As the first six weeks comes to a close I am taking the time to step back and reflect on our blended journey. In November 2015 I had the privilege to work with some amazing colleagues to dream about how we could leverage an opportunity to bring innovation, blended learning, to Birdville. After days of intense collaborative thought, four of us sat in a room until almost 11:00 PM on the day that Raising Blended Learners round one grant submissions were due to make final changes and click “submit.”
For the next several weeks we waited, and speculated on the possibilities. In January 2016 we learned that Birdville ISD had indeed advanced to the final round. We immediately began to reflect on our first submission and began to dig-in and expand our understanding of blended concepts and contemplate how we could implement in our district. The team expanded to draw in more stakeholders and a group of blended leaders participated in an intense 2-day workshop in Austin to prepare for round two grant submissions. Following this, the now expanded team spent hours and days designing and editing a plan could change the teaching and learning structure in Birdville and cause the student learning experience to change and meet the demands of today’s learners.
April 13, 2016 will always be remembered as a pivotal moment in my career. It is on this day that Raise Your Hand Texas formally announced that Birdville ISD would be a Raising Blended Learners demonstration site! I had been named Project Manager and would now formally embark on a journey that has led me to much reading, learning, and design work to train and support the work of blended learning. It has challenged my thinking and made me reflect on past practices. It makes me hopeful for our future generation. It has reignited my passion for education and the pressing need to make a difference.
With my colleagues and outside consultants we, the Birdville Blended Leaders, mapped out training opportunities to begin the onboarding process of preparing all 9th grade ELAR teachers to launch blended learning in their classrooms beginning the first day of the 2016-17 school year. Six weeks into the school year I am now reflecting upon and evaluating our work.
My first response was we had somehow missed the mark! That is not a fair or true statement! There are iterations of blended learning happening in Birdville ISD that are on-track to prove that student success absolutely can and will increase through this implementation. But on the flip side I must acknowledge that there are also opportunities for growth and additional learning. I am a teacher. I should not be at all surprised by this! Not learners advance at the same pace!
To quote the work of Staker and Horn in Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools, “Blended learning is the engine that can power personalized and competency-based learning.” The word I want to focus on is PERSONALIZED. I am a lifelong learner. Teachers are lifelong learners. All learners are in a different place on their personal journey, and bring with them a variety of experiences that contribute to their understanding and ability to apply new concepts and models. This work is hard! This work causes us to put aside years of traditional teaching and conforming to out-dated models of education. It creates dissonance in our cognition that forces us to grapple with and make sense of new ways of teaching and learning.
As my amazing team of colleagues and I look forward to the next six weeks and the supports that we will offer to our blended teachers, I feel compelled to revisit the definition of blended learning and the reason we are embarking on this work. The focus is personalized learning - to meet students at their level and advance academic achievement, ultimately preparing them for college and career. We do this by examining data, collected formally through screenings and assessments and informally through exit tickets, observations, and reflections. The next step is to design a personalized student experience that is at a level of rigor to engage students and lead them to deep understanding of the standards. The student experience can be delivered through individual or small group instruction using both online and offline resources in a variety of modalities with opportunities for student agency.
Birdville ISD is committed to the work of transforming teaching and learning and making blended learning work at our schools, for our students!
Cheryl McKnight
Raising Blended Learners Project Manager
