The Gaps…

So my life has become about gaps now. At least my professional life. I promised in my last post that I would explain my new professional venture and here it is. I am filling gaps. A passion of mine, or it has become one.

In the latter part of my two plus decades in education, most of which was teaching mostly math, I spent a great deal of time researching and practicing personalized learning. I was wondering how personalized learning differed from individualized learning, as they seem really like synonyms until you dive deeper. And, I also spent an even greater amount of time unpacking the years we were drilled as teachers on differentiated learning. I did a lot of drilling myself, that differentiated was the way to go. Differentiated learning seemed to work, especially for a whole class, and especially for one teacher with a lot on her plate. But, then as education seems to do, it cycled to different ways, along with different words, and one is left to decide are the new ways just new words or are they worth trying?

Without diving too deep into educational practice, as this isn’t a post about that, when I think about differentiating a math lesson, I think about making sure that each student has something at their level or their interest, for whatever portion of the lesson that may be. When I think about individualizing a lesson, I am making sure individuals have what they each need, but in a way that really understands the individuals and gives individuals attention. This is not an easy task, when compared to differentiation, in both planning and in implementation, for any size classroom. Think about differentiating versus individualization for an ice cream bar for a kids’ birthday party. Differentiation would be comparable to providing a range of choices based on different abilities and interests, gauged prior to the kids’ arrival at the party. The adults would then be available by walking around and making sure that the kids are able to enjoy the party. The choices were available to the kids and the adults were there to guide them to what was better for them. This would be easier than an individualized ice cream bar that may look like every child receiving their favorite flavor and in a vessel they are able to eat out of, which was accomplished by the same pre-party survey.

Personalization of learning is a buzz word recently, but for me, in math, it is one of the hallmarks of best practices. All teachers personalize to some extent, just as they differentiate and individualize at times. Actually using a combination of the three is an excellent way to run classrooms, and knowing when to use techniques for which students and which subjects is the true art of teaching. Personalization is knowing that groups of students may need the same skill, but may need it presented in different ways, or vice versa. Groups of students may be able to learn in the same way, but may need different skills. Personalization of learning is understanding that while all students are individuals, their course of learning does not need to be individualized, and while choice and differentiation is often a great way to organize input or output, it always required. Using the birthday party analogy, at a personalized ice cream bar the guests would be grouped upon arrival based on previous experience with ice cream, again either gauged by a pre-party survey or by the adults knowing their experience through relationships built with them. At those stations the students would enjoy the flavors and toppings presented at the station, and adults would be at the station to help make sure the kids were making the most of the options presented. No child was at their own table, and once the ice cream station was complete the students could then move on to the next activity at the birthday party. The tables looked relatively similar but each one was personalized for the group assigned to each, with flavors that were around their liking, and toppings and vessels that they could handle for their age and understanding, etc. Each table had a different type of creation to build, guided by an adult.

When planning the ice cream party, and figuring out which kids to put into which groups, often you realize that kids don’t have all the experiences they need to to truly enjoy the dairy deliciousness to its full extent. Grouping helps, of course, filling the lessons with help from adults, and peers to some extent, also helps, but if students don’t know that how to construct a perfect sundae, or that the salty-sweet of pretzels adds an extra dimension, there is really only one way to go… back- to fill the foundational gaps… allowing true success to open up for children during the lesson, I mean the party.

Obviously, overly simplistic in its nature, the ice cream party example of gap filling is very small. However, if a student is in sixth grade and trying to learn complex operations with fractions, maybe even with variables, but never truly was able to add fractions back in elementary school, or never really understood that a fraction was part of a whole, the student will struggle. Sure, the teacher can try to patch the gap, or push ahead with computation procedures in hopes that the student will get it enough to manage some level of success. But, what the student really needs is to understand. The gap needs to be filled and the hole needs to be sealed, in this case, on fraction understanding. Does this take time? Sure. Does it take a lot of time? Maybe not. Is it worth it? YES.

So, circumstance aside, I created Filling the Gap Educational Services. I made it official, with an LLC. We do it a lot of different educational “things,” all virtual now so we can reach a wide audience. I have a good colleague-turned-friend off of which I bounce a lot of ideas, who is gracious enough to be providing her services for free. I have a husband who is allowing me to play entrepreneur right now, as I build all of the foundations of curriculum, assessment, and instruction for my “brand.” And, I have a few educational peers who have joined me on this journey, waiting for the time when education and families move beyond the daily grind of will or how will schools reopen.

What we do and how we do it is certainly not all unique, but some of it is in the way we not only believe in personalization as an educational best practice but we also personalize, and at times, individualize, our educational plan for our clients. We aim to help students, parents, educators, and schools. We offer a wide range of services, all centered around our why- finding and filling the gaps are the critical missing pieces. And there are many ways to fill the gaps, and then seal the holes, through diagnosis and detective work, through education and tutoring, through family and educator education, through curriculum development and alignment, through lesson design and modeling, and more. We want students to experience success and feel confident, and we want to make sure students are not pushed forward without the foundation and true understanding to do so. As a team, we work to make sure that our service is the right one, and then as a team we find the right path towards success.

As readers, new and old, of my words about talking math, I hope you can join me in filling gaps too. I believe that teaching math through talking about it is important. How else can anyone understand math, the why, not just how-to, without talking through problems? The future of our education and our careers are about discussion, real discussion, and being able to explain understanding is preferred to completing pages of computation problems. Teachers understand students’ challenges in current math skills and they find them through daily interactions or through formal assessments. My goal, through Filling the Gap Educational Services, is to bring awareness that the challenges in learning (math and other subjects) could actually be gaps from content introduced years prior. The gap finding and gap filling are critical pieces to student success, to curriculum development, to lesson writing and implementation, and to overall thinking about how the whole child is truly learning.

Check us out: http://www.fillinggap.com

Or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fillingthegapeducation/

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It’s Sunday Night- Planning Time!

In my opinion, Sundays are one of the best days of the week. Although it is obvious and imperative to build upon the academic and SEL work that has been done last week, and the entire school year, it’s like a fresh start for a new week of learning, Whatever may have caused any stressors last week seem to fade to distant memory of Friday and Saturday with family and activities. Sundays are days of football watching, of straightening and organizing, and, of one of my favorite intellectual pursuits, planning for the math learning of my students, this year in grades four, and in grades six through eight.

I have always enjoyed the development of curriculum, and have never been able to just stick to the program that the school purchases. I use “the book” as a guide and a resource, combined with a the standards that students need to reach by the end of the year. I am blessed that I have always worked in schools throughout my career that have allowed me to utilize my creativity and my education to do what I feel is best for my students. I have added activities and ideas, from resources that I research or from my own creation, that I know will interest my students, or more importantly, be impactful to the students’ needs as math learners. As teachers, I know we have an intuition that sometimes supersedes data, we know what our students know and don’t know, and can use the “art of teaching” combined with the “science of teaching” to produce the perfect balance of challenges within a learning environment.

At this point in my career I am focusing on teaching math so that they get excited when they figure out problems, to excite students about numbers, to increase the confidence of all students, especially in mathematical pursuits. And… I personally strive to reach every student in a way that all of their gaps are filled without overlapping with prior mastery. My hope is that if I do overlap learning they have done before, I do it in a way that is more meaningful, more rigorous, and/or in greater context so that it builds numeracy, critical thinking, and appreciation. It is not easy to teach math in a personalized way, it takes time. And, as I am learning this year, and slowly documenting here, and in a notebook, and of course, in my mental notes, it takes prioritizing beyond just time.

Tonight’s planning for this week? Well, the middle school students, grades six through eight has been set with an upcoming assessment. My focus, as part of the prioritizing, is a new way to look at a fourth grade class of almost thirty students that I feel has not learned in a way that provides the education the students deserve- it needs to be more personalized. It needs to be more math. If I had my way, we would do math the entire school day! But, alas, I am only allowed so many minutes, so it’s about flexibility and thinking outside-of-the-box, and being grateful for the generosity of colleagues. Tonight, I am solidifying what I have been thinking about for a week- I am putting in a plan for hands-on, and face-to-face, and paper-and-pencil centers, all surrounding the topics of factors, multiplication and division, at a variety of levels. Let’s see how it goes!