Module 2: II.) Key Elements of the Student Experience

We believe in starting with the end user in mind and in a school, the end user is a student. So when we're designing the ideal learning environment for students, we want you to hold four big ideas in your mind. The first is student ownership. The second, personalized education. Third, mastery based, and finally, deep relationships.

Now, you'll notice that this list looks very similar to the list from last week when we were describing a high quality blended learning environment. But the difference is this week we're really thinking about the experiences that you need to nail to create a great experience for students. And it's that student framework that changes this slightly so that relationships is one of the key items because you really have to forge deep relationships for students to make this really tick and be high quality.

And since we believe in mastery based education, we, we're going to give you a quick assessment now to show you the big ideas that we're talking about in this week. If you know this stuff backwards or forwards and can ace it, by all means skip this video. But we think there's also a lot of richness in the detail that we're talking about these big ideas. I had a teacher say to me, you know the old adage, whoever does the work in the classroom does the learning. Well, in my classroom, I'm doing all the work. And I think that's just so true of so many of our schools throughout the world. It's like the American education system is this gigantic canoe with 50 million students in it, and each year there's a few thousand brave teachers with those paddles just breaking their back, trying to make a little bit of progress down the river. What happens if we give the students the paddles? If we can convince them to really put their back into the effort that's the big force multiplying change that we're looking for. It's as if the biggest wasted resource in our system is actually the effort of the students.

And this is why student agency is such a big concept that we're focusing on this week. And we're thinking about how to put students in charge of their to do more of the work and to empower them to seek help, whether it be from peers or teachers when they need it. And this really starts to move the teachers away from, yes, it's a hackneyed phrase, but moving them toward being the guide on the side and away from sage on the stage.

And think about how motivating it is for kids if they own their own learning in this process.

And think about one other thing as well, which is that as we think about lifelong success in students going into post secondary institutions, there's not the support around them that there is in K12 education systems. And so if they learn to own their learning, they can be far more successful in the future.

I can do more than people think I can because I am smart and I know what I can do. I know the things I could do, I know the things I can't do. I know what I can do. I do what I can and what I can't do. I try my best.

I think that's so important for students because, I mean, let's face it, when you get to college or when you get out in the workforce, you have to be able to do that. If you can't make a plan and follow through with it without someone praising you or supporting you along the way, that's going to severely limit what you can do with your life. And I think we've all seen the students that can do that are more successful. When I think about the students that I've taught previously, especially in high school, it breaks my heart to admit this, but you could look at the kids coming in day one and you could more or less figure out that kid's going to make it in college. That kid's not, that kid is, that kid isn't. And by and large, it was that skill of self direction and ownership.

So the second big idea around the ideal student experience is personalization. And this is getting at that concept of every student gets what they need exactly when they need it. And in education speak, we call that differentiation. But I think differentiation is a word that was invented to make teachers feel bad about ourselves because in reality we just can't do it manually. And this is where technology holds some promise to maybe give teachers the potential to do more personalization.

So the idea of personalization is getting away from the set curriculum at the set speed for every single student.

I had this epiphany recently. I was sitting in the back of a classroom watching a really good teacher in a good school just do their best song and dance and try to deliver a great lesson. And it sort of hit me that a bunch of these students already know this material. Maybe a third of the class is sitting there, and if we tested them now, they could show proficiency. But they're good kids, so they smile and nod and wait through it. But it's essentially a wasted class. And as I watched them, I could see like their little heads turning yellow on the Dita dashboard. It wasn't the right lesson for them. And then you realize, well, for another third of the class, they don't have the background knowledge or they're lacking a certain skill to make this lesson accessible. So it's not only a waste of their time, but it's truly frustrating because they're just. They know they're not ready for this lesson. And those poor students, I could see their heads turning red on their little dashboards. And maybe for a third of the class, there was the right lesson at the right time. They were in their zone of proximal development and they were getting the right material, and maybe those students could turn green. And then the thing that really hit me was I, as the observer and probably even the teacher, wasn't able to tell which student was which.

Every kid can be working on exactly what they need to be working on when they're ready for it. It's huge. One of my biggest frustrations as a teacher was always the fact that I knew there were kids sitting in my class.

Boredom.

Because what we were learning class that day like they got was easy for them. And as much as I tried to differentiate, I knew I could never differentiate. I could never plan 30 different lessons within a single day. You know, there was just too many kids with too many different needs. And as a single teacher trying to plan a single, even differentiated lesson every day, like you couldn't actually meet the needs of all the kids.

So the next idea is mastery based education. Now think about Brian's example and think about those students who could already have passed out of the material. Wouldn't it be great if we could just give them a test up front so that they could show their proficiency and just keep moving on.

Michael actually did a really nice Q and A recently on Forbes with our friends from the Learning Accelerator. Using the analogy of mastery based education being like kung fu. And think about this for a sec. You know that there's a progression of belts. You know what you have to do to show mastery on any belt. And students can still be in the same dojo working on their own individualized skill and, and then advance when they've actually shown mastery. We put a link in the resources section. I actually think it's really worth your time to take a quick read.

At Summit, we focus on mastery based learning because it's simply not okay to continue passing students on from class to class year to year when they're full of Swiss cheese holes in their content knowledge. So by having a mastery based system where students must show competency in content before progressing, we know we're setting them up for success down the road when the courses get harder and the content more challenging because they're going to have the base level of competency that they need.

So the last idea to hold onto around the ideal student experience is relationships. We still think that teachers are at the center of any learning process. And that relationship between student and teacher, and frankly, even student, student to student, is a core and essential part of any good learning environment.

A lot of people worry, and rightly so, that if we just put technology into classrooms that it's going to be actually terrible for education because students will be sort of like the Night of the Living Dead sitting in front of a computer screen for eight hours, just clicking away mindlessly. But the really big surprise that we've seen when we go into blended learning environments is how much interaction students are having with each other. They're bouncing off to talk with other students about their assignments, they're talking with their teachers much more one on one interaction. And at first it seems really surprising, but what I've realized as I've stepped back is that if you think about the typical 30 to 1 lecture format for a class, actually there's very little opportunities for personalization there. But in these blended models, when you start having these small group rotations, opportunities for tutoring and other such experiences, there's a lot more time for one on one interaction.

And we'll go deep on this next week as we talk about the new rules of channel teachers.

Teachers spend a lot more time doing one to one conferencing or small group conferencing. Even in high school environments. I think there's a great tradition of small group instruction in elementary, but you really haven't seen that in secondary schools. I should know as a secondary math teacher. But all of a sudden it's a lot of one to one, it's a lot of two to one, it's a lot of three to one. And for the teacher it's great because those are experiences they really wanted all along. And for the student, I mean, we talk about and we make movies about how impersonal and big high schools are and how hard it is to really get to be known. And when you meet students and see their interactions with teachers in the environment, it's really intimate and it's really personalized and people feel really well known. And sometimes what kids need is they don't need a lesson in how to do X, Y and Z. They just need to know that you care about them and that you're interested in who they are. And Teachers can do that kind of 90 second or 5 minute type check in is their going around and doing those things. But it completely changes how you spend your time in the learning environment. And I use that word intentionally. It's a learning environment.

So the reason I chose to come to Summit instead of somewhere else is because we have the one on one mentor relationships. And you stay with that group of kids until they graduate and you check in with them each week and you really get to see their progress and you've set goals with them academically, but also like personally and like things outside of school, things inside of school and like you really just hear what they have to say and you really like care like you have that time to like invest in a relationship with that student. And I feel like that the fact that Summit like programs it into your day and you're not having to like figure out when to meet with kids or you are not only picking the kids that like troublesome in your class, but like there's a time for every single student is very like, is important to me and is what made me want to work at Summit.

My teachers make me feel motivated to go to school because when you, when you, when you're going low, you're coming down, they, they don't let you stay there. They help you come back up, let you, if you fall behind, then they help you get back up to college.

So again, hold onto this list of the four big ideas for the ideal student experience. Ownership, personalization, mastery based and relationships. Now, in addition to hearing from Michael and I and showing you some schools, we want to bring in some other experts in the sector. And we were sitting down recently with our good friend Alex Hernandez from the Charter School Growth Fund and he told us about how he begins an exercise with folks to begin thinking about the ideal student experience. After Alex, we're going to cut to the next video and start showing you what this looks like. In our protagonist schools.

We advise our school designers not to start with the school schedule when they advise schools. And the reason is blended learning is this big open canvas. And what you do when you start with a schedule is you basically drop a thousand constraints. You're giving away stuff that you're not even prepared or have thought about giving away. And so where we do ask folks to start is we say start with a learning environment. And I don't care if it's 30 kids or it's 90 kids. And let's not think too much about the space at this point. Think about the experiences that you want students to have academically, socially. And let's not do too many, but let's just think through, like, if we wanted to do three or four of these different experiences during a certain block of time. So you start putting boundaries around these experiences. How do you create these experiences for students? And that's the beginning of school design. And then once you've kind of mapped that out, we do a lot of drawing, we do a lot of visualization, you can start saying, okay, how do kids cycle through this environment? And sometimes by just saying, hey, we're going to cycle kids through this, all of a sudden your design starts breaking. So then you start modifying. You want to make sure that every kid's getting the experiences that you intended to get, not just because you have time to do one to one for 10 kids, and the other 90 kids get left out in your school model. And that's the beginning of iteration. And so the key is, don't give away your constraints too early, because it's not really that useful to know what you can't do. What's really useful is figuring out what you can do.