Personalized Learning

Personalised Learning proposes a wholly different approach to high school learning than the image most of us carry in our minds from our own experience in grades 9-12, and any further experience we have gained as professionals. As fairly level trend lines in standardized test scores continue to show, the accountability movement is not accomplishing its purposes - but no applicable models have emerged for whole-school change. This book explains why becoming an adult in a technological society demands a new vision, a reliable process for personalizing learning in high school and compelling examples of students who successfully design their own pathway to graduation. It also shows that high standards make a sound foundation for learning based on individual interests, talents and aspirations. Personalization does not replace current practice; it simply adds enormous resources beyond the school walls and puts all in the hands of parents, advisor/teachers and students with their distinctive interests. This book explains the basis principles and ideas that lie behind personalized high school learning, but it does so largely through the voices of Pathways students at Mount Abraham Union Middle/High School in Bristol, Vermont, with commentary by their advisors, parents and community mentors. Pathways is a process that supports any student who want to pursue a personalized plan for meeting graduation competencies by assembling evidence from involvement in the community, high school classes, college classes, virtual courses, travel or creative work that have met graduation standards. The voices of high school students, rather than those of policy-makers and statisticians, testify that a different kind of high school is feasible, and that the results match the hopes most Americans hold for young adult students.