Success can be measured not just in terms of academics but also in personal growth. I imagine my potential group of students will come from very challenging circumstances and backgrounds providing unique personal and academic needs. Academically, state assessments can be analyzed at the beginning of the year for individual and whole group weaknesses to guide and inform my planning, teaching and assessing. Also, a more informal baseline assessment that I administer in the beginning of the year can be a good tool to use to conference with a student and have them identify goals they might have for themselves academically. The more students take ownership of their own learning and goals, the more invested they will be in their education. Similar benchmarks might be given throughout the year, each one building on skills taught previously and still identifying individual and group needs. Not every student should be expected to meet the same goal but rather to progress from where they are. Success can also be measured on a personal scale in regards to connections that students have made with their peers or me throughout the year. Students coming from lower-income areas may have trouble making connections and may desperately need to make connections due to a difficult home life. The more connected and accepted they feel in school with their peers and at least one adult, the more invested they will be in their academics. I will pay close attention to their personalities, likes and dislikes and use this information to guide and inform my personal and academic conversations and assignments with them individually and as a whole group/family. Providing choice, whenever possible, will also be important in helping them to express themselves and feel connected to school, and has shown to help struggling and hesitant readers and writers. I can keep anecdotal records of times when students open up to me, make more eye contact, ask for extra help, enjoy and put effort into an assignment I gave them some choice on and show personal growth over the course of the year, being sure to give them praise and acknowledge their efforts as well as their achievements. Listening and noticing incremental improvements for my students both academically and personally will be solid indicators for me of their success.
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I AM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH THIS PIECE BECAUSE IT SPEAKS THE TRUTH, WHOLLY AND FULLY! In fact, this work reminds me of a video that I saw a while back titled “I SUED THE SCHOOL SYSTEM!” In the video, the narrator talks about how the school system has rarely adapted over the years to accommodate for the needs of every single student. Once upon a time, all of the students that sat in those chairs were simply going to be a part of some sort of physical labor: there was a strict way of accomplishing the job and accomplishing it effectively, so there was not much divergence in regards to how the procedure was taught. Now, students have a lot more options when it comes to what they want to do with their life and what they want to pursue. As a result, they deserve a much more independent learning experience in which allows them to efficiently build on the skills they need to engage in that vocation. Moreover, everybody retains information differently, comes from a different background and is provided with different resources to learn. You clearly understand that we are currently living in an era that thrives on personality and individuality, thus students deserve an education that satiates their personal needs and interests. This is the only way that they will be fully invested in their education so that, in the future, there will be a surplus of career opportunities for them. In other words, the more they know, the more passion they have for a particular field, the more likely that they will grown into success stories.
I would love for you to expand on this experiment and include real-life examples to substantiate your declaration and further validate your hypothesis. There needs to be more proof on the merit of personalized education and individual experiences for students. Thus, if you have obtained the evidence, I whole-heartedly believe that you should convert this into a sort of trial and error piece. Start out with your assertion, such as “The more students take ownership of their own learning and goals, the more invested they will be in their education,” then apply it to one of your students – past or current. Explain how you granted this student permission to take ownership of their learning ambitions, and how this affected their performance over the course of the year. Essentially, what I am saying is that: you can transform this work from an agenda or a plan to an assessment or a study; not only will it make the entire piece more rounded but also influential and utterly, utterly valuable!