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CHAPTER 1

Reframing

It is human nature to integrate new information into existing mental models (Senge, 2000). Our personal experiences as students, our teacher preparation and experiences, and the test-driven memories of our most recent history all influence our consumption of new information. However, piling new on old doesn’t allow our minds fresh thinking opportunities. Instead, adding new to old simply adds more quantity to the boundaries and parameters of our original learning that already confines us. Thus, for the subject at hand, we offer the following mental models to reframe your thinking to prepare you to engage with the personalized learning ideas and accompanying strategies we will discuss in this book.

For us, the path to personalizing learning required us to reframe our thinking around three areas: (1) curriculum maps, (2) the role of the teacher, and (3) collaborative conversations. In this chapter, we will look at each of these areas and discuss how reframing them enables us to extend learning for students who have demonstrated proficiency with the instructional content. You may have already been thinking of these items in ways that resemble what we describe in our reframing; we are not suggesting everyone reading this book will need to change their thinking or that we are offering thoughts others have never considered. If you read one reframing idea and you are already doing it, you can enjoy knowing you’ll need to expend less mental energy on that idea and move to the next.

Reframing Curriculum Guides or Maps

Many of us remember our first days of teaching and entering our first classroom or new teacher induction program with wide eyes, eagerly anticipating direction on what we would be expected to teach students. The three authors of this book all had very different experiences in their first roles, and we suspect that everyone reading this book can relate to one of the three. One had a very detailed curriculum map and pacing guide that teachers were expected to follow in great detail. Another was handed a one-page document and the district-approved textbook for the course. He found that the one-page curriculum document was simply a list of the chapters in the book and was told to teach it however he saw fit. The third was given a detailed curriculum map and pacing guide but was informed that this was just a guide and that he had plenty of freedom to make it work for him. Three brand-new teachers, three different guidelines, and three different sets of expectations.

We propose that you and your collaborative team have a conversation and add those to whom you report in order to gauge where your school or district falls within these three scenarios—or perhaps there are other scenarios we haven’t considered here. Your collaborative structure and curriculum expectations are unique to you. Before you continue, please review your curriculum map and any school or district non-negotiables that could impact your classroom actions.

In many school districts, we have seen very specific curriculum maps that lay a foundation for a guaranteed and viable curriculum. A guaranteed and viable curriculum ensures that every student, regardless of the teacher, principal, or school he or she is assigned to, has the same opportunity to learn from a highly effective teacher because schools set the systems in place to ensure this occurs. This includes determining the most important standards to be taught across grade levels and courses that are tied to an established and aligned assessment plan (Marzano, 2003).

The research is clear about the importance of a guaranteed and viable curriculum, and personalization is not intended to distract from it. Institute for Personalized Learning senior advisor and personalized learning author Jim Rickabaugh refers to this and other non-negotiable items as “load-bearing walls” (J. Rickabaugh, personal communication, September 21, 2016). To do this work, you need to identify the non-negotiable walls (standards, indicators, district assessments) and those you have the ability to alter (small-group work, intervention and extension time). Interestingly, load-bearing walls in one district or school can look different from those in another. In fact, our research for this book finds that tolerance for personalized learning looks very different from one building to the next. We want to make sure you are fully aware of your circumstances as you begin this work. Identify the most flexible places, or non-load-bearing walls, in your curriculum map and instructional model (see figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1: Identifying load-bearing walls.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/PLCbooks for a free reproducible version of this figure.

In one district, we reviewed a language arts map, which included standards, indicators, suggested materials and resources, common assessments, and pacing available for all teachers. Within the eighty-six-minute block, there were items recommended for the whole group which may take fifteen to twenty-five minutes per day and would not be considered as prime for personalization. The rest of the allotted time had room and flexibility for personalization. In this example, there was a great deal of time for personalization, while also providing guardrails for what is required and non-negotiable. In another school, this one a gifted focus school, teams found that extended learning for students needed to be built around the district-mandated and time-sensitive common standards and assessments that occurred after each four- to six-week unit of instruction. Around this load-bearing wall, the school could build its teaching strategies that would best suit the many question 4 students in an innovative way that worked for them.

The last thing we want is for readers of this book to be in a position where they have to defend the use of personalization. We contend that by being very clear about load-bearing walls with others in your environment, your success at implementation will be far more likely. Consider the guaranteed and viable curriculum, required assessments, school and district tolerance for trying new things, and other mandatory components to your position when identifying load-bearing walls.

Reframing the Teacher’s Role

For some, the teacher’s role may be the most difficult area of reframing we discuss in this chapter. It seems everything we have been taught in our profession has put us, as educators, at the center of the learning process. We think back to our own formal teacher education training and reflect on the phrase we heard repeatedly, which was intended to be a guide for how we—as teachers—should develop lessons: from sage on the stage to guide on the side (King, 1993).

Alison King (1993) uses this phrase to challenge college professors to instruct differently. In her article, King (1993) states that the day and age of the instructor being the sole source of knowledge and pouring information into the empty vessel of the learner is no longer effective. She then provides specific examples of how educators should change to being the ones who facilitate, orchestrate, ask questions, and provide resources in order for the learners to think up their own answers (King, 1993).

Sometimes, when we authors were new teachers, we felt guilty when the class was engaged in learning but we were not specifically lecturing or at the front of the class and leading the lesson. We privately wondered if this was cheating. However, with this “guide on the side” way of thinking, not only was it acceptable but it was also encouraged. We should intentionally and deliberately think about ways to promote active learning and facilitate activities such as think-pair-sharing, generating examples, developing scenarios, concept mapping, flowcharting, predicting, and developing critiques.

While we still support the “guide on the side” thinking, personalized learning adds yet another wrinkle. Many of these activities to promote active learning that we have mentioned are still very teacher driven and developed, even when the teacher is not lecturing from the front of the classroom. Rickabaugh (personal communication, September 21, 2016) describes the next shift and transformation in learning: “Don’t just be the sage on the stage or the guide on the side, be the mentor in the middle.”

We love this quote as it relates to personalized learning. First, we appreciate the use of the words don’t just. What that tells us is there is a time to be the sage on the stage and a time to be the guide on the side, but don’t be just that. Also be the mentor in the middle. It reminds us that in a personalized learning environment, it isn’t always going to be one way or the other. There will be times when it is most appropriate for a teacher to stand up and be the sage on the stage. When students are misusing potentially dangerous equipment, for example, we want the teacher to provide very specific knowledge and content for safety’s sake. We don’t want our students to learn in a self-directed way. There will be other times when being the guide on the side is the most appropriate. For example, if the standard calls for using mathematical representations of Newton’s law of universal gravitation and Coulomb’s law to describe and predict the gravitational and electrostatic forces between objects, the classroom activities may look more facilitated than personalized. Most students aren’t going to know this on the first day of class. However, if this teacher has students in class who, for some reason, are well familiar with these laws and can prove this understanding on a preassessment, the teacher could allow these students to conduct an experiment they find interesting that proves the laws to be true. Or perhaps a team of students work together to develop a video clip of movie scenes that demonstrate Newton’s laws that they could later share with the class.

Rickabaugh’s quote also reminds us that when you aren’t just being a sage or a guide, you are stretching yourself to do more. To be the mentor in the middle, you are taking on a very different role. Mentors, by nature, are experienced and trusted advisors who support mentees on their personal journeys. When we authors think of our own mentors, our relationships with them started with the mentors being good listeners and co-developers of the necessary actions and steps to meet our goals. To us, this role is much different from guiding or facilitating because it makes it personal, which is what all learning is.

Being the mentor in the middle can be a little uncomfortable. As the teacher, you are letting go of some of the responsibility and shifting it to the learners. If you are starting to fidget a little bit while reading this book, remember this is why we are discussing mentoring in the context of reframing, and we are advising you to start slow. We think the following example helps illustrate the mentor in the middle, as this teacher was literally in the middle of the classroom as students worked on the perimeter and he gave immediate feedback to support their work.

A fifth-grade science teacher shared that, for the most part, before he began using personalized learning, every day he arranged students in neat rows. Because he taught the one elementary grade level in which students are assessed on the state test in a three-year band, he felt a great deal of responsibility to make sure the students not only were proficient at what they learned in fifth grade but also remembered what they had learned in the previous grade levels. At the start of each class, he followed a pretty familiar pattern for his lessons. He wrote the objectives of the lesson on the board, and students would start with a short quiz on the previous night’s reading assignment. He would lead a lecture or discussion, and an activity with some sort of hands-on feature would follow. Last, he grouped students in teams and assigned a sort of review game for them to play, which would include items from third and fourth grade that might be on the state test. When asked what students would do if they already knew the material, he shared that they could always pick up one or two new ideas in class that they hadn’t considered before.

However, after this teacher made a commitment to extend learning for question 4 students, the classroom looked very different. When the students entered the room, this teacher asked them to complete a short preassessment that gave students three leveled options for responding to a question on the topic the class would be exploring. Students could read over the three choices and complete the task they felt most comfortable answering. The teacher jokingly called it “a poor man’s adaptive test.” Based on students’ level choice and the accuracy of their responses, the teacher could identify the question 4 students for the upcoming learning target and extend their learning. The teacher would meet with these students and have a collaborative discussion about the extended tasks that the students could do around the topic. Then, after whole-group instruction each day, the students worked on the project they decided on as a group.

What we love most about this activity is the willingness of the teacher to be vulnerable—to take a risk to engage students so they might own their learning. This teacher will tell you that the mood, environment, and energy levels far outweighed those when teaching the same standards just one year prior for both the students who already knew it and the students who did not. Students who already knew it owned their learning, wanted to learn, and were more confident while working at their own pace. Students who didn’t know it yet had more teacher attention and could shine while answering the questions and leading the small-group activities. Classroom duties and leadership roles were redistributed.

Reframing Collaborative Conversations

When we think about the ways that we have known teachers to approach teaching question 4 learners, we consider their various options for strategies on a type of continuum ranging from the least amount of energy for the classroom teacher on one end to the most amount of energy that exceeds the normal routine of a typical classroom on the other.

The strategy that has the least effect on the classroom teacher is, of course, to do nothing additional. Teachers stick to the course guides and scope and sequence and vertical alignment documents they have developed for the entire class and apply these with all students. We do not promote the idea of plan, instruct, assess, and move on to the next unit and allow the student who already knows it to be a part of the regular class. The research we share in this book suggests that this method can actually have adverse effects on students (Long, 2013).

The next options on the continuum involve pull-out services provided by trained gifted education teachers. During this pull-out, these teachers stretch students’ learning in ways that engage and challenge students. Slightly further along on the continuum, we find similar strategies to the pull-out strategies, but with the gifted staff coming into the existing classroom during scheduled times.

Moving along on the continuum, the next options involve more energy and planning on the part of teachers. They consider those students who have been identified as gifted using approved district measures throughout the course of a given unit. In this arrangement, for example, all students receive an assignment to work on after the whole-class instruction. The few gifted students might be asked to meet the teacher at the front of the room and are then challenged to take the assignment further or do more in the time that other students are engaged in the original activity.

Finally, options toward the far right of the continuum, which include using data, are less common but are the ones we most advocate using. To begin moving further along on the continuum and implementing more robust options for responding to question 4 students, teams will need to reconsider what they discuss during collaborative conversations. Teams should also consider what “already proficient” means to them. Does it refer to students who show proficiency after a common formative assessment? Or does it refer to students who already know the material before you begin instruction? To us, these two topics have major differences and need to be considered by all teams.

How teams define proficiency will require additional adjustments to collaborative conversations that they may not be accustomed to. For example, if a team identifies students as proficient based on performance on a common formative assessment, the collaborative team really needs to make certain that its learning plans and pacing guides include flexibility to respond to these students. The team would need to have conversations around developing specific, additional lessons that meet the needs of students at regular intervals that would take place after each common formative assessment. Realize, however, the drawback with this approach is that the students who knew the material when they walked in the door would have still been involved in the same instruction as all of the students in the room up until this formative assessment occurred, even if they already knew the information. In addition, based on the most typical concern we hear from teachers, we know time is of the essence. It can be difficult to identify a time in the school day to allow for this type of teaching following a common formative assessment but before beginning teaching the next set of content. These are issues a collaborative team will need to discuss and decide how to respond to.

If teams identify students as proficient before beginning instruction, they’ll need to decide what criteria to use to determine this proficiency. Without some sort of preassessment, question 4 students would still be a part of the traditional instruction of every student in the room at least until a teacher gives and reviews a formative assessment to determine who does and does not know the material. If teams define already knowing it in the context of before the lesson, they need to have conversations to create measures and procedures to learn what understandings and abilities students have before instruction occurs.

In our personal experiences and in reading the work of the experts in gifted education, there are various ways to go about this task. This includes using information that you have learned about the students from work in the class in a previous unit or assessment, offering an opportunity to complete a project, and, probably the most common, providing a preassessment (as we described in the example of the fifth-grade teacher in the preceding section, Reframing the Teacher’s Role [page 20]). The preassessment doesn’t have to be long or look exactly like the final test that students will be completing at the end of the unit; it needs to be something that informs the teacher about how this student will have his or her time best utilized over the course of the unit.

A shift to offering a preassessment and then thinking about the various options for differentiating the instructional activities may pose a need for some teams to reframe their processes, procedures, and the way they think when they have conversations about how to logistically use and respond to preassessments within their workflow. Regardless of where your team falls on the continuum, you need to know what you are going to do with question 4 students before you begin instruction, so you must reframe your collaborative conversations to address this.

For teams who have not previously considered preassessments, this will likely create a wrinkle in what you are used to your agendas and team meetings looking like. To help make a smoother transition to this shift in the way team conversations are framed, we offer some questions for teams to discuss: How do we make sure that the needs of all students are met, which means determining who already knows the material? How do we, as a team, want to preassess students? As a result of this preassessment, how do we plan to personalize learning? While incorporating these instructional strategies, how will grading be impacted? Collectively answering these questions prior to the start of a given unit will provide teams with an intentional and deliberate approach to addressing question 4 with a small reframing of their collaborative team time.

We suggest teams also consider deciding to change their typical agendas to discuss question 4 along with question 2. Many teams we have worked with assume they must follow the four questions in chronological order in their collaborative meetings, which is likely one reason question 4 is often omitted. By the time many teams get to question 4, it is too late. By reframing their conversation structures to discuss these two questions concurrently, teams will be equipped to address this item. We think this will serve as a reminder to teams that if you are truly going to do something for question 4 students, it must be considered at the start of the ongoing cyclical process of a collaborative team.

Next Steps

As you continue reading this book, consider how you and your collaborative team will make a shift toward moving within your load-bearing walls, being this mentor in the middle, while reframing how you think about the curriculum and the teacher’s role, as well as how you discuss and develop ways to respond to question 4 students as a collaborative team. Before you move on to the next chapter, use the reproducible “Individual Reflection: Teaching Approaches” (page 26) to reflect on your individual approach to the teacher’s role. Then, as a collaborative team, use the reproducible “Collaborative Team Discussion: Reframing” (page 27) to reflect on your team’s current reality and support collaborative conversations and learning in your collaborative team.

Individual Reflection: Teaching Approaches

Rank the following three phrases from first to third in terms of how comfortable you are when instructing your learners.

——— Guide on the side

——— Sage on the stage

——— Mentor in the middle

Did your ranking surprise you? Why or why not?

When They Already Know It © 2018 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/PLCbooks to download this free reproducible.

Collaborative Team Discussion: Reframing

As a team, use your individual work to develop a master list of load-bearing and non-load-bearing walls for your collaborative team.

	Load-Bearing Walls in Our District or School	Non-Load-Bearing Walls in Our District or School
Collaborative Team Reflection

Collectively, when looking at the following three phrases, how did your individual rankings compare to your team’s? How did your rankings reflect your teacher education programs, schools you have worked in, and personal backgrounds?

Guide on the side:

Sage on the stage:

Mentor in the middle:

When They Already Know It © 2018 Solution Tree Press • SolutionTree.com

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/PLCbooks to download this free reproducible.