“All major changes are like death. You can't see to the other side until you are there.” ― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park By R.J. Sullivan Salutations, today I’ll be taking a break from my normal sphere of topics to discuss an upcoming change that is seeping into our classes. Personalized learning (PL), undoubtedly you’ve heard someone bring it up in a conversation, after all it's the “next big change in education” or the “future of education”. Both nauseatingly optimistic phrases seem almost voluntarily ignorant to an untested education system that, according to the Daily News Miner, the district pumped $1.6 million into. The district definition of PL is fittingly vague, “Personalized learning is the structuring of schools, classrooms, and instruction so we can better respond to the individual needs of students. Personalized learning shifts from a one-size-fits-all model of education to one which better prepares students for the jobs and needs of the future.” Now, don’t let my pessimism fool you into thinking I’m on the extremes against personalized learning, I am not. I am, however, noticing a distinct carelessness in the way the district has brought personalized learning to our schools. It almost as if they got a new puppy, and in their rush of excitement about a new canine, they forgot to get the essentials to care for such a fragile life. Likewise, we’ve been told that we’re getting personalized learning but have not been told how to use it, much less what it is. Rather worryingly, students who are in the firing line if this goes poorly, appear to have been cut out of a lot of the planning that’s gone into bringing personalized learning to our school. In the words of Mrs. Gallaway, student input has been “woefully inadequate”. The district’s timeline for implementation of Personalized Learning according to the school district website (https://www.k12northstar.org/personalized-learning) is currently:
If any of y'all know what that means then congratulations, because I sure don’t. The problem with that? This is the public information release, for both parents and students! How is anyone supposed to understand personalized learning when they can’t even understand the press release? And I haven't even gotten to the other “phases” yet! Now to keep this short I’ll end with Launch next, and this one is good. “Share focus areas with schools during Academies”, “Survey teachers and students”, “Confirm plan to capture and share data related to outcomes and focus areas”. If anyone has more questions or wants to see the presentation for themselves you can find it at https://www.k12northstar.org/Page/6543. Now, before you go on and say “of course there’s no student involvement we haven’t reached that stage!” to that I’ll reply, why is student involvement limited just one section? the smallest section might I add, and why don’t students get more say overall? I am not using this article to attack personalized learning or person(s) involved with it. I am, however bringing the flaws of how personalized learning is being implemented to your attention so that you, the student, can ask more questions and make sure that this new “education revolution” will go smoothly. Even more glaringly important, is that it will take perhaps until the class of 2023 before personalized learning will be fully implemented. So while the upperclassmen (myself included) will be long gone before things get topsy-turvy, there will still be newer students coming to this school, which means it’s imperative that we, the students of here and now, make sure that personalized learning will work effectively. I can write on and on about the pros and cons of personalized learning but that’s not what’s important, what is important is that personalized learning affects all of us, and we need to act like it.
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