Shifting Minds 3.0: Redefining the Learning Landscape in Canada, by Penny Milton, struck a chord for me, a student of the MEd Language and Literacy program at the University of Victoria. This article is a great introduction to the course: Personalized Learning.
Teaching in my hometown, Inuvik, Northwest Territories, which is also the town I have taught for the past 9 years, I often feel like I am not where I need to be with my current teaching practices. I am aware of the 21st century competencies and project/inquiry based learning, however, putting what I know into practice has been a challenge. Where do I start? What resources are available to me? My students’ needs differ greatly, how do I reach them all in an engaging and authentic way? These questions plagued me and, more often than not, resulted in IBL/PBL being put on the backburner, because really, who has time to start something new with minimal support?
Answer: Personalized learning and collaboration. In Shifting Minds 3.0: Redefining the Learning Landscape in Canada by Penny Milton, she highlights the need for collaboration to make an impact in educator’s current teaching practices. If we want to make any sustainable, innovative change, we need to collaborate and work together. And finding just the right person to collaborate with can be the deal breaker, the golden ticket to a forward-moving transformation that may start off in the classroom but with the potential to trickle out to the school and the district, and quite possible, the province/territory. Waiting for a top-down mandate is not sufficient, if we want to meet the current demands of society, teachers need to act now. In Shifting Minds 3.0, Milton gives several starting points for educators that are manageable and sustainable.
In my current school, we have a large number of students who are not meeting grade level expectations. Students are frustrated and disengaged. They need educators to bring personalized learning to the forefront of their daily teaching practices. Kill and drill needs to be a thing of the past. Traditional teachings, in isolation, have not worked for the past 20+ years, so why are we so keen to cling onto it? What students need is a balance between guidance and autonomy, in-class and out-of-class experiences…flexibility. Traditional teaching blended with innovative, online/virtual practices provide teachers with a pathway to reach students’ needs and interests. The environment combined with flexible, adaptable instruction allows for deeper and independent learning and provides more choice and varied access points for the learner. The teacher plays a key role in helping to create conditions for students to learn and innovate and they don’t have to do so in isolation. Milton (2015, p.16) suggests finding the innovators or change agents in the school that are influential for making positive changes. There are likely others in my school that want to make change and innovate in my school, and I just need to find out who they are. Collaboration will be the key in creating innovative change in my school. Now that’s something I can buy into.
References
Milton, Penny. Shifting Minds 3.0: Redefining the Learning Landscape in Canada. C21 Canada, 2015. http://www.c21canada.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/C21-ShiftingMinds-3.pdf