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Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute
Course: Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute > Unit 2
Lesson 2: Case studies: teaching in a blended learning environmentCase study: teaching in a flex model at Summit Public Schools
Created by Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute.
Want to join the conversation?
- Is Blended learning being adopted in Colleges and Universities?
Also how do we strive to adopt blended learning for students with Autism etc has this model been successful?(1 vote) - Has there been any effort in the flex model or any blended learning model to strive for diversity in core topics? For example, in today's world shouldn't student's have exposure to logic, computer science, and programming at a young age? We are moving to a more quantitative, data-driven society and these are fundamental tools just as is math. Likewise, should we consider increasing the role of philosophy, economics, and government in our education system? These are fundamental tools that benefit society when the mass is more informed. The flex-model seems to be well-equipped to diversify our core knowledge base.(1 vote)
- during PLT time, having top performing peers be the first line of defense to help pupils solve minor challenges would free up teacher's time for one on one remedial pupil help, have you thought to implement this?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- When I talk to people
about our school model, they're always impressed
with how we allocate time. And how we allocate student
time around focusing on exactly what they need
and not wasting their time with that they don't. And focusing teacher time on coaching kids and setting goals, coaching
kids on drawing out their skills rather on the mundane
tasks of grading papers or preparing simple tests. - So at Summit Public Schools,
we really start to see these different roles for teachers come to life in a few distinct
ways that we wanna highlight. - [Man in pink] The
first one is this notion of personalized leaning time
or what Summit calls PLT. It's an essence students
owning their own learning. - [Man in violet] Next, the
teachers job is really different during their project time,
that here their focus is all on non-cognitive skills and
teaching students those mindsets that they want them to develop. - [Man in pink] The third
area that we wanna focus on is what Summit does with team teaching. - [Man in violet] Finally, it's
really interesting to think about how they use their Fridays. Where the teacher's job is almost entirely mentoring and goal setting with students. - So we're gonna start by
looking at how Summit uses this personalized learning
time for an hour each day. Take a look. - [Man in violet] I find
it fascinating to watch how independently all
these students are working and when we're there you can just feel that they are hungry for their
knowledge during this time and they're working on
many different things at the same time. - [Man in pink] You probably
notice that there's a shift also in the teacher's role. They're not in the front
of the room lecturing or guiding every single thing, instead they're now facilitating and you can see them
actually doing just that. - We were surprised at
how quickly and easily our students took to
personalize learning time. We saw that when we put
them in the driver's seat and we put the tools in front of them that they dove right
into it and we believe it's because they had choice
and they had time to explore. They also had their
relationships with their teachers and a safe space in order to
fill in a very useful way. - So we have community groups
where they read everyday. Then those community groups, we discussed like what personalized learning time is and what it looks like
and what it sounds like with each group and then we
sometimes revisit as needed. Instead of us, us teachers saying like personalized learning time is silent. Personalized learning time
is blank, a long list. It was like let's come up with it so like they created it, instead of us telling them what to do. It was all about student choice. They think that just gets their buy in it and they want to learn and they realize, oh this is what's gonna
make me successful. - So this is one of those cases
where culture is everything. They've built this school
from their first day to make this PLT time
sacred and have the kids really have that
uninterrupted, quiet, focus, and allows the teachers to do
some very different things. So the teachers you do see on the floor, they're main job during PLT time is actually to do assessments. So when a student is ready,
when they've learned enough that they know that they
can take an assessment, they just put their name on
a board or raise their hand and let their teacher know. The teacher unlocks the assessment, let's the student take it and then the student
has immediate results. It's really interesting to just
watch this happen in action. - [Teacher] Ryan. - To Brian's point about
culture, you can see that some of this worked really
hard in the first few weeks to instill in students this idea of being self-directed learners and
the big idea for teachers here is that you're no longer
being that explainer of every concept but
you're only intervening once a student is
exhausted every other route in front of them. - Sometimes, I have
trouble finding something or I like doing something. With the teacher they'll help
you or something like that. But I think it's kind
of a challenge for me so that I could be a
self-directed learner. - So if PLT at Summit is all
about the individual time for students then the
other part of their days in project based time. This is where students are
collaborating with other students and teachers are still
not being the explainers, they're just now facilitating
students through this projects to get at those deeper learning skills. - Summit has decided to block
schedule of their project time so they can use teachers in different ways and one thing that's emerging
is they're starting to play with team teaching. It's really interesting to
hear the teachers talk about how much they enjoy this and
how much they're actually learning from each other. - Brian and I both have had
a lot of experience teaching but neither one of us have
co-taught on a regular basis. I had like push and support
from a special aid teacher but I didn't have like Brian. I didn't have someone
in my class full time who like we can sit down
and co-plan together. Even if we, is on a professional level like co-teaching with someone
else has really helped and has really just started this like very trusting relationship with each other. Where we can, like I
can show my lesson plans and I could care less. I hope he had a lot of
feedback to give me. It's the same thing for him and we've learned form each other because we've both had a
lot of different experiences and he's really pushed me to think older and I've pushed him to think younger because I've taught younger grade levels and he's taught high school. It's great because we can
like, if you forget something we can bounce of each
other and remind each other like, oh yeah, hey this is
what we're supposed to do next or let's add more to that or I don't think they're
understanding this. We trust each other so much
that we're not like offended or we don't feel bad, we just
feel like we're able to grow and it's just we're really like trusting, comfortable situation. - If every teacher doesn't
have to do the entire job of teaching by themselves, we
can imagine the shift happen from generalist to specialist. It also, just think for a
moment about being a teacher in a setting where you have
a colleague to play off of and the camaraderie to work together. We've had teachers telling us about how much they're learning from each other because in the old system,
the doors are closed. We see teaching as the
second most private act. We're opening the doors,
we're letting people interact and be together and
frankly, improve their craft. - Lastly, on Friday's at Summit,
what they do is basically it's an expanded PLT day. The entire time is devoted
to personalized learning time for students but what
that means for teachers is that they're operating as mentors. Literally pulling students
in to 10 minute meetings at a time, where they're
reviewing their progress and how they've learned
over the whole week, holding them accountable and
then setting learning goals for the next week, which
really is that engine that drives self-directed learning. - We also have one on one
check-ins with kids every Friday. So I spend my entire Friday,
doing a 10 minute checking with about 30 different kids. I think that really helps
too because it helps them set some goals towards those areas and every week we reflect and get feedback and if they've improved
and if not, what strategies they can try to get better at.