The Personal Touch: Classroom Innovations for Personalized Learning

One size does not fit all when it comes to learning, and a variety of innovative educators are honing in on that idea to bring a more customized approach to teaching our children. Find out how New Classrooms' Teach to One: Math, Avenues: The World School, and The Bronx Guild, a Big Picture Learning school, are doing just that.

 
Students at William P. Gray Elementary School in Chicago check master schedules on big screens before beginning a rotation of varying teaching methods during Teach to One Math, a pilot educational model from New Classrooms.

America’s education system is evolving. Traditional teaching styles, the ways children learn, and even the once-sacrosanct paper-and-ink textbook are being called into question by progressive innovators ready to move our country’s learning system into the future. Local academic leaders are changing classroom layout, teaching technology as a native language, and urging students to take control of their passions more than ever before. What’s the common denominator here? “P” no longer stands for a “pass” on your gym-class report card. Education is rapidly, necessarily becoming personal again. 

According to a 2012 report published by the New York State Education Department, graduation rates across the state are on the rise, but slowly. Only 74 percent of students statewide who began ninth grade in 2007 graduated on time in 2011, a slim increase from the 69.3 percent of freshmen who began high school in 2003, and a negligible increase from the 73.4 percent who began in 2006. The percentage of students in NYC who graduate on time is even lower, at 60.9 percent. While narrowing in on causes behind the statistics may have experts running in circles, there is one clear variable educators are examining—and proactively tweaking: the ways in which students learn.   

As each individual student listens to a different genre of music and participates in different extracurricular activities, each, too, has a unique way of learning. Here’s the catch: The traditional model of education caters to one style, an impersonal one at that, which involves a uniform lesson plan—one teacher instructing at a strictly-measured pace, hoping that the entire class retains enough to progress to the next lesson the following day. Expecting uniform success and actually yielding successful results are two different ball games, however. There is no quick fix, but it is imperative that education appeal to multiple learning styles to ensure success across the board.

Space Matters: Classrooms Redesigned

Joel Rose, former chief of staff to the deputy chancellor at the New York City Department of Education and then-CEO of School of One, an NYCDOE initiative, knows classroom struggles firsthand from teaching fifth grade in Houston for three years. When he returned to check in on old students after they had progressed beyond fifth grade, Rose was alarmed. “There were kids on different levels in the same class,” he says. Frustrated with the system in place, Rose set out to change what he found to be the biggest problem: the delivery model.

Now co-founder and CEO at New Classrooms, a budding organization implementing its pilot program Teach to One: Math in 15 schools nationwide (six in NYC), Rose and fellow founder Chris Rush are finding that bringing creativity to the traditional classroom goes a long way. “The American education system has become quite unimaginative,” Rose says. The lack of imagination, according to Rose, is what makes or breaks a successful learning environment. “We haven’t designed models that are positioned for success.”

Just how imaginative is the New Classrooms approach? The program brings different modalities to an existing classroom, giving students the freedom to learn at the pace and in the setting in which they will most likely succeed. “Not all kids come to school at the same level. Not all kids learn in the same way,” Rose says. New Classrooms honors each student as an individual, striving for personalized learning—a departure from the “one-size-fits-all approach” employed in many classrooms across the country.

“We set up different stations in the classrooms that allow students to learn different things in one learning environment,” Rose says of a New Classrooms layout. Students check a schedule upon entering their classroom to see which modalities they will interact with first. Throughout the math period, they engage and learn at different stations, working with teachers for a set timeframe, then moving on to software lessons, collaborative projects with other students, and time spent with virtual tutors from around the world.

At the end of each period, every Teach to One: Math student must complete a software assessment; the curriculum and modalities the student will work with the following day are dependent upon the previous day’s assessment and delivered in alternative ways, giving those who need extra work on fractions the time and flexibility to master those skills, lessening the risk of kids falling further behind as others move on to more advanced lessons.

Creating a seamless educational environment, which supports multiple learning styles, a respect for a student’s learning pace, and the ability to receive attention in one-on-one and group settings all adds up to New Classrooms’ fundamental goal: “We want all students to realize their potential,” Rose says. And while New Classrooms and Teach to One focus exclusively on math education, Rose and Rush are exploring the expansion of their model into other subjects in the future. 

Wired for Success: Transforming Technology’s Role

Technology is an integral part of the educational experience at Avenues: The World School, an independent school in its second year in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. “Technology is part of our DNA,” says Dirk DeLo, chief technology officer at Avenues—and that fact is evident from the moment one walks through the school’s doors: The main lobby features a large digital screen showcasing student work, information about world cultures, and even a computer-generated web illustrating students’ interconnectedness based on their personal interests. There are more than 100 screens and 2,000 supported mobile devices in use at Avenues. With plans for international campuses in the works, technology will be the thread that continues to link all students together.

Even preschoolers at Avenues are regarded as digital natives. “The little kids have iPads in the classroom, but it’s not one-to-one yet,” DeLo notes. In fact, the one-to-one child-to-tablet ratio takes effect in kindergarten, where “we let students personalize their device,” DeLo says. This offers several benefits. Practicing a “new every two [years]” guideline for purchasing up-to-date technology, students claim ownership of their specific device for that time period. “The iPad is assigned to a particular student for two years, so he or she can develop a digital portfolio.” As early as kindergarten, Avenues students are proficient in note-taking and content-archiving apps such as Evernote. By using this technology, DeLo says, “they can start to curate what’s important to them.”