Customized Learning

There isn’t a parent or teacher who doesn’t know two things about how people learn: people learn in different timeframes and in different ways.

We know this so well, and yet most schools are still organized in such a way as try to have students learn in the same way at the same time.  You can’t help but wonder how much of our challenges with student achievement, special education and support services, student discipline, and student motivation aren’t directly linked to the number of students who have been forced to try and learn using someone else’s pace and method!

Customized Learning is the attempt to restructure schools to rectify this, and starts with those two foundational premises: people learn in different ways and in different timeframes.

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Overview of Customized Learning

• Why We Need To Change Our Schools – Bea McGarvey
• 10 Key Components of Customized Learning
• Not All At Once: The Phases of Implementing Customized Learning

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More on Components of Customized Learning

• Build a Shared Vision with a broad selection of stakeholders
• “Student Voice and Choice” is More Than Just Choice
• The Curriculum and Customized Learning
• Cross Industry Borrowing, Scouting, and Organizing the Curriculum
• Capacity Matrices: Examples & Overview
• Keeping Track of Student Learning (Part 1; Part 2)
• Thinking of Instruction in Two Parts (Part 1; Part 2)
• Don’t Play Blind Golf: Formative Feedback
• Moving Towards Standards-Based Grading
• The Problem With Grades Based on Averages

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Supporting the Shift to Customized Learning

• Moving to Customized Learning takes Deliberate Leadership
• If It Sounds Crazy, That’s Probably Not How They’re Doing It
• Focus on Implementing Customized Learning in Phases
• Support the Heck out of Teachers
• Modeling of Customized Learning (Paradigm Shifting)