Then & Now: 9 Months Later

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Then: 9 months ago

I am one of the lucky ones in teaching: well run school, supportive principal(s) and school community, and experienced colleagues. Best of all, I have top notched students. They are enthusiastic, inquisitive, kind, and caring. Most of them don’t like to sit in their seats or be quiet most of the days, but that just keeps me on my toes. With all these key ingredients in place, one might think we have a recipe for success, but it’s been a roller coaster ride trying to implement blended/personalized learning.

Early March of 2013, the ball started rolling once my principal learned of the DPS Janus Blended Learning Initiative.  April, May, and June were exciting times as the school went through the grant process and were eventually notified of our acceptance as a lab site. Those of us on the pilot team couldn't wait for the beginning of the school year.

August 2013. Welcome back to school! This year, we’re going to focus on the following school - wide initiatives:  Thinking Maps, Orton-Gillingham, Blended/Personalized Learning, and Recycling/Composting in addition to district directives and everything else we normally do.

If you're a teacher, admin, or work in education in another capacity reading that list, you might already be shaking your head. Any one of those initiatives alone would have been more than enough for a year long study, but we were trying to fit in three ginormous initiatives in addition to everything else it takes to run a school. I call it, “Initiatives Overload” which leads to “Initiatives Fatigue”, a subject for a later post.

Then, we had to juggle the start of a school year with our students as well as the roll out of the grant: ordering the hardware, getting us pilot teachers the training that we needed/wanted, and supporting us as we try out new blended strategies in the classroom etc. It was one hurdle after another, for once the hardware arrived, we have to figure out delivery, labeling, changing passwords, locked out accounts, wi-fi connections, and many other unexpected pleasures. Though the experience was stressful, the people we worked with were great. We wouldn't have been able to keep moving forward without the efforts of our extremely helpful and patient secretaries as well as Jason from DOTS.

Now: 9 Months Later

As we just got all of our hardware, I can't speak too much about the classroom situation. Instead, I am going to focus on what I’ve learned during the nine month span since I was introduced to blending, knowing full well this is just the tip of the iceberg.  

Here are a few things that are different for me now:

Waiting for directions vs. Taking Charge

As teachers, we are used to being told what to do, and we follow directions (most of the time). With this blended/personalized learning initiative, even though we had written up this elaborate plan in our application, we were still waiting for the Blended Learning (BL) team to tell us what to do, when to move from one step to the next, etc. Finally, at our mid-year check in, we realized what they've been trying to tell us all along: they didn't know what blended learning was going to look like either at our respective schools. It was up to us to make it happen.

Since having that realization, it has freed me to take the steps that we see necessary to implement blended/personalized learning at my school. As the project lead, my grant work currently falls under two categories: working with the pilot teachers (9 classroom, 1 technology/STR) and planning for school wide roll out next year with all the teachers.

Teachers will Automatically Come On Board vs. We Need to Create Teacher Buy In

With several large school wide initiatives, teachers are pulled in different directions, whether it is due to their interest or grade level taught. People are too busy to invest personal time learning about new things unless they see value in it. If they can’t see how it applies to their classroom and daily practice, it’s hard to get their buy-in.

Since our "aha!" moment, one of the first things on our list is to show all the teachers in the building what we’re doing (build background knowledge) and how they can use it (provide value). Jokingly, I call it my gorilla attempt to “Googlefy” the school because our district just got “Google Apps for Education”. We have already introduced it to our 3^rd – 5^th grade students as one tool to blend and personalize learning. Now we want to practice what we teach by introducing the whole staff to the apps and use them to run our school wide PDs.

Our working theory is that once a teacher sees a tool, uses it, and is familiar with it, they are more comfortable using it with their students. Thus far, we have started using school wide folders to organize things in Google drive, using Google forms to collect feedback, having teachers collaborate together in Google docs. etc. Our PD coach and principal have been very supportive of this charge and have worked with us to change how we are conducting school wide PD. It’s still at the beginning stages, but the response from the staff has been positive thus far. 

Looking for Outside Help vs. Identifying In-Building Experts

Since intentionally incorporating technology in the classroom, one of our needs has been how to get the training we want while also juggling the other demands of teaching and personal/family life. Meetings after school or on Saturdays work for some, but not all, of us. Those of us, who have been able to attend, have attended many outside trainings: Digital Educator Summer Academy/Digital Educator Fall Academy, Technology in Education Conference, Blendtastic PD, online MOOCs, etc. These trainings have been extremely helpful, and teachers are coming back with new ideas to implement. Other teachers are already doing incredible things in their classroom, but no one knows about it because we're all too busy.

This leads to my next project which is to create a directory of technology expertise in the building. Teachers can go to these in-house experts to see how specific technology is being used in the classroom and turn to these teachers for help for initial implementation. Then as we need more training, we can connect those teachers to additional out of house experts.  Ideally, if we want to build the long term sustainability of this BL initiative, we need to make sure that not just one person possesses all the knowledge, so we're creating a community of internal resources. As we’re all trying to juggle full time teaching jobs, it’s not feasible to do everything ourselves either, sanity wise.

Isolated vs. Connected

For you to understand the enormity of this change, I must start off with two confessions. One, I like to work alone, and two, though I have no problem asking for help in person, I am an internet lurker who never comments or asks for help online. When I want to figure out how to do things in the classroom, I search for it, take what I need, and leave. I've never stay within particular groups or have felt the urge to contribute to online discussions because I didn't think what I had to say was important enough. 

This has slowly started to change since meeting other BL teachers in the district. Once I started meeting those brilliant minds in person that I had only previously seen online, and I saw how open and helpful they are, I felt better about participating in online communities and asking the group for help. It has opened up a whole new world for me in terms of things I learn and opportunities that I want to participate in. As blended/personalized learning is still so new and can be implemented in a variety of ways, I feel more confident embarking on this journey to the unknown with a community of like-minded people who will support me along the way (yourself included!).

My Next Steps:

Meeting all these inspiring teachers and seeing what they have done has got me itching to do more with my students. I’ve been so busy running around for school wide things that my own students haven't made much progress other than getting started on Google Drive and Khan Academy. I know we can do more together.

One of my personal goals that overlapped with my professional goal is “less collecting, more doing”. I’m notorious for collecting ideas but implementing very few as I just spend more time gathering more ideas. During the last remaining days of winter break, I am going to sit down with my curricula and hardware to do some planning with a few targeted tools. I don't have to try everything at once because less is more. 

Closing Thoughts:

A professor once shared that when we choose a solution, we are also unknowing choose all the problems that come with it. The journey towards blended personalized learning has been challenging with all the unexpected, yet rewarding in so many other ways. This is a stressful but exciting time to be in the classroom with all that we, as teachers, can do for our students. Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed by all that is going on, I just have to remind myself, “one bite at a time”.