Dear School Board Members and Teachers Union,

It takes a village to raise a child. At Plantation High School, the teachers have been tasked with raising over 2,000 children during the critical teenage years. The students need our help and the teachers need yours. Public education is in shambles. I know that’s nothing new. School is boring. Nothing new here either. No one is teaching because no is learning (Holt, 1964). Maybe this comes as a shock. In order for teaching to be successful learning must occur. To define teaching we must define learning. What are students supposed to learn at school? Standards? Why? Social skills? How? Problem solving? When?

I support the concept of compulsory, publicly funded education. I also agree with accountability systems to make sure that teachers are teaching and students are learning. And we all know that more paperwork for teachers will not solve anything. Of which I’m sure you’re aware, there is something missing. More testing is not the answer. Stricter teacher evaluations will not help either. A few years ago, though, the union and the school board agreed upon a new high school course schedule designed to give older students a break during the school day, lighten teacher workload, and save the district money. I am referring to the A/B block schedule with a built-in study hall period for each teacher and student. It is to this 90-minute period that I will be asking you to consider throughout this letter.

My attention was drawn to this class period because of the name it was given to appease teachers and board members. Personalization period. In this personalization period, it is given that teachers will not have any extra work piled on to their already full plates, administrative evaluations cannot be conducted during this class, and students are given a no credit class in which to study, complete assignments, and a variety of extracurricular tasks as needed. This class section is falling short of its fullest potential.

Below, I propose to the Teachers Union and school board members a call to revamp the purpose and structure of the personalization period. The goal of this redesign is to help students and teachers make secondary public education meaningful and engaging.

Student Placement

Tracking has been a cornerstone of tradition in the school system. I am a product of tracking and received excellent instruction and opportunities from the moment I was placed on the advanced track based on my 5^th grade standardized test scores. I was lucky. The advanced classes I was deemed capable of exceling in at age ten kept me separated from my peers through grades 6 -12. Those who did not perform as well on that one test were kept below me and the students who performed exceptionally well were deemed above. Here I am, seven years removed from high school and I still remember the tracks, the pride, and envy felt by being labeled advanced. Undoubtedly, social rankings were developed by tracking. Those who did poorly on their exams at age ten usually filled the detention room five years later (Oakes, 1985). Students like me who did above average did well in school because we were good test takers but could only ask the teacher for help because our classmates only understood as much as everyone else (1985). Eight years after taking this standardized exam, those who scored the highest marks were accepted into ivy league and name brand universities.

Tracking has a negative effect. It is only in school where you will find people organized by performance on a one-time, high-stakes assessment to determine what they will be able to achieve later. I am not familiar with the time requirement and amendments required to remove the tracking system from our schools. But the personalization period is a prime opportunity to bring students together who never had the chance to share ideas or form relationships. Unfortunately, and I am assuming unintentionally, tracking separates students along racial lines (1985). Mixed-ability personalization periods will allow students to work with peers significantly different than them. This would be a more authentic model of the real world. “Higher level” students could assist those who are struggling in a certain class and ethnic students can share their culture with others.

Whether or not the personalization period should be mixed such that students of different grades are placed together – I am not sure. This structure has its pros and cons and is something that would need to be investigated further - possibly decided on at the school level. But, children will learn best when not under pressure (Holt,1964). And, unfortunately, the figurehead of a teacher is intimidating enough to force a student to not think clearly and avoid learning (1964). The relaxed atmosphere of a mixed ability, personalization period removes that pressure. The teacher, essentially, is a monitor. Instructional duties are not required but the teachers keeps an observing presence as he or she ensures that students are studying together. An environment like this would have allowed students like myself the chance to reach out to a classmate who may have taken my calculus class before and help me understand the concepts better, or allow me to assist an English Language Learner develop English communication skills.

Cooperative Learning

Humans are born with an innate sense of curiosity. “Children being great lawyers” (1964) will naturally start to question and prove the world around them including the people with which they share spaces. This gives the personalization period teacher an opening to teach the students how to learn cooperatively. Cooperative learning has become a buzzword where many teachers (including myself at times) have organized student desks into groups and called it cooperative learning. Proximity of desks does not mean that students are sharing and exchanging meaningful ideas.

Like everything else, students must learn how to work cooperatively. The current school system punishes students for asking their friends for help and expects them to perform at their best, and be their best, on their own. Students have gone from learning how to communicate their needs and share unique thoughts to creating strategies to avoid failure and trick the teacher into thinking they understand the material (1964). Instead of learning independently, this instructional culture has taught students how to become avoid learning.

In a low-stakes environment such as a personalization period, the teacher in the room can offer hope to students by exposing them to the opportunity of developing cooperative learning skills in which students “…[create] the cooperative class, and they then [teach the instructor] how much in such a class they could help and teach and learn from each other” (1964). I recently became aware of the three types of cooperative learning (Johnson, D. & Johnson, R. n.d.). Each type is different so that students of all learning styles and cultural backgrounds can find a method that best suits him or her.

Minimal work would be done by the teacher when exposing students to cooperative learning groups. This keeps the teacher’s workload light for this personalization period and affords the students the chance to tryout different cooperative group styles with different classmates to find their niche. Benefits of the different cooperative learning styles include the ability to have a group come to a consensus when problem solving, foster friendly competition amongst groups in the room, and the chance for students of mixed ability to hold each other accountable to student-determined goals (n.d.). To get students familiar with cooperative learning and to have students practice and master working with one another, the teacher could use relevant and engaging topics of discussion such as different cultures, careers, and current events to structure cooperative learning group discussions.

Accountability

Even though teachers are professionals in their own classrooms, it is necessary that there is an accountability system in place to make sure that students are benefitting from the redesign of the personalization period. This is where the personalization aspect of the personalization period rings true. Why not let the students create their own accountability system? “Children who are learning on their own, learning what interests them, don't get all upset every time they meet something unusual or strange” (Holt, 1964). Therefore, students who set their own learning goals within their own cooperative groups get to own their progress and education. In a structure of education that determines what students should learn and by when, giving them the chance to study how they want, with whom they want, is incentive to achieve greatness that is personal and promising.

In conclusion, using this redesign of the personalization period, teachers would have to submit students’ accountability systems and goals to school administration for formal documentation. Evidence of student progress towards meeting these personal goals would be required but, again, would be determined by the students with guidance from the teacher. Ultimately, the goal of the personalization period is to let the teacher have a reprieve from formal, pre-fabricated instruction and allow the students to take the lead in discovering and determining the joys of learning.

Thank you,

Marissa Hoffman