Personalized Learning Plans – The next big thing
by Ron Whitehorne on Apr 01 2010 Posted in Class notes
Personalized Learning Plan form
Teachers in the Alternative School Region (what we used to call disciplinary schools) are struggling with a new District initiative, Personalized Learning Plans.
The idea is that some goals are identified for each student along with an action plan, an indication of the resources required, and a way of measuring progress. The student, parent, and teacher all sign off on the plan. The goals are expected to reference assessment data like benchmarks and PSSA results. The Personalized Learning Plan would be reviewed every 30 days. This initiative is a pilot project for now with the expectation that it will be used with all 9th graders next year.
As is so often the case, the problem here is not with the concept. Differentiating or individualizing instruction is clearly important, and good teachers do this routinely. But they do it within the constraints imposed by the number of courses and students that they teach. The realities of large classes of diverse learners make it tough.
Smaller classes and more preparatory time are needed to move forward on this front. Instead this project calls for more paper work…lots more. Instead of allowing the teachers the autonomy of figuring out how they can better individualize instruction, we have the requirement that they fill out upwards of a hundred forms a month.
