where one student is leading a brainstorming session with their peers using collaborative tools. The noise level changes and is beginning to sound more like a coffee shop with “controlled chaos.” You are now hearing an exciting buzz of voices from around the room.
Students have identified an authentic, real-world problem or challenge that they want to tackle. You may see students in the hallways or other areas in or outside of the school with an excitement about information or resources they discovered that could solve the problem. They are brainstorming ideas and generating solutions. Students are using technology effectively to make connections and build a network of peers. They are showcasing evidence of mastery demonstrating how they tackled the problem. They may even create a call to action in an exhibition, on a website, for their peers. This is where students are starting to advocate for themselves and are developing self-regulation skills. This is also where you see students protesting about crucial local and national issues like gun control and school safety. You will see more students at this level participating in global projects like the UN Sustaining Development Goals.
This is where students take on a leadership role around their passions, interests, or what they want to do to make a difference. They believe in the cause to the point that it drives everything they are doing now. They self-direct their learning and take responsibility for the outcomes. The teacher takes on the role of advisor, providing feedback and any support needed in finding connections and resources to meet goals around what each learner believes is their purpose for learning. They take on their purpose to make a difference and change the status quo. This is where students are advocating for others and what they believe in and have autonomy and agency. You may see students running for office, for school boards, for planning commissions, or running political campaigns. Their voice not only matters, in their leadership role they make sure their voice is heard.
