New Castle second-grade student Chloe Rothaug was eagerly aligning her yellow vocabulary cards in neat stacked columns.

“We’re aligning them according to short or long letter sounds. It’s so we can have better grammar,” said fellow classmate Amelia Egert.

“We get to choose one rotation every day and today we wanted to work on word study,” she added as she pointed to a white board in front of the classroom titled “My goal for the week.”

That board was covered in sticky notes with individual goals written by students.

Across town in a fifth-grade classroom at Dey Elementary School, students similarly were making choices and adding sticky notes to a board filled with options for stations—from ‘Work on Writing,’ to ‘Read to Self’ to ‘Word Work.’ They, too, could choose their work for that learning time.

“I like having choice. We do better. It’s more fun and when we choose, we are more inclined to do it,” Egert emphasized.

Tallwood High School senior Ava Criscitiello agreed.

“When we have choice we are more interested,” she said. “We’re not just going through motions or learning for a test. We’re learning for a purpose.”

On the board, advanced placement English teacher Jenna Free had prescribed the lesson for the day but given students choices of which literary theory to work on. They could choose from working on the feminist theory, deconstructionist reading, biographical theory and others.

The common element in the three classrooms: their teachers, Debbie Seth at New Castle Elementary School, Suzanne Buhner at Dey Elementary School and Jenna Free at Tallwood High School, are among the 57 passionate educators representing nearly half of Virginia Beach City Public Schools as Design Fellows. Their purpose: to define Personalized Learning, which is a key focus of Compass to 2020, the strategic plan for Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS).

Launched this summer, the group now meets quarterly to reflect and share their progress specifically about:

• What does personalized learning look like in the classroom?
• How can I show others what personalized learning is?
• What do teachers need to know and do to successfully implement personalized learning?

“We didn’t give them a model when they started their work this summer. We gave them a working definition and asked them to help us make personalized learning visible so that we could show others what it looked like at the classroom level,” said Dr. Lynell Powell, professional learning specialist in the Office of Professional Growth and Innovation (PGI), which is guiding the work of the VBCPS Design Fellows.

“They immediately dove into reading articles and learned more about design thinking so that they could identify a challenge to address in their classrooms that would further our understanding of personalized learning. Every design fellow identified a slightly different challenge,” she added.

At New Castle, Seth decided to partner with her students on decision making and goal setting. She wanted her students to really be part of the decisions in the classroom.

“By taking the focus off being teacher-centered and making it student-centered, the students take ownership, and hopefully become more committed and engaged in their learning,” Seth said. “It personalizes the learning and puts students competing against themselves instead of against each other.”

Teacher Jenna Free even involved her students in designing the rubric for the literary theories lesson.

“They needed to show me what they will learn, tell me the reason behind it and show proof.”

As teachers begin to implement examples of personalized learning in their classrooms, PGI organized “Design Fellow Tours,” which started in January and continue through March to provide principals, fellow educators and division leadership an opportunity to see the progress in action.

“We’re seeing three important components emerge from the work the design fellows have been engaging in this year,” Powell shared at the start of one such tour. Those components include:

Learning Environment

• Flexible learning spaces
• Student created displays/resources/work
• Routines and procedures to support independent and collaborative work

Personal Pathways

• Use of assessments to determine interest and readiness to guide students’ learning focus
• Student created options for how to learn and/or how to demonstrate learning
• Personalized inquiry based learning

Student Ownership and Agency

• Student goal-setting, progress monitoring and reflection on learning
• Students use knowledge of self as learner to successfully identify and navigate their personal pathway
• Practices and strategies that promote student self-awareness and metacognition

Meanwhile, teachers are excited about continuing the work of Design Fellows through their quarterly meetings and are energized by the student engagement that is occurring in their classrooms.

“Students are clearly engaged and it is supporting a hypothesis that I had,” said Dey Elementary School fifth-grade teacher Suzanne Buhner. “I know that I can differentiate instruction. This is an opportunity to provide students a voice and a choice in their instruction and provides me an increased toolset of instructional practices.”

The Office of Professional Growth and Innovation invites you to follow the work of the design fellows on the PGI blog and is excited to support a new cohort of design fellows in the upcoming year. Stay tuned for more information on the application process coming soon.

To learn more about Goal Two: Multiple Pathways that includes personalized learning as a critical strategy—or all of VBCPS goals and strategies for each goal, visit the Compass to 2020 page of vbschools.com or click here.

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