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We all have methods to organize ourselves for the day. Me? I am a list maker. I get great pleasure in making lists, and taking my flair felt pen and crossing them off one by one. Sometimes I even add something I did just to cross it off. It can be helpful but also limiting. I can spend too much time planning the days, and not enough time implementing the plans or getting the drudgery of the mundane tasks completed. Planning for the school year can be an overwhelming task. I currently have 12 tabs open as I type this on my laptop, each tab inviting me to complete a task for the day. It is overwhelming for many to look at, but for me, they are placeholders, a reminder of my next steps.
Today my goal is to outline the first week of school. The first week of school is critical. It is where we build not only routines and set expectations, but we build relationships. Without relationships, no learning can occur. You must begin to learn the story of the student before you expect them to take risks in your classroom. The challenge this year is two-fold, our first days occur more often because our classroom family continues to grow throughout the school year, we have a fluid population. The second challenge is my students won’t be in class at the same time completing the same coursework on a daily basis. How do we create a community of students who arrive with individualized plans?
Personalized learning is not about the tool that provides access to content, but instead, it is creating content that is meaningful to the learner. You can’t do that until you build the time and space to get to know them. So every activity I select for this opening module has to allow me a view into the interests, skills, and strengths of my students. The face to face interaction will be there, but there must also be a way to archive those interactions, so students who join later get a glimpse into the interests and personalities others in our community. I look forward to feedback from my NWP cohort and will share the module here in this space in hopes you too will join this conversation. Building a digital space that connects, not isolates is both the challenge and the reward.