Personalized Learning
One of the main difficulties when teaching a class is that of finding a way to keep every student engaged. The typical classroom often has students that are too confused to be engaged, others that are too bored because the material is overly simple for them, others that find the content uninteresting, others that seem engaged but are actually just blindly following their classmates’ lead, and a small number of students who are actually following along and learning something. Every teacher has faced this, and most have tried to find a way to address this problem.
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One common way I have often seen is to make the lessons exciting! A physics teacher I met once turned everything into a construction project that involved hammering. A math teacher had a gimmick to teach trigonometry that involved throwing a glass of water at the blackboard. Some teachers turn themselves, rather than the lesson, into the exciting part, acting like a magician at a kids’ birthday party while talking about grammar or geometry. The idea here is that if they can grab the students’ attention in any way – even if it is through means that have little to do with the content – then the lesson itself will stay in the students’ minds. I certainly appreciate the enthusiasm, and their lessons probably have more permanence than less exciting ones, but there is good evidence that the actual understanding isn’t improved much by these tricks.
Teaching Goldilocks
When we are taught something for which we are not ready – because we lack previous knowledge, or our minds haven’t developed the ability for that level of abstraction yet, or whatever else the reason may be – we find the process frustrating. Being overly challenged leads to giving up (and often to developing a strong dislike of the subject matter). If, instead, we are taught something that we already know, or we find
When the material presented is not right for the child, it is boring or frustrating to learn it
very easy to understand and internalize, we grow bored. Being under-challenged leads to loss of interest (and can also lead to a strong dislike of the subject matter!). So teaching an engaging class is really a Goldilocks problem. If we can present to each student a problem (or an idea, or new content) that is juuuust the right amount of challenging, the student will be interested, engaged, and, once the challenge is overcome, very likely pleased with themselves (and hopefully develop a like for the subject matter!)
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There is, of course, a very natural question that comes to most people’s minds when considering the idea of a classroom where students of various skill levels are each of them learning what they are ready to learn. That is: how will the teacher manage? Or even, can the teacher manage? The answer is that it’s not actually too difficult. Even in a standard classroom, not too much time is spent lecturing, and the bulk of classroom time is dedicated to students working on their own on some skill or other. This can, of course, be replicated in a personalized classroom without much alteration. The fact that the questions the students bring forth to the teacher will necessarily be about different topics isn’t really a problem, as long as the teacher is actually capable of answering them! As for group work, project presentations, and other such tasks that require several students working together, they are no more difficult to achieve in a personalized classroom than in a traditional classroom that mixes students of very different skill levels. A little bit of planning on the part of the teacher would ensure there are always at least two students learning complementary content, thus making it possible to partner up to investigate different aspects of the project’s subject matter.
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In this day and age when we personalize and customize every aspect of our lives, from our exercise routines to our lattes, it simply makes no sense to accept a one-size-fits-all model for our children's education. In arguably the most important aspect of their lives, we should, and we can, give our children the type of education that exactly fits their needs, their developmental stage, their interests, and even their energy level.