Now as we share some examples of

schools that are actually changing these assumptions and

playing with these decisions, don't get too

fixated on the actual decisions that they make.

You may agree with some.

You may disagree with others. It's not the point.

What we're trying to illustrate.

Is that you actually have these assumptions as

things that you can play with in your context.

They're choices that you can make.

>> So, some that looked at their

school calender and they had two desired outcomes.

The first was for students, the second was for adults.

For students, they wanted an environment where students could go

deep on extracurricular or electives, for a sustained amount of time.

And for staff, they just wanted more PD time during the

year to spend really thoughtful time in training with each other.

So they looked at their calendar and they built these things

called intercessions, which look a lot like a college campus intercession.

For a couple weeks at a time students work with either a

set of teachers or community partners to do deep and meaningful sustained projects.

And during that time the staff have

really rich professional development time with each other.

Now, they used to have a very traditional schedule.

And they went after this change and in the

process created something that looks very new and very different.

>> So when we started really rethinking our school model,

one of the things we tried to free ourselves from.

Was the traditional year long calendar just like we

tried free ourselves from this sort of traditional bell schedule.

And so, we started with kind of a blank slate and we

said, you know, what, what would be ideal, what would be optimal.

And clearly there are some restraints because our society still has

this notion of, sort of summer break and things like that, but.

Within reason, we said, you know, really how long do we need to spend on an annual

basis for kids to really built you know, progress

in the way that we want them to progress?

And, to learn the content, learn the skills they need to learn.

And, how can we really think that year so that it's not like start, and then run

all the way to the end before you have a breather, or a break or time to reflect.

And so we've done something really innovative which is

we have taken eight weeks of the school year,

so really 20% of the student's time in school for a year.

And said, you know, we know we

value kids having authentic, real-world experiences where

they're able to follow passions and do a deep dive and be in the community.

Let's give them that opportunity during the school year.

in our case, we've broken it up, so three, two

week periods, and two one week periods, scattered throughout the year.

And let's give them the time to sort of

step back from the regular day-to-day, to be able to

reflect, to be able to immerse themselves in something

else, to get that sort of breather, and break, and.

In a sense, restart.

Very powerful for students.

Not only what they're doing for that, during that time,

but what they're, that, that, you know, break, if you will.

But even more powerful is what it does for teachers.

Because it gives our teachers.

Eight weeks spread throughout the year very strategically where they have time

to professional, proffesionally develop. Where they have time to work as a team.

Where they have the time to look at

the data around their students and reconfigure, and.

Do these iteration cycles where they're really thinking about

and looking at data of what they've built and

what they're learning, and how they can iterate on

that and regroup around that and be true leaders.

it's so incredibly powerful and I think it's one of the key drivers for how we're

able to move our model forward so quickly, so efficiently, and so effectively.

And I think a beautiful example of how you

can take what's best for kids, principles and things

you value, and find a way to leverage that

to make the model really, really work very well.

>> Now, that's one way we've seen

people start to play with the school calendar.

Some school's we're familiar with are actually going to year-round schooling.

And they're doing this in a variety of ways.

Having flexible groupings for students, they're doing very specific tracts, so

that they have different vacations, and staggering the schedule within the school.

And we're seeing all manner of innovations in this.

>> What we think is important is to remember that everything is a tool.

The calendar can be a tool. Don't assume that it has to

be the way it's always been.

Think about your desired student outcomes that you want, that

learning environment, and figure how your calendar can support that.

>> Now, of all the schools that we're looking at,

KIP probably has the most different looking school day itself.

Now, you may be aware, but KIP has made a very big committment

across its 140 plus schools to have extended learning days for each child.

And often the schedule goes from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM.

>> Now, wherever you think about an extended school day,

I happen to think length of time matters a lot.

It's an interesting question to still ask.

Well, does this have to be true for every student?

If we believe in our mastery-based ideals, what if

some students need an extended school day and others don't.

Could we envision a system where students could

show mastery and maybe get an earlier release.

Or even have a day of the week that they didn't have to come

to school where that they could work on projects that they cared most about.

Because they've already shown that they know it.

So again, if you think about changing the length

of the school day, you don't have to think in

a uniform block of every student.

We're still focusing on what individual students need.

>> And this brings up a really interesting

question which is everyone's fame, favourite which is homework.

>> Mm-hm.

>> Now, does, do we actually need the

same concept of homework that we've always had?

Well, if we're really focused on mastery, can we

let the students decide where they do the work?

>> So we hold them to the bar of what they need to

learn, and whether they do it in school or at home almost becomes irrelevant.

Carpe Diem, in Arizona and Indianapolis, combine these

two ideas of question in homework and whether

all students need the same schedule, to create

one of these models where students who's demonstrated mastery.

Can take their Fridays off or work on something their interested in.

And similarly navigator schools has built their schedule with an early

release each day, for students who are on pace and showing mastery.

They get to go and either go home or work on something they want to.

And the students

who need more work to demontrate mastery stay and get

small group or one on one time with their teachers.

Another organization, Education for Change, is starting

a new blend of learning school called Epic.

And at Epic, what they're going to do is

introduce this time of flex time for each student.

So similar to how Google gives each of its employees 20%

time, where they can choose the work they want to work on.

Basically, what's going to happen in Epic is that as students

demonstrate mastery, they're going to be able to earn this flex

time so that they can choose what they want to learn.

We've talked a lot about the use of time in this course

and even showed you how student schedules change back in week two.

>> So today let's focus on how people use time across the whole day.

As well as how the heck people manage this day to

day in a school when there's these kind of different schedules happening.

>> Now one of the things we've emphasized is that when you move

to blended learning, teachers can use time much more effectively within a classroom.

But our protagonist schools don't just stop there.

They're also thinking how do you combine classes in novel ways, rethink

schedules, and actually move beyond using

that time effectively just within the classroom.

>> Right, so in kick ballet, they do a rotation within the classroom

but they also rotate between classrooms to mix and match students and teachers.

All around the idea of giving the right kid

in front of the right adult for the right person.

>> We thought, wait, why don't we play to our shrinks.

We have a teacher whose

really good at getting the low babies up.

We have a teacher whose really good at getting those bubble students.

So that students are right in the bubble of proficient advanced,

push them all the way up and getting them solid advanced.

So why don't we play to our shrinks?

So we started mixing the kids.

We started sending kids to different teachers for the math block.

To make sure that they were truly getting what they needed.

>> Similarly, think about how navigator schools created

a school-wide schedule that allows teachers to peel

off students as they've mastered material.

So they can dive in deeper with the

students who are still struggling with a concept.

>> I'll give you an example, a second

grader would begin the day in a maths class.

They have a 60 minute maths lesson.

And, at the end of that 60 minute maths lesson we assess the

student's learning for that day on it, what we call daily learning objective.

Those who got it.

Go onto the blended learning part and do ST maths

for 30 minutes the rest are put into small group intervention.

We have a pair that comes in and

covers the computer time while the students are working

in are the, the teachers are working with the kids.

>> And these lab rotational models are going to require school wide coordination

because you have fixed resources like a lab and different students using them.

So this is by definition going to bring

everyone in the school together coordinated on schedule.

>> Now, as we think about a flex model, the

opportunities for school wide reinvention around schedule become even greater.

And the reason is because we lose

those distinct demarcations between subject matter times.

It's because in essence, students are picking when they want to do

maths, foreign language, reading, social studies,

science within that period of flexible learning.

>> So at Carpe Diem, the school we mentioned in Arizona and Indianapolis.

They have large, open blocks of time, often multiple hours.

And one student might spend a little bit more

time on maths and a little less time on English.

And this is really nice because,

why do we think that all knowledge can be broken down into a 57 minute chunk?

Some activities are going to just take more time and that's really hard

to do if the bell rings and sends kids on every 57 minutes.

>> We've created time and space for students to really

drive their own learning, and we call this personalized learning time.

Personalized learning time in our schools for one day

a week, happens in a really large chuck of time.

And during that time,

students are also engaged in a one-to-one conversation with their mentors.

So it's this combination.

And really what we were driving for here Is that we

wanted students to sort of build that muscle, if you will, to,

to get the experience of thinking about a longer chunk of

time, a big stretch of time, that they really were going to control.

In terms of planning for it, setting goals,

actually working their way through it, accessing resources,

seeking appropriate help.

And we felt like the way schools are traditionally structured students really

only have short chunks of time in which they're asked to do that.

We wanted to give them a longer period

of time that, they could really build that muscle.

Because we do think that's more like college,

career, and life, that you're going to have those.

The big open spans of time that you really have to think about.

we also wanted to give kids the chance to really do a deep dive and

to get immersed in their learning and.

Thinking about something and be able to really chase it down for a

longer period of time before they have to pick up and move onto something.

And finally as we think about. Where are models going?

Because we're just at the beginning.

The idea that there could be a day in

the week where eventually student could really drive their

own learning and say, you know what, I don't

need to be on campus for this whole day.

Well, I need

to be in an internship because I know where I want to go,

or I want to explore this career, or, and I'm really good right now.

I've got my, you know, skills down.

I've got my plan down. I'm leaning.

And this is what's meaningful to me and more impactful for me.

The idea that we could give that time to them

and free that up and be flexible is really exciting.

And I'm, I'm looking forward to the next

iterations on our model that'll have for that personalization.

At Acton Academy, which is a blended learning school in

AustinTexas, the school gives the students two to three and

a half hours each day where they can pick and

choose what they work on to meet their individual learning goals.

So some students may be working on maths by consuming videos on Khan Academy.

Or working through Alex which is a maths software program and others might

be working on English or still others

learning a foreign language through Rosetta Stone.

>> And this idea

of flexible schedules is not a U.S only phenomenon,

especially for those of you taking this course internationally.

Take a look in Sweden an organization called

[FOREIGN],

which has schools in Sweden, New York, and other Settings.

Here, students actually create much of their own schedule each day.

>> So they've essentially eliminated this notion of a classroom

schedule and students are progressing through their own individual pathways.

And they actually divide classes up in steps.

So there's steps one through 35.

That students are working on, and it might actually seem sort of

chaotic, but from the student's point of view, they have a strict schedule.

It's determined

by their learning goals which they record in the

log book, and they work their way through them.

>> And it's fine for Michael to be on step 34 and me to be on step three,

but we both know where we are, and there's

a minimum that they're ensuring everybody's still making progress at.

Now I want to pause for a minute, put my old principal's hat back on.

because if I'm honest with myself, it was really hard to manage just one

master schedule and I used to fanatically look at the right teacher, the right room.

To think

about building flexibility into that would have been like playing three dimensional

chess and I think it would have been really hard for me.

So, I want to put two ideas out of a how people are working on this.

The first is to really still hold that control.

And to put just as much attention to the master schedule as we've always done.

But now to really build in that flexibility.

And this is hard work, but it's doable.

It's almost like being a wedding planner on steroids.

You have to get everybody in the right seat, but uncle Joe can't sit next to aunt

Sally, and then what happens if there's a disaster?

But if we think about flexibility as a piece of the scheduling

matrix, it actually can be done, and schools are doing this new model.

>> Now if we move to a flex model, this sort of demonstrates the second option in

front of us, which is to sort of relax

our rigidity around each minute of the school day.

And let students actually own and drive the learning.

So if we look at our flex schools like Su, like Summit and Acton Academy and others.

Basically students are making those decisions about

how they use that individual learning time themselves.

>> And again, this isn't all day, take away the rules, we

think schools need lots of structures and systems to hold kids accountable.

But could we envision a part of the day where for some amount of time.

Kids have more control, and therefore more flexibility.

We think yes.

And this is a win for students, because there's nothing that says I

need to spend just as much time on my reading as I do maths.

Or that Michael has that

same formula.

If we can let each student customize a

bit, it'll be a more efficient learning system.

>> And if we think about post secondary success, seems logical that

students will do much better in the post secondary or workforce environments.

If they've had the experience of managing their workload at the K12 level.

Questioning Our Assumptions I

Blended Learning: Personalizing Education for Students

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