MOOC-Ed: Learning Differences: Habits of Mind

Consider whether one of the following activities might work well for your colleagues and context during a regularly scheduled staff/department/PLC meeting.


Hold a staff screening of the The Myth of Average, Todd Rose’s TEDx Talk video, and after watching together, discuss the following questions:

• Do Todd Rose’s comments resonate with your personal or professional educational experience to date?
  
• Have you been in classrooms designed for the “average pilot”? 
  
• What do you need to embrace a “design to the edges” attitude? 

 
Encourage your staff to complete a learner sketch or profile at Faces of Learning either before or during your meeting. After folks have completed their profile, encourage conversations around the following:

• Sharing strengths and challenges in each others’ learning profiles;
  
• Reviewing and evaluating the various strategies suggested in each others’ learning profiles;
  
• Learning profiles next steps… How might we use this with our students? What will we do with what we find out?
  

Provide folks with paper or electronic copies of your local or site-based teacher effectiveness standards and prompt folks to uncover the following:

• In what ways do the standards address learning differences?
  
• To what extent do the standards address learners' varying experiences, abilities, talents and prior learning?
• To what extent do the standards expect teachers to address learners' language, culture, and family and community values as assets that can be used to promote their learning?

Source: The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation  - North Carolina State University