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.
​

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. :)
​

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...
​

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. ​

God bless you if you are teaching and still, somehow, making time for professional learning outside of school. I have not spent nearly the time I normally do reading blogs, checking out teacher content, or creating shared resources.

Mostly, I am watching TikTok and crying at how accurate all the teacher creators are. (I am also simultaneously guilt-ridden that I support TikTok when it is single-handedly making a job that already felt impossible actually unbearable. #amiright?)

Other than combatting "Devious Licks" and the far worse upcoming challenges, how are things? I mean, we're only handling the politicizing of COVID, subbing in every spare second because of crippling staff shortages, and being accused of "indoctrinating" children....

Lockdown isn't looking all that bad now.

But we persist. Somehow, we keep doing what is best for kids and sacrificing our own well-being (and sanity) for theirs. And listening... which is kind of what I wanted to focus on in today's personalization update.

My tip above is one that I think applies to all teaching, but especially to personalized learning. The entire goal of personalizing learning is to get students to use their voice and make positive choices about their education so that they can so the same outside of school. Without habitually checking in with them, they slowly lose that voice and just surrender to the traditional teacher-driven form of learning. In other words, without listening - personalization fails.

There are two types of check-in that I try to employ consistently: Conferencing and Surveys. 

1. Conferencing
While I try to do quick "How's it going?" checks while I move around the class during learning time, I also try to ask questions about their learning. For instance, as they were coming up with assessment ideas this week, a lot of them were asking me about finding articles to analyze. My response has usually been: "Well, what do you care about? What is going to make this interesting?" Then... they look at me blankly, as though they've never been asked such a question in school.
I also try to ask about the best approach. I had a few students who were taking a long time on the teacher-designed assessment (CHECK), so I asked: "Would it work better if I asked you the questions instead of you writing out all of your response?" Again... blank stares, usually followed by "I can DO that?" 

While conferencing is sometimes about questions they have on the content, I also use those moments to ask them what is working and what isn't. From conferences I've had during Unit 1, I learned that a couple students needed to be added to my oral response group for assessments (as mentioned above) and that my teacher-designed assessment was taking much longer than I had anticipated. It motivated me to look at my Unit 2 assessment and eliminate some redundant prompts. One of my favorite things about personalizing the learning process is that I have time for these conversations.

2. Surveys
When I want to hear from everyone, I use a survey. Especially, as I am learning about a new group of students, it is important to give them a chance to speak up anonymously or privately. Survey's give that opportunity.
This week, I created a survey about my LMS (Schoology) setup and pacing. It also had an open spot for kids to pose other questions. Based on their responses, I made some slight changes to Unit 2, but for the most part, they were on-board and positive.

Actually, what I liked about this check-in survey - which I created entirely to have them reflect on MY work - was that the kids used it more as a chance to reflect on how they were doing. I got a lot of comments about how they had the tools they needed, but they needed to avoid procrastination and focus in class. Or comments asking me what my expectations were in niche situations.
Surveys seem simple, but they are a powerful tool to hear from kids. And, as I learned with this one, a subtle way to get them reflecting on their learning.


Because this week and last have been focused on finishing assessments, my time has been largely spent in conferences and talking to kids. I have also started some of my usual interventions for those students who begin to fall behind.

This - the point where kids fall behind or struggle to manage their time - is what frightens a lot of teachers away from personalized learning. First of all, honestly, they're usually the same kids who fall behind regardless, and secondly, there are so many ways to keep kids on track.

Here are some strategies I've used over the last two weeks:

• Setting daily goals on their unit calendar.
• Mapping out a plan for the week in the same calendar.
• Emailing advisory (homeroom) teachers to let them know the student has English to work on.
• Requesting the students during flex time. (I know most schools don't have this. Sorry).
• Asking students to come in during their open periods.
• Reminding the entire class of each upcoming suggested deadline. Daily. 
• Chatting with their volleyball coach about focus in class.

You'll notice that as of now, I have not contacted home. Part of building agency is giving students a chance to handle it themselves. I try to give them as much chance to right mistakes on their own before reaching out to parents.

That said, our "blackout deadline" for unit 1 work is Oct 13. (These deadlines are the final cut off for any work related to Unit 1. I usually schedule them a week or two after my suggested deadline). Because my blackout deadline is Oct 13, I will probably message parents the Friday before if I am worried about a kid finishing on time. At that time, I send a list of their specific tasks to complete and the final blackout deadline.

I want to clarify that flexible pacing does not mean a free-for-all. Its more about allowing for a window of time in which kids can complete work. Completely open pacing - which I have also tried - is not successful and honestly, the kids didn't want it each. They love the flexibility, but they have told me every year that they need some  hard deadlines to keep on track. 


So these weeks, it was listening and intervening where I needed to. Without the daily lesson planning of traditional learning, I have time to do these things. As I mentioned in previous posts, personalized learning gives me the time to do all the things that I actually enjoy about teaching. Mostly, it allows me to really know kids...

...which is just enough to make up for stupid TikTok challenges.
​

We are finally making personalized moves! Last week, I explained that the first two weeks in a personalized class really need to be about building the right culture, so we didn't even touch any content until Week 3. 

Like I've been telling the kids for the last two weeks, we are making baby steps so that we can climb mountains later. I have always felt that when students first encounter AP Language content, you need to build their confidence with "baby steps" or tasks that seem simple but actually scaffold to some challenging work.

Here is the daily breakdown of how we've been doing that:

Week 3, Day 1 (Tuesday, because of Labor Day)
I started class with their Daily Dose (daily ten minutes of informal reading or writing). Then, I warned them that this is one of the few days where I would stand up and talk at them for most of the period (a.k.a. My own personal hell).  It is a necessary evil for this particular lesson as I walk students through the core features of my personalized classroom. I ask them to write questions on the PowerPoint notes (below) as I go. 

After my spiel about our procedures, I ask them to complete a detailed learning inventory. It is a simple Google form with questions about how they learn best. 

Week 3, Day 2
My school adopted what we call "Flex Wednesday" last spring. Students are given an open schedule to fill based on what they need and want to do. As you can imagine, it is a work in progress, but fostering student agency means giving up a lot of control. 

For AP Language, I have designated Wednesdays as test prep, so for this day's sessions, I offered a walk through of the exam.​ I use the 2020 Practice Exam from the course audit.

At the end of the lesson, there is extra time, so I walked students through our Learning Management site, Schoology.

​Their unit folder includes the following:
1. Unit Calendar
2. LEARN Folder (Vocabulary and Flipped Knowledge Lessons)
3. CHECK Folder (AP Classroom Progress Check, Review, CHECK Assessment)
4. SHOW Folder (Brainstorming Guide, SHOW Assessment).

 
​This format uses a similar format to what I have posted about in the past. Please note, there are deadlines listed in the folder; however, these are suggested deadlines. Flexible pacing is essential for a truly personalized class.

​Week 3, Day 4
This was our first "Learning Day" where students are engaging in personalized options and I am taking a more flexible role. We still started class with our Daily Dose, and before I let them jump in, I expressed my expectations for this flexible time. 

Using the CHAMPS format, this is what I tell them (and tell them and tell them...):

Conversation: Only whispers are allowed in the room. If you want to collaborate with others, you need to head to the hallway or FTLAs.
Help: Approach the teacher OR send a Schoology message.
Activity: Personalized learning time.
Movement: Move freely, but quietly.
Participation: Working on your Learn folder without side conversations or distractions. Making progress!

I also take a moment to show them their unit calendar again. The unit calendar is very simple: learning targets, checklist, and an empty calendar. Each day, I ask them to set a goal for what they want to accomplish for the day between Daily Dose and learning time. At the end of the period, we do emoji reflections in the box to assess progress.

 Week 4, Day 1 & 2
Over the weekend, I came down with this horrific head cold that is sweeping through the school. So while the kids were continuing their personalized learning, I was getting a COVID test (negative!), napping, and chugging DayQuil.

My notes for subs were simple:
1. Daily Dose
2. Update Unit Calendar
3. Learning Time

As with anything, the kids were probably less productive without me, and it killed me that I wasn't there during their first days of this format, but they were able to make progress. Good enough.

Week 4, Day 3
I was back for Flex Wednesday. This week, we talked FRQ rubrics. I walked students through my pizza analogy for the FRQ rubrics. 

Week 4, Day 4
The next day, it was time for another group activity. When students and I looked at the Unit Calendar for the first time, I was sure to designate days on their calendar for group activities. These are more traditional days where I walk them through a whole class activity. 
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For me, whole class activities are non-negotiable. While I gain great relationships with students through conferencing and individual instruction, they still must build a culture as a class. Whole class lessons allow opportunities for this to happen. They also create checkpoints where they can refine and check their learning against others and my own instruction.

The group lesson we did today is one I thought up the day before, and I ended up loving it! I was trying to think about how we can practice identifying claims and evidence in a passage without doing my old reverse outline activity. I knew I'd like to use the 2014 rhetorical analysis passage - Abigail Adams' letter to John Quincy - and I kept sticking on the idea of advice. 

After a quick chit chat with my colleague, I was thinking about how they could pick out Adams' advice for her son and modernize it when the idea hit me:

DEAR ABBY!

Of course, the kids have no idea who Dear Abby is, but after a quick internet search, I found a host of hilarious Dear Abby responses that I knew they would laugh at. To marry the two Abbys, I decided to create a Dear Abby letter taking on John Quincy's perspective. The kids and I then picked apart the original letter from Abigail Adams to pick out different pieces of advice (claims) and the examples she used (evidence). 

We talked through one claim she made (going new places is a learning experience) and picked out the evidence from the letter (John Quincy's improved knowledge of the French language). I asked them to write this advice in modern language and then find a second piece of advice from her letter and do the same.

Essentially, I was checking that they could identify her main claims (advice), explain what type of evidence was used, and compose their own letter by modernizing her claims and evidence.

Here are the materials:

I wasn't sure they'd LOVE it, but they really loved the sass-factor from both Abigail Adams and Dear Abby. I strongly encouraged them to bring that same sass to their letters. 

Reading their letters, I saw pretty consistent ability to pick out her claims. A pretty impressive task when using a letter from 1780!

Week 4, Day 5
And our last day was another learning day. After Daily Dose, we did Unit 1 Calendar as usual, but then I took a minute to review the second folder on the unit: CHECK. Some of the kids were working ahead and onto this section, so I wanted to review what had to be done. Yes. We talked about it the week before, but I've been reviewing what they need to do daily. Like I said in my tip for this post... even if you feel you have told them enough. Keep telling them. 

Here are some of the things I did during learning time:

• Provided a few students the passage to complete their CHECK assessment. (I vary the passages to avoid cheating, and I keep the passages with me).
• Corrected Unit 1 Reviews with students using the textbook for their knowledge learning.
• Checked with a couple students who had completed the AP Classroom Unit 1 Progress Check to see how they felt about their learning so far.
• Refocused students who were more excited about the evening's out-of-town football game. Because... teenagers.
• Sat with a group of girls that had been doing too much talking during the prior day's Dear Abby lesson. I wasn't sitting there to punish them, but I made a point to joke around with them a bit to work on building the relationships a bit. As my fellow coach would say, I was making some investments in hopes of cashing in later.
• Provided feedback on the Dear Abby letters for those who stated they prefer in-person feedback. (It might seem difficult to keep track of every one's preference, but I made myself a quick cheat sheet of their results that I just carry on my clipboard).
• Encouraged a student who did a sad face emoji after our Dear Abby lesson. She was second guessing herself so I wanted to show her she did it correctly.
• Asked a student to read her Dear Abby letter to me because I couldn't read the handwriting, but I also felt that she might be able to explain it better orally.

Going through this list, I am reminded exactly why I love a personalized format. These are all things we need to do, and even love to do, as teachers, but we rarely get to do them if we are at the front of the room teaching.

It may seem like I did a million things, but really, I walked into my classes Friday with a very short post-it list of things to do. The rest happened organically. Once upon a time, I was never the teacher who would still be planning her lesson the day OF the lesson (Hello, Dear Abby). Adopting a personalized format has forced me to get out of my own way and focus on what is needed in the moment. It has made me a more present teacher and a much better teacher.
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This coming week, we are going to hit our first suggested deadline (Tuesday) and our second (Friday). In my next post, I'll talk about managing flexible pacing as I'm sure there will be hiccups this week. 
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