HELLO! I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome back to vted Reads! We're kicking off our second season of the podcast with none other than author, professor, associate dean and Vermont education LEGEND, Dr. Penny Bishop.
We'll talk VT PLPs, the power of a compelling school example in changing classrooms practices, and how to steal all the examples from Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades, with Penny Bishop.
But before we get to the episode I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's listened to us so far, everyone who's sent messages and tweets of support and love. We love you all right back, and are so excited that you want to talk books by Vermont educator, for Vermont educators...
You know the rest. It's vted Reads time. Welcome back. Let's chat.
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #VTed Reads. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today I'm with Penny Bishop, and we'll be talking about Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades: A Guide for Classroom Teachers and School Leaders by Penny Bishop, John Downs, and Katy Farber. Thank you for joining me, Penny.
Penny: My pleasure.
Jeanie: Tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Penny: Well I am a professor and an associate dean at the University of Vermont, and in the College of Education and Social Services. I'm also founding director of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education.
Jeanie: Thank you. I'm so delighted to talk to you about this book. I'm going to start with a softball. What book is on your bedside table right now?
Penny: Well, there are probably 12 actually, and there's a bit of toppling action going on at the moment.The one I'm reading is by Annie Proulx and it's Barkskins. I don't know if you've read it or not, but it's an amazing tale of over 300 years. How immigrants came to New France and the landscape, and how landscape and people change over time. I'm really enjoying it.
Jeanie: Oh, I'm so glad. I'll look forward to talking to you about it when you're done.
So, let's talk about this book, Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades. You really start the book, you and John and Katy, by defining personalized learning. I wondered if you could put your definition in a nutshell for us. Defining "personalized learning" Penny: Happy to! So, I think the foundation, for me anyway and the foundation for the book, is: believing in the capacity of youth to do great things.
In order to do those great things, we need to enable them, invite them to have more say, more ownership, more agency in what they do and how they learn. The way that we have conceived of personalization in the book is to think about it in terms of three pillars. The first pillar is knowing students well. We use a personalized learning plan as a way, as one mechanism, one way to do that, to get to know students well, and then using what we know about students. That first pillar leads to the second, which is flexible pathways or creating authentic opportunities for learning. The third would be a proficiency-based assessments, so valuing what students learn. Using those three things in conjunction is essentially what we talk about in the book.
Jeanie: What I noticed when I was reading through, especially that first portion where you're defining it so well, is that you take Vermont's Act 77 and put it in context and into practice in a way that makes it visible for people. You take this abstract concept and really make it visible.
Penny: I feel really fortunate to be working in a state where we have Act 77 because I think it's given educators license to do a lot of developmentally and culturally responsive work, the kinds of work that teachers know is right, and now we have permission to do it.
So it's a very exciting time.
Jeanie: One of the tools you use in the book to really take this framework, the three pillars framework and the legislative framework, and make it visible,