As a Personalized Learning Coach, my role is to facilitate teachers’ understanding of ways to transfer ownership of learning to the children. Other instructional coaches ask what resources I use to make this happen. There are two specific resources that I lean on the most. One is a what, and the other is a who.
Allison Kerley Townsend, the 2019 Georgia Teacher of the Year, is my who. Three years ago, I was trying to piece together the mindset that it would take to be a teacher who personalizes student learning. I had three things that I believed would be necessary to be successful. I searched for a teacher that would be willing to take risks alongside her children. I searched for a teacher who would be transparent in their learning. And most importantly, I searched for a teacher that could do all of this while being unrelenting in the reflection of their work. Allison was the perfect teacher for all of these tasks. She had a passion for teaching and putting children at the center. She also had a Twitter following (@teachkerley & @kerleyclass) that was growing exponentially day-by-day. Over the years, her classroom became my number one resource to provide a model of what it looks like to personalize student’s learning.
My second resource for helping teachers personalize learning, oddly enough, is the Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES). For many years, teachers have seen this as an evaluative document. But like all documents used for evaluation, when placed in the hand of the learner, they become powerful roadmaps for understanding, goal setting, and self-reflection. The most important aspects of focusing on the learner have lived in the TKES rubrics for many years.
Over the course of the next seven blog posts, I plan on breaking down the most critical Performance Standards in TKES for teachers to use as they look to transition from a Proficient towards Exemplary. This deep dive into the difference between the two will reveal many elements that define the qualities of both teacher-centered and learner-centered classrooms. It will also empower teachers to take risks for their students knowing that their efforts are supported by our current evaluation system.
I look forward to examining this further with you all. Please feel free to add questions or comments in the section below.
Allison Kerley Townsend, the 2019 Georgia Teacher of the Year, is my who. Three years ago, I was trying to piece together the mindset that it would take to be a teacher who personalizes student learning. I had three things that I believed would be necessary to be successful. I searched for a teacher that would be willing to take risks alongside her children. I searched for a teacher who would be transparent in their learning. And most importantly, I searched for a teacher that could do all of this while being unrelenting in the reflection of their work. Allison was the perfect teacher for all of these tasks. She had a passion for teaching and putting children at the center. She also had a Twitter following (@teachkerley & @kerleyclass) that was growing exponentially day-by-day. Over the years, her classroom became my number one resource to provide a model of what it looks like to personalize student’s learning.
My second resource for helping teachers personalize learning, oddly enough, is the Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES). For many years, teachers have seen this as an evaluative document. But like all documents used for evaluation, when placed in the hand of the learner, they become powerful roadmaps for understanding, goal setting, and self-reflection. The most important aspects of focusing on the learner have lived in the TKES rubrics for many years.
Over the course of the next seven blog posts, I plan on breaking down the most critical Performance Standards in TKES for teachers to use as they look to transition from a Proficient towards Exemplary. This deep dive into the difference between the two will reveal many elements that define the qualities of both teacher-centered and learner-centered classrooms. It will also empower teachers to take risks for their students knowing that their efforts are supported by our current evaluation system.
I look forward to examining this further with you all. Please feel free to add questions or comments in the section below.