Exit Ticket 6/28

This Learning Plan Template reflects my latest incarnation of what I might accomplish this week. However, I'm not at the moment feeling particularly positive about what I've placed there. I've completed two modules and begun a third and I don't really feel like I'm learning. Instead, I keep encountering information and ideas I've already come across before. For example, I completed a chart almost identical to the one in the Introduction to the Middle Grades Concept in a Nature and Needs class I took last fall. The advisory module seemed geared largely toward convincing educators of the value of advisory, but I'm already convinced of that. The same seems true of the interdisciplinary teaming module. So if my goal is to gather resources to bring back to my team that will help us in the work we began earlier in the summer, I don't think I've made much progress. And I'm concerned I won't. I'm not sure how to proceed...

Or at least that's how I was feeling before you (Kathleen) just stopped by to chat about sending me some additional resources regarding advisory. I really think my school is missing a huge opportunity by not leveraging advisory, so perhaps those resources will allow me to dig deeper and design a project around how to improve it. So if my first goal is to develop a goal, perhaps I have made some progress. I look forward to delving deeper into those resources tomorrow.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, our time here seems like an immersion into what personalized learning might very well look like. To be honest, it's been very uncomfortable for me. There are, of course, aspects of my life in which I very easily set goals and establish steps to reach them. One recent example is my guitar playing. I've been strumming for about eight years now and felt like I'd reached a plateau. So I decided I wanted to learn some finger picking. So I went online, found some resources I thought could help me, and now have five or six songs under my belt.

But somehow this is different. Maybe it's because teaching is WAY more complicated than guitar playing, but I've really been struggling with how to find a focus area for where I want to improve my practice. In retrospect, I think I would have benefited from some scaffolded goal-setting activities or yesterday so that I could really hit the ground running. I would have liked to have had some model goals that I could borrow from as well as more examples of what individuals and teams have achieved at their time at MGI.

In reflecting on the challenges I've faced with personalized learning, it strikes me that when I begin it in my classroom I'm going to need to provide a LOT of scaffolding. Students will need to be taught about goal setting. Students need to explore what makes a good goal and how to break down a goal into smaller steps. Students need many, many examples of goals they could set for themselves before they begin creating new ones.

In short, this has been hard for me so far -- but I'm optimistic about tomorrow.