Taking Risks: Student Designed Courses to Personalize Learning in K-12 Education

One yearly task that seems to cause dread, almost universally, among counselors is SCHEDULING and REGISTRATION.  While the reasons behind that dread may be varied, we all know how difficult it can be for a school and the course offerings of that school to "be all things to all people."  I have been thinking lately about ways to become all things to all students.

What if we as public education entities embraced the power in allowing students to truly direct their own learning for part of every day?  What if we modeled our school day after Google's concept of 20 time, where students were given 20% of their time to study or work on a project of their own choosing and design.  Now I am not proposing just free time with no expectations, but rather time to truly invest themselves into a course of study that they direct.  Nor am I proposing abandoning our traditional course offerings.  I am proposing a system that engages kids in their own learning.  We all know that when we are passionate about learning something we harness that power and throw ourselves full force into it.  We become almost obsessed with it and it invigorates us and refuels us to work on it.  

Over the course of my thirteen years in education, I have numerous times felt like there have been students who we have failed.  That failure to serve students can be grouped into two categories:

1. Failing the high ability students by handicapping them with our pacing and limiting them to our course offerings.

2. Failing the disengaged students by not allowing them to study what is relevant to their lives and futures and consequently never teaching them the power of pursuing your passion.

Now the first group of students succeed in spite of our work as educators.  Truthfully, these are the kids who are good at the game of school.  They earn good grades and learn regardless of the quality of instruction or materials.  They are just bidding their time until they go off to college or enter the real world where they become 'game changers'.

The second group of kids are those who are chronically disengaged from school.  They show up week in and week out on the eligibility list, detention lists, at-risk list, etc.  They hate coming to school, they find it a waste of their time, they don't see the school as applicable to their lives.  Sadly, many times I have to fight back the urge to agree with them.

What if we changed our system of schooling to allow every kid the opportunity to study something they are passionate about.  Then we allowed them the opportunity to create some sort of learning outcome they could showcase to teachers, administrators, community members, heck even the entire world!  I can almost guarantee you that when students are given the opportunities to study what they are passionate about they will almost always hold themselves to higher standards than we as teachers do when applying our industrial model of assessment.

Now, I am sure you are reading this thinking, 'What a whack job!' 'Doesn't he believe in accountability?'  Yes, and yes, I am not afraid to think outside the box and I do believe in accountability.  I believe we need to allow students the opportunity to hold themselves accountable.

Think back to the first group of kids I say we have failed (High Ability Students).  I believe that we have failed them because we have handicapped their potential.  Rather than setting benchmarks for them to reach, we put a ceiling in which they are not to exceed.  The second group of kids we feed more broccoli to even when they don't like the broccoli.  Why not put some cheese on the broccoli to make it more palatable.  Lets give kids the opportunity to create their own coursework for one elective and see just what happens.  The worst thing could happen is that they don't learning anything useful or don't do anything....(News Flash: That worst outcome is already happening in the courses we offer).

Now consider the possibility of one of those chronically disengaged kids choosing to pursue the study of cell phones and how they work.  What if in the course of that study, he learned about the electrical circuitry behind all of that and realized, 'Hey, wait a minute, I need to know Trig so that I can understand this.' or what if she got curious about the programming behind the user interface and learned how to code.  Next think of the shift that would take place as these kids came to our math or science or computer classes and engaged even more so they could learn what they needed to go even further with their personalized learning course.  Can you imagine how awesome that would be to have students who want to learn not for the sake of the test, but for the sake of applicability and pursuits in which there is no reward other than the intrinsic reward of learning?

With all the resources that exist digitally and the MOOC movement taking hold, why not harness the power of the winds of change before it becomes the tornado that destroys our pretty little system of mass education.  Why not use what we see working with these MOOC's to accomplish our goal of educating kids who are able to problem solve while pursuing their passion.  There are free resources online (Coursera, EdX, Udemy, etc.) There are communities abound online where collaborative discussions take place on nearly every subject imaginable.  Why not allow our kids to go beyond what we know and connect with these resources to really learn?

Why not?  Well it is messy and we don't like messy in education.  We like standards and maps and flowcharts and crosswalks.  I challenge each of you as you read this to consider the possibility that maybe we have it wrong.  Maybe, just maybe we need to personalize rather than standardize.  As people we all want individualization and to be seen as an individual with unique skills.  Why not give this a shot and risk being right?  What if this worked for 10% of the kids?  Would that make the reward worth the risk?

If we are truly educating kids to the best of our ability, then we can't be the limiting factor.  Let's get out of their way and start directing learning, facilitating their learning, provide guidance/feedback/criticism/encouragement to go above and beyond what we currently offer.  Heck it just may cut down on those who make our coveted lists!

Thanks for reading and best wishes as our school year begins.

Dustin Favinger
9-12 Counselor
Cozad Community Schools
@CHS_Mr_F