In my previous school district, I was the only teacher teaching a physics course with set, district-wide learning outcomes. These same outcomes were also taught in physics classrooms at the other high school in our district. But at our school, I was one of the 2 physics teachers. The other teacher taught the AP-level physics courses. So, in many ways, I had opportunities to incorporate strategies I believed were best for learners and that I found worked best for them without being seen as out of alignment with anyone in our building. My amazing friend and one of my teaching philosophy goddesses, Katie Novak, stated the following misconception about alignment: All teachers must deliver instruction in the exact same way. True alignment, she says, is about shared goals, rigor, and outcomes. Thank you, Katie! Katie has taught me to truly believe that learner variability is the rule, not the exception. I encourage you to take 10 minutes to listen to Katie Novak explain it in the ...
It's been a while since I've written a post. The transition to term 3 with new courses all around has delayed my ability to reflect. In addition, I just had LASIK surgery so, I've been trying to limit screen time a little bit. But, it's officially been 14 days. So, here we go! Well, the Oscars were last week and I've been thinking a bit about best picture winners and memorable quotes. When it comes to educational buzzwords that have been floating in my head, this is the one that keeps springing to my mind. One of the biggest pushes in education these days is personalization. There is a phrase that is constantly floating around the idea of what personalization entails and that is "student voice and choice". In this post, I intended to focus wrapping my head around what we mean when we say student voice. In my next post, hopefully it'll be soon, I'll try to tackle the idea of choice. Let's wait on defining what we mean by voic...