Future Ready Framework and the 9 Gears

In reflection of the Future Ready Framework, I was very pleased that personalized student learning is at the center of the gears. As a special education teacher everything I do is personalized to student learning. I often create my own curriculum and lessons to best meet the needs of my students. Also, as a special education teacher I have a unique role of seeing students year after year. I have the privilege of watching children grow year to year and see their interests change. Annual Review season is my favorite time of year when I get to reflect with parents on how much their child has grown and changed through the course of one year. We often reminisce on their child’s growth through the years. An example that comes to mind is when I had a kindergarten student who loved Spiderman; anyway that I could incorporate Spiderman into the lesson was a win for this child. We would do everything from counting spiders to reading sight words on spider webs, anyway that I could incorporate his favorite things into the instruction it made the lesson a 100x more engaging for him. With personalized student learning as the center, it’s closely related to the gear that is most important to me, Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment.

Future ready Schools defines the following elements for this gear as:

·         21^st Century Skills/Deeper Learning

·         Personalized Learning

·         Collaborative, Relevant, and Applied Learning

·         Leveraging Technology

·         Assessment- Analytics Inform Instruction

The two elements that are the most important to me are personalized learning and collaborative, relevant, and applied learning. As previously stated, personalized learning is the name of the game for my position. I’m constantly creating personalized materials and instruction to best support my students. I’m also continuously demonstrating the relevance of what we’re doing to everyday life. I would love to incorporate personalized learning through technology into my classroom. The difficulty for this in my classroom is inconsistent internet connection. Often our tech is in need of updates or has difficulty connecting to the Wifi. This can be extremely frustrating. The article states, the need of access to devices and high-speed networks and broadband both at school and beyond. This is definitely a need for our school as we continue to move forward into the future.