The title of this post refers to the vision statement for my district. I recently applied for a district committee position (unsuccessfully). In the application, I expounded on the meaning of our district vision moving forward:
World-class education in 2009 and beyond will involve three key factors: customization, collaboration, and ownership.
Increasingly, students and families will expect a customized learning experience for each learner. We know that every student in our district has a unique mix of learning strengths and styles. As we move forward, we will need to develop resources, tools, practices, and assessments that allow educators to harness the strengths of each student to maximize academic achievement.
Collaboration will be the life-blood of this movement toward customized learning. Educators throughout our district will need to combine their bags of tricks, and they’ll need the tools to sort through and catalog those resources for easy modification and implementation. To realize world-class results, we will need to collaborate and share with educators world-wide.
We must empower our students to take ownership of their learning and performance. By developing assessments that are timely and informative, students can assume a more active roll in their own achievement. For students, assessment data should provide logical and immediate feedback regarding mastery of skills and concept. For teachers, data tools should allow easy slicing and dicing of assessment data to inform instructional decisions. We must also cast a wider net to collect student-centric evidence of mastery. Students express mastery in many different ways, and our data collection should acknowledge and leverage this diversity.
Joel, I agree that we need to acknowledge of students’ strengths. The expectations of students are ever increasing. It seems that students today have to learn more information then I did when I was in school. With this being said it is important that teachers build on their strengths in order to help them process and retain the information. This may mean that the teachers will have to use more then one teaching style or approach. They may also need to expand their resources and adopt new teaching tools. As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to enhance their background and build upon what they already know. I take their interests and needs into account when developing a lesson.
Also, you are 100% correct about empowering our students. If students became empowered they would become aware of learning styles that work best for them as well as identify areas of their learning that need improvement.
I believe that one way to do this is to create student portfolios. Together students and teachers discuss the types of work should be included and why. At the end of the school year students should be encouraged to show these portfolios with their families. This activity alone helps students critically think about the quality of their work and identify ways to improve. Using portfolios would help students take ownership of their work.