Checking in for just a second today to share something I am working on. 

Last month, I started putting together bell ringer packs to fit each of the 22 learning targets in the AP Language and Composition CED. 

Each pack includes 9 different bell ringers to suit the learning target, and ultimately, there will be enough bell ringers to fill an entire 190 day course. 

My plan is to include these in my free resources, but for now, the first 8 packs are available on my Teachers Pay Teacher store.

Despite my phone dying, almost missing my flight home, and multiple panic attacks, the AP Reading was… fine.


In all honesty, I came into this one bitter, as I felt a little duped into attending the in-person reading instead of reading from home. (Probably more my own fault than anything).
It didn’t help that the in-person reading was essentially the same as reading from home. This year we read from computers again - which we’ve obviously done for two years now - but it made the entire exercise of flying thousands of people to Tampa see pretty foolish if we were just going to sit at computers the entire time.

My bad attitude plus the previously mentioned surprises made for a rough week.

But I made it.

Because of the extension of the Reading when we weren't able to finish, we had a unique experience this year. In the last two days of in person scoring, we trained on all three of the questions - something that has not been done in my five years of reading.

For me, it was a blessing. I was so sick of reading about ethos, pathos, and logos (more on that later) that switching to Question 3 and then to Question 1 was a welcome change of pace. However, a number of my peers were aptly concerned about the accuracy of scoring when we were being jumped around.
Personally, I think it’s a toss up. Like I said, I needed the change so I found myself reinvigorated every time that we switched. I feel my scoring would probably have been just as hindered by the fatigue had I continued with Question 2.

But that’s enough rambling commentary (... my kind word for whining). This post is not about my complaints, but about the suggestions and tips moving into another year of AP Lang instruction.

The following are the observations I took note of for myself. Some of them are mistakes I saw multiple times that I want to correct next year. Others are harder mindset shifts that I'll be mulling over for the next couple months. Additionally, I want to be very clear that I am in no way an expert, and you should look to the Chief Reader's report (Coming Soon!) for that. These are just a few notes and thoughts I kept for myself as I plan a new year.
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I have 9 total days left of this school year. And I. Am. Ready.

Somehow, I always forget how tired I am at this point in the school year. I slept the majority of this weekend (a luxury, I know!), and I am still completely drained going into the new week. 

Usually, this time of year, I am pouring my energy into planning for the fall and redesigning my class (again). However, this year, I don't have the juice. (My lack of posts in the last few months can further prove it). 

It's been a rough year... Stupid TikTok trends, reteaching students how to "school," cruelty-rampant social media, and universal apathy have made it harder than anyone expected, myself included.

But I am an optimist. One of my favorite things about teaching is that we get to start over every year: new kids, new course, new content. I love it. 

In the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about that optimism. Where does it come from? Next Thursday will end my tenth year of teaching, and I am still excited to try new things and grow as a teacher. But I know that isn't the case for everyone. Teacher "Quit"-Tok is making it very clear that many, many educators are throwing in the towel.

How can we take the remaining enthusiasm and replicate that across buildings? How do we undo months of fatigue and apathy to remind educators why we do what we do?
How can we take the setbacks of COVID and embrace how we learned to adapt and grow?

As much as I wish these questions were just a transition to a post about all the great solutions, I have - it's not. They are just the questions that spin and spin and spin through my mind. Now that I am an instructional coach, I feel even more of a responsibility to keep great teachers in the classroom. 

For me? I just need the ability to try new things and learn as an educator. But how do you reward great teachers? (And for the matter, how do you measure a great teacher?)

Again. Just more questions that I have no answers for.

I am ready to spend the summer pouring all of my energy into answering these questions, but I am at a complete loss of where to start. (And, in all honesty, it isn't really under the umbrella of my job title). I've just always had the mentality that if something isn't being done, I'll do it myself. 

How? How? How?

I think finding the answers is more urgent than we all realize.

We had a great week in AP Lang. Really. Despite multiple virtual days, state hockey tournaments, and a flurry of student vacations, we were able to work together on a fun group activity.

Because the class is generally personalized by method and pace, most of the time students are working independently. Yes. They chat and enjoy one another's company and work alongside each other, but most of the time, they are working on different items. 
For that reason, it is really important to create spaces and opportunities where we come together to do something collaboratively. 

For my current curriculum design, I create these moments at the beginning of each new unit. Not only are students working together, but they are being introduced to the concepts of the upcoming unit.
I try to design these activities with an authentic purpose. For instance, as I've posted multiple times, I love creating true crime related activities to engage them in investigation and critical thinking. I have also created activities to connect course material to their daily lives in the form of high school gossip and social media. 

But mostly, I just want them to do something together and take a break from any feelings of isolation that can come with personalized learning.

This year, I have been working to improve those activities that have worked in the past and creating some new opportunities to get the class collaborating on engaging projects.

This last week, we tried one of these new ones: a simulation of what the United Nations does. Essentially, I gave students a global issue, assigned them a country to represent, and asked them to work together to draft a shared resolution. 

Here's an Overview:
This multi-day activity is designed to mirror the process of MUN (or Model United Nations) competition on a smaller scale. Students will be assigned countries from around the world and present resolutions for a provided topic of discussion. In this case, the students will act as members of the UNICEF committee to mitigate the problem of child labor around the world.  
Students will research their country and it’s current practices in regards to child labor, prepare a draft resolution, vote on the top three resolutions, and then enter into a debate with the goal of creating a shared resolution that can win the votes of the member states (USA, United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France). 

While it ended up being stretched over a few more days than I wanted, I loved the conversations we had as a class. Students did a great job of qualifying their own arguments to suit others and negotiated in creative ways. 

If you are interested, I have a teaching narrative written out below! Be well, all.

After over five days pent up in my house with COVID, I am happy to announce that I FINISHED THE SUPPLEMENT PACKS!

In fact, it will probably seem a little controversial, but I'm actually pretty happy that COVID finally found me. This is not to minimize how horrible this pandemic has been for our country, but in all honesty... I needed a forced break. 

This year has been trying in new, unprecedented ways already, but the addition of my new position has left me in tears, bitter, and exhausted more than I ever imagined possible. I was forcing myself to go at full speed every second that I was at school, and I was burning out. Badly. 

While I would not enjoy going back to my first (and worst) days of COVID, I have enjoyed the last few days of quarantine immensely. I made a book list for the rest of the school year. I started organizing my crazy ramblings into a possible table of contents. And I finished the supplement packs I started at the beginning of the year. 

The heavy, heavy fatigue of COVID has emerged as a metaphor for the burden I'd been carrying around before being forced to stop and take care of myself for a minute. I have never been as physically tired as I was in the first days of my COVID spell, but I would also say I had never been as emotionally and mentally tired as I was leading up to my positive test. 

As much as it should be a lesson about self-care and perspective, I know I'll go back to school tomorrow with the same over eagerness that will end up in the same burnout. All I can really do is try to remind myself about balance moving forward and do the work that brings me joy (and spend less time on the rest). 

I am dismally behind in updates about our personalized classroom. Between inclement weather days, end of the semester, and my coaching responsibilities, I haven't had much time to sit down and summarize what we have going on. Apologies. 

However, amidst all those things, I encountered an issue that I wanted to share. One that I know most teachers struggle with. Particularly, in the digital, device-driven age. 

Cheating.
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Because I use a self-paced format, student assess at different times. This creates the obvious issue that some kids will complete assessments before others and even get feedback. There isn't much keeping them from sharing their responses with others. And I'm certainly not going to create a unique version of the assessment for each student. 

As the semester ended, I had a student who was very near failing. In all honesty, she needed to be proficient in the final unit to even pass. I'm sure many of you know that when put under such pressure, students get desperate. All the re-attempts and supports can't do much when a student has placed themselves in a position such as this one. 

So I guess I wasn't surprised when I saw that her answers were identical to another students. (Like... copy and pasted). My initial reaction was to laugh - seeing as neither response was accurate. Then, I had to consider how to approach it. Giving her a zero would mean failing the entire semester, and there was only one day left.

If you've ever been in a similar situation, I am sure you understand the frustration. There were many ways this student could have avoided this situation - possibly failing - throughout the semester. She did not. There was many opportunities in class to get help on this unit. She did not. The strict authoritarian in me is always ready with a "Sucks to suck" response. The human in me just can't.

So I revised the assessment to use a new sample essay. Gave the two offenders a specific time to come and re-attempt the assessment. And ultimately, both passed. 

For the next few days, I obsessed about preventing such behavior in the future. Do I need to lock their iPads down when they complete assessments. Do they need to do all of them in front of me? Do I need to explicitly write when they can and cannot get help from others?

While I will be making some changes for the new semester, I came to a clear conclusion. No matter how intentional I am about preventing cheating, there is always going to be someone more determined to cheat. In talking to students in other contexts, they can give me a host of creative ways students cheat - things that I would never anticipate. The thought of combatting all of these possible methods is exhausting to even think about. 

Instead, my approach has been to be proactive as I can, and vigilant when assessing work. Here are some of the ways I mitigate cheating in a personalized classroom:

1. Assessment Design
   1. The easiest way to deter cheating is to create assessments that are open ended - authentic assessments that go beyond multiple choice and matching. While those are naturally easier to grade, they very rarely even assess the targeted standard in a high level course. Short response and project based learning minimizes the ease of cheating to a certain degree.
2. Allow Revisions
   1. Students cheat when they feel pressure to perform on something. The biggest way that I mitigate this is to remind students that they can always revise and re-attempt assignments. Knowing that they always have a second chance eliminates some of the pressure to copy a peer. 
3. Flexible Assessments
   1. Being an AP course, there are hundreds of prompts and sample essays at my disposal. Therefore, when I make assessments for class, I often make multiple versions just swapping out prompts or samples. For instance, a unit earlier this year focused on writing task and orienting a read to a rhetorical situation. I wanted students to write an introduction paragraph to demonstrate this, but I had three different prompts that I handed out at random. Similarly, in our new unit, I wanted them to analyze commentary in a sample essay, so I pulled paragraphs from multiple different samples. Creating assessments that can interchange resources or passages makes creating multiple versions much easier. 
4. Emphasize the WHY
   1. This is something I think all teachers can be better at: explaining WHY students have to complete a certain assessment or activity. As an AP teacher, I can often fall back on how different tasks relate to the exam, but I also try to be clear about how each formative check is building toward a bigger assessment. While it might not curb cheating all that much, for a few kids, knowing that the assessment is a step on the road to a bigger task can help invest them in the process. Think: "I wanna see what you know, so I can help. How will I know if you don't show me what you can do on your own?"

I prove this tips knowing full well that I have also admitted to students cheating in my own class. While I'd love a fix-all type solution to cheating, I know that it is a constant work in progress. Each year, I add new methods to minimize cheating in my class, and I will continue to as I learn what works for us.

What I would hate to see is hesitance over personalizing your classroom based on the possibility of cheating. If you feel dead set on students completing assessments synchronously, then personalize elsewhere. As I've said before, pace is not the only way to personalize lessons. If you are interested in playing with pace, steps like those I've laid out above can be helpful in setting a successful environment. 

I've probably mentioned it before, but giving up control of my classroom was probably that hardest part of adopting a more personalized approach. Once upon a time - and even a little still - I was the teacher that would plan a semester at a time. mapping out months of curriculum at a time.

As I grew in my teaching, I learned quickly how futile it is to plan so far in advance. Good instruction is responsive and flexible - two words that I would never use to describe my young practice. I would attribute my change in mindset to attaining my National Board Certification. The reflective process required for this made me really focus on how I am reacting to students and creating intentional next steps throughout the year.

In each manifestation of my personalized approach... (I think we're on Version #294594 at this point)... I loosened my grip a little more. Version 1, I let them decide artifacts to show their learning. Version 2, I let them set their own pace. Version 3... and so forth. Each new approach gave up one more small piece of the control I obsessed over as a young teacher. 

I would say I have grown into the responsive and flexible teacher I set out to become, but there is one challenge in giving up control that still holds me back:

How can I sit back and watch a student fail?

As teachers, we are told to do everything in our power to make sure that students are successful, often at our own expense. We stay late to let them come in and get things done. We extend the deadline, knowing it'll mean a fast turn around for grading. We pester and nag until we're just as annoyed as the kid. 

This mindset has been problematic all along, but it's become the norm and unfortunately, the expectation of teachers. That we sacrifice ourselves in the name of student success. 

There are so many things that have created this dangerous mindset: high stakes testing, incentives, toxic teaching martyrs, and more. It is so deeply embedded in our culture as teachers that we feel that we aren't "allowed" to let a student fail.

That said, they still do.

Often times, I need to remind myself that a student failing is not my fault. I'll recount all the different things I did to avoid the inevitable, but because of the deeply ingrained shame, I'll pick out a handful of additional steps I could have taken. I obsess over that one thing I didn't do.

I talk through this frustration not to complain or whine. Instead, I mention it so that what I say next doesn't come off as hugely callous or unfair...

Sometimes. Students need to fail. 

As I said, stating this goes against everything I have been taught, everything I see in media, and the teacher I pictured myself to be 10 years ago. It isn't a jaded response to years of apathetic students, but a realization of how learning really happens. We learn from our mistakes. 

Right now, I have about 5 students across my three sections of AP Language that are failing. They are missing assessments from previous units and they are behind on the current unit. While the majority of them will get back on track and pull it off in the end, I know I need to stomach that some of them will not. The best I can do is give them reminders, reach out to parents, and offer time outside of class. Beyond that, I have to draw the line. 

They may blame the flexible pacing. They may blame the self-designed assessments. They may blame a lack of direct instruction. But the bottom line is that all of these could have been altered by a simple conversation with me. By reminding them of their options frequently, I am also instilling the core premise of personalized learning: that they are in the driver's seat. 

If the intention of building student agency is for students to take more control of their learning, that control has to come from somewhere else. In other words, I have to give up control so that they can have more. And giving them control will mean mistakes and failures.

Accepting this fact is, in all honesty, the real first step in adopting a more personalized format. As long as you take steps to help students along the way, you cannot blame yourself when they fall short. Instead, you can talk through the choices they made to end up there and help them evaluate what needs to change. 

I'm going to start by being very frank. These have not been good weeks. 

Fortunately, it has nothing (as usual) to do with class or the students. Instead, it's been days and days of frustration with what I perceive as a toxic attitude sweeping across teaching at the moment. I don't want to dig into this too deep right now, but my frustration has really been draining me: keeping me up at night, leading to poor choices, and just creating a heavy metaphoric burden.

That said, I am happy to talk about class. Always. :)
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Classroom management in a personalized learning environment is something that frightens a lot of teachers away. The thought of leaving students to make their own choices and manage themselves is impossible in some classrooms. While I would argue that personalized learning is possible in any context, self-pacing is one aspect that doesn't suit a class that has high classroom management needs. If possible, however, self-pacing can transform your class.

I'm going to acknowledge the obvious: My position as an Advanced Placement teacher may suggest that the kids I have aren't going to be the ones to create problems, and for the most part, that is correct. However, if you are a teacher of students in advanced classes, I am sure we could share war stories about clever cheating methods, off task behavior, and argumentative questions.

What I'm getting at here is that every classroom has management issues that can be exacerbated by some aspects of personalized learning. Honestly, I feel this is the biggest objection to personalized learning that I hear. Self-pacing (which, I remind you, is just one method of personalization) frightens people away because as we all know... teenagers aren't great at managing their time.

Today, I'd like to share some of the ways I keep students on pace and intervene when needed. Just like I try to give them options and adapt to their learning needs, I do the same with intervention. Some things will work on some students. The same ideas will likely fail on another.

Here are some things I've done in the last weeks...

• Negotiations: I have a group of three boys in my second class that prefer to work out in the hallway in our FTLAs (flexible learning areas). To be completely honest, I know they aren't working all that hard out there, especially when students on an alternate schedule fill the halls. On occasion, I'll float out there to remind them to be on task, but for the most part, I trust that they are working. That said, a couple weeks ago, I found out they were all pretty behind when I checked in. Knowing these three value the freedom to be out in the hall, I struck a deal with them that if they met the next suggested deadline, they could continue to sit in the hall. If not, they would have to stay in the room. Two out of the three met the deadline, and the third (after some friendly heckling from the other two) got caught up within 24 hours. 
• Required Time: Our school offers some flexible time in the schedule that I often use as an intervention tool. In class, I will announce a weekly expectation to define who will or won't be required to come to me during that time. This week, I announced the day before our flexible periods (Wednesday) that if they did not submit an item in 24 hours, they would come and do it with me during the flexible time. While I know not everyone has that option, a similar intervention could be before or after school. If students don't come to these required times, I email their parents (which for teenagers is seemingly the ultimate punishment).
• Pinky Swears: Yes. I mean holding up my pinky finger and making students promise to complete something. Last week, I had required a few a couple girls for that flexible time, but they had other obligations they wanted to complete during that time. Each of them promised to get something finished that evening, so I made them pinky swear they were going to follow through. They both did. Furthermore, one of them asked me the following day if she could work in the hallway, and when I asked if she was going to be productive, she immediately put her pinky up. Pinky swears still go a long way with 16-17 year olds, I guess.
• Proximity: I have a group of girls in my last class of the day that consistently distract one another, sit on their phones, and talk too much. In their own words, they've been "in the doghouse" with me. Because there were a couple other pockets of off task behavior, I put together a seating chart for that class. However, as soon as learning time started, they have the choice to move around and the same people gravitated back to one another. Because I didn't want to go back on my word about my expectations for learning time, I simply moved to an empty seat nearby and occasionally reminded them about being focused. I'd give them one look, and they'd immediately defend what they were working on. 

So as you can see, different kids respond to different interventions. As the year goes on, I'll see more and more what is going to work and what won't. I know there is validity in consistency - (I mean, I've had my CHAMPS training like the best of them) - but absolute rules and expectations are just plain unreasonable. I do have clear set expectations for when I am lecturing, reading time, or for it we are doing something together, but beyond that, everything is determined by the individual student and situation.

If you walk away from this post with anything, I hope it is the belief that self-pacing is possible and that some flexibility and creativity with your intervention practices can go a long way. The bottom line is simple: different kids need different things. And that includes different classroom management strategies.


I hope this post finds you well and... honestly, surviving. We do this work because it is important. Know that your impact on kids is worth the tough days (or weeks, in my case). Be well!

Wow. Four weeks slipped by before I even realized I hadn't updated this page on our personalization journey in class. I know it isn't much of an excuse to an audience of teachers, but I just had too much going on: hosting focus groups, planning a professional development session, and unfortunately, we lost a student last week. It has been one of those all-too-familiar spells where teaching is all consuming and getting through the day-to-day takes every spare second. In fact, last weekend, I put in about 14 hours trying to prep my next unit and catch up on grading. 

That said, my hours paid off for you as well. Unit 4 of my College Board aligned units is posted and free! Unit 5 is still in early access, but it'll be available Dec 1. 

But for right now, let's talk about what has been going on in AP Language...
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My experience with personalized learning has been years of trial and error. Were you to look back on my posts, you would see many versions and variations of what I use and have used. From the outside, it may appear as though I kept "throwing out the baby with the bathwater," but in fact, each variation has informed the next and played some role in defining what I currently use. 

Today, I am known in my building for personalization strategies and standards referenced grading. However, I would say I am far from an expert. I've just tried the most things. 

I mention this not to brag, but to explain that the process of creating a personalized classroom is time consuming. Over the course of that time, one will face a lot of questions, and sometimes, these questions can appear as people trying to put you off the move.

In fact, I had a conversation with an administrator this week. We were talking about reassuring teachers that they would be supported in giving out rational consequences, and I mentioned that many teachers don't feel supported when it comes down to a tough decision. The administrator was perplexed as to why anyone would feel they wouldn't be supported, and said, "I might ask a few questions, but..." I told him that there is a misconceptions that when people ask tough questions, they are trying to set you off or change your practice.

Personalization - or really, any venture from traditional education - elicits a host of these tough questions. At first, I too felt threatened by questions from administrators and parents. I also wrongfully assumed that these questions were meant to discourage me. 

What I found is that the longer I kept at it, the easier these questions were to answer. Not only did I have evidence from past classes to support my choices, but I had spent more time thinking about the practices myself. In other words, the more I had to answer questions, the more I understood the teaching practices themselves. (Seems kind of backward, right?)

The bottom line is this: don't let questions put you off trying something new. As much as we assume negative intent with parents and administrators sometimes, it really is unfounded. At the end of the day, we are all on the same team, and best practices speak for themselves. Yes, there will be the stray challenge, but the more you reflect and refine your method, the better you'll feel about responding to obstacles and inquiry.

We can all agree that American education is in disrepair, or as some would say, broken. We can all also agree that change is difficult and intimidating. But change is the only way to see any real reform, and that change happens one classroom at a time.

I feel I mentioned it before, but even if a class is personalized, there should consistently be times where the class comes together. For my kids, I shoot for two group lessons and pick out the learning targets that I anticipate will slip them up. In this case, it was rhetorical appeals and composing defensible thesis statements. ​