A wise man once said, “Greatness never came from a comfort zone.” People will never do and accomplish great things in life by staying comfortable, in your own little bubble or safety. Real change happens when you put yourself in an uncomfortable situation, and adapt and grow from these hardships.
It’s mid August, a young, naive kid with devilishly good looks and amazing hair walks into class, but not just any class,World Geography. This kid has heard horror stories from the grade above him about this class, how the teacher is the harshest teacher and the harshest grader in the school. How there is no way to study for his tests. How you have no curriculum and you aren’t taught anything.
This kid, being the naive kid that he was dreading this class, preparing for the worst, preparing to struggle to pass. The child was terrified, even telling his mom that he hopes he gets the other teacher(who he had never known before). This kid was about ready to just drop out of school.
Then something happened though, this teacher who all had spoken such negativity about was not anything like the child had heard. He was a forward thinking, progressive, kind teacher who just wanted to better the children of the future.
This was a brand new idea and a new concept to this child. This child had only ever experienced “traditional” learning. The kind that gets repetitive, and lulls you into comfort. A class that was self paced seemed like an insane idea to the child. The child was very skeptical at first, but as the year went along he realized that not being confined to a box of what the teacher wants you to learn, and learning what you want to learn is a beautiful thing. For the child, choosing his own topics helped him discover new passions such as Social Justice, and pursue passions already there, such as Basketball in Europe. The child thrived in an environment where he could learn what he was passionate about. It made learning exciting for the child, looking forward to finally having a class where he created his curriculum.
If you are a little late to the party and haven’t noticed, the child is me, the teacher is my 8th grade World Geo teacher, Mr. Engstrom. Now you may ask yourself, why did the class before me hate it so much? Were they lying or what? Well, the truth is that the class above were not necessarily the hardest of workers. Some could even call them….slackers. A new approach to learning made them so confused that they couldn’t follow what was happening. But what was this knew and “terrible” approach?
Personalized learning. Now you may ask yourself, what is personalized learning? There isn’t one set definition, but my definition would be, “taking ownership of what/how you
learn.” Learning what you want and choosing the learning style that fits best for you is pivotal in furthering a new generation of learners. This “one size fits all” learning approach many teachers use has proved time and time again to ultimately fail the student and does not prepare them for their future.
Taking ownership of your learning leads to taking ownership of your life. Preparing yourself for YOUR future and not having someone hold your hand along the way is of the utmost importance in better preparing yourself for the future. Being responsible for what you do is what life is like, and the ones who struggled in this class often didn’t take ownership of their life.
Imagine a world where we could transform school into a place that actually prepares students for college and beyond. Schooling where you could identify what you want to go in to and what you want to do with your life. A school system that homes in on the skills that you want to use to make a living and cut things you don’t need. 75 percent of college students either go into college undecided on a major, or switch their major during college. Imagine a world where students knew what they wanted to do in life, and didn’t need to experiment with different majors because they school system didn’t fail them.
Personalized learning isn’t just something that is cool every now and then, personalized learning is a must for schools if they want to transform the school system into a system that does not fail the students that will make up 100 percent of our future.
So while my example is very small scale, and some teachers and students may be “uncomfortable” with this change, just remember, greatness never came from a comfort zone.
