High-Agency, Personalized Learning

    Something that I, along with most teachers that I know, am currently struggling with is how to keep our students engaged in virtual learning.  Now I'm not talking about turning on their cameras or answering questions when called on.  I'm talking about getting them to actually buy in to what we are doing.  Now more than ever it seems like school feels like a chore to students.  They don't get to see their friends, they don't get the banter back and forth with their teachers, and they don't get to get up and move their bodies during class.  So how do we keep them coming back to our Zoom classes?

    Eric Sheninger thinks that the answer is through high-agency, personalized learning, as seen in the infographic below:

https://twitter.com/chriscolleydog/status/1313078992723939328

    Over the past five weeks of online teaching and learning, I feel like I have a strong grasp over place, path, voice, and choice.  Students get choice over how they learn and how much support they get, how they engage with the material both on- and offline, and how to participate, with their physical or virtual voices.  But I am really struggling with pace.  I only get to see my students for two hours a week.  How do I maximize this time to both teach and allow students time to complete their work?

    What I'm doing now is not really working.  I try to start each class with a mini-lesson, then allow time to work either independently, with a teacher and small group, or in breakout room groups. However, my mini-lessons are never actually mini.  This is usually due to the fact that I have a lot of student participation - yay!  I really don't want to stifle students who want and need to speak.  But, this means that inevitably there is less time for students to complete graded assignments during class, and they end up getting pushed to homework.  While some students do complete the work after class, others don't.  I feel torn because I know that students are already spending so many hours on the computer, and now I'm asking them to spend more time online after class is over.  But if not after class, and not during class, then when?

    The other option I have considered, but not yet tried, is the flipped classroom approach.  This would involve recording my mini-lessons and asking students to watch them for homework, thus allowing more time to complete work in class.  However, what happens with students who don't watch the videos?  Are they then more lost than ever when asked to complete their work?

    I don't know what the best solution is.  For now, I've been personally inviting my students with missing assignments to our virtual check-ins so that they have time with teacher support to complete the work.  It's okay for the time being, but I don't want them constantly playing catch up the entire year.