notes from the flight deck
CONNECTIONS March 2025 | Issue 18 From Event to Habit: Reflection as Everyday Learning Defenses of Learning taking place across the state almost always ask that students reflect on themselves as learners both academically and in terms of the durable skills found in district and school graduate/learner profiles. However, we put students in a difficult situation when reflection only takes place when preparing for an event like a Defense. Years of study about the way humans learn makes it clear that reflection isn’t something to be overlooked. Probably all of us through our educator preparation programs learned about John Dewey and his theory that learning doesn’t simply happen as result of experiences but instead, as result of reflecting on those experiences. Despite Dewey’s work and the research of others who emphasize the essential role reflection plays in learning, it’s still sometimes an afterthought - something we have students do if there’s time. How might reflection become an integral and intentional part of lesson design? Rob Collins, former English teacher at Greenup County High School, now an Innovative Programs Consultant at KDE, shared an important question from one of Kentucky’s Innovative Lab Network Teacher Fellows and his response through a recent LinkedIN post. Today, we are sharing Rob’s post below with his permission. We hope it might spark some new thinking about the shape reflection can take - and if it does, please let us know! We’d love to share and learn from your ideas. Rob’s post: Important food for thought - and action Reflection is the most powerful, most enduring assessment we do in life. So why do we often overlook it as a meaningful measure in school? During a recent meeting of the teacher fellowship I facilitate, one of our excellent teacher fellows asked: "Does student reflection on their attainment of standards actually count as enough of an assessment?" She was reflecting on a classroom project that culminated in a community exhibition of learning, where students shared stories of their town’s history—how they are part of it and how they plan to contribute in the future. In previous years, she had walked around with a clipboard and rubric, scoring student projects and engagement. This year, she made a different choice: Instead of scoring projects in real time, she focused on being present—engaging in conversations, truly listening as students shared their work. The assessment? Student reflection. Instead of being graded by a rubric in real time, students completed a guided reflection—self-assessing their attainment of the project’s standards and their mastery of key skills. For me, the answer was immediate: Of course, that’s assessment! And a damn good one at that if her students’ reflections are any indication. But it raises a bigger question: Why do we so often discount reflection as a true, valid assessment of learning? 🔹 We assess ourselves through reflection all the time—at work, in relationships, in personal growth. These self-assessments shape who we are. 🔹 Tests fade. Projects get archived. But reflection endures. 🔹 When students reflect deeply, they’re not just showing what they’ve learned—they’re shaping how they learn (and who they are) in the future. How can we elevate reflection as a main course assessment, not just a formative tool or an afterthought?
CONNECTIONS January 2025 | Issue 15 Innovate, Iterate, Inspire: Revolutionizing Learning Through Prototyping Industries like healthcare and technology, which have transformed our daily lives, thrive on robust research and development (R&D). So why has education, the foundation of our future, lagged behind in embracing this transformative process? R&D systematically tests and refines ideas to solve problems and find new solutions. In healthcare, for example, decades of research enabled the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines. Imagine if education adopted this same approach—testing new ideas with urgency and intentionality. Some schools have already begun. High School Prototype: One leadership team wanted to explore new scheduling options. What they didn’t want, however, was to implement changes long-term without knowing whether or not they’d really work. What might give them the opportunity to try something in a low risk way, learn from it and continue to iterate? They decided to find space for a series of short design cycles. One of their prototypes engaged students in designing one week - five days - of personalized learning. Not only did this ultimately inform their new approach to scheduling, this prototype is still in existence as Intersession, a five day period occurring each quarter that provides time for students to explore passions and interests as well as to take important steps toward their post secondary plans. It has become a popular cornerstone of the high school experience - one that students start talking about and planning for even in middle school. Middle School Flex Period: Frustrated with poor time management, teachers introduced a student-owned “flex period.” This simple concept evolved into a full flex day where students manage their own learning. A Different Approach to Summer Learning: Knowing the dismal outcomes often resulting from the traditional approach to summer school, one district asked teachers to create proposals for “adventures” with an intentional focus on math and reading/writing and the district’s Profile of a Learner competencies. Through a series of Design Studios, the district supported teachers in designing their “adventures” aligned with the district’s goal of authentic learning as the norm for every student. Not only did this result in a much more engaging and impactful summer learning experience for students, it also allowed teachers an opportunity to try something new in a way that felt much less risky than during the school year. A special celebration of learning to conclude the summer learning program involved both students and teachers reflecting on the impact of the new design. Student-Driven Credit: After a disengaged student wished he could get credit for his passions, his school designed a program allowing students to propose personalized learning paths alongside traditional credit models. (Imagine doing some R&D around a model like this for credit recovery!) These are just a few examples showing how R&D can drive meaningful change. Interested in thinking about what’s possible in your school or district? Join us on March 7 for a special Design Studio, Beyond the Bell: Reimagining the Secondary Schedule . Together, we’ll explore entry points, prototypes, and rapid design cycles to find new ways to use and organize time so that our students are truly equipped for the world today.
CONNECTIONS January 2025 | Issue 14 “All I’m hearing right now are questions - Where are you going to college? What will you major in? Who will you room with? And what I’ve realized is that for 13 years in school, I’ve been told what classes to take, when to eat lunch, how long papers have to be, and what books to read. I’ve never made any decisions. And now I don’t know where to begin.” -High School Senior Student agency. It’s a term often used in education circles, but what does it mean? And why does it matter? We know what agency isn’t. The senior who shared his realization paints a clear picture of a soon-to-be-graduate whose experiences in school don’t seem to have prioritized the development of agency. Considering that preparing students to work in factories was a priority during the Industrial Age, maybe that’s not surprising. Compliance was key. However, we have significant evidence to show this isn’t working for the learners of today. We’ve heard employers are saying the workforce isn’t prepared. Like that high school senior, graduates often say the same thing. According to a recent guest essay from the New York Times, “In a survey by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation of more than 4,000 members of Gen Z, 49 percent of respondents said they did not feel prepared for the future.” So why is this happening? “Many recent graduates aren’t able to set targets, take initiative, figure things out and deal with setbacks — because in school and at home they were too rarely afforded any agency” (NYT, Jan 2, 2025). Could this be another example of a system producing exactly the outcome it’s designed to produce - even if that outcome isn’t at all what we say our goals are? The term “student agency” is sometimes misunderstood. Agency is often described with words like voice and choice - and those are important. However, agency doesn’t mean that school becomes a free-for-all, with all decisions being made by students. From that same NY Times essay, “Giving kids agency doesn’t mean letting them do whatever they want. It doesn’t mean lowering expectations, turning education into entertainment or allowing children to choose their own adventure. It means requiring them to identify and pursue some of their own goals , helping them build strategies to reach those goals , assessing their progress and guiding them to course-correct when they fall short. So how might we begin to reshape our students’ experiences so that school isn’t something they just show up for, waiting passively for directions? Are there simple shifts we can make that begin to build motivation and autonomy - ultimately, agency? The short answer - YES - and it’s not all or nothing. Engaging students in meaningful goal-setting and planning is a great place to begin. Whether making intentional time for reflecting on important durable skills, academic skills or something else - setting goals, planning for reaching those goals, and reflecting on progress - just as suggested by the shifts under the Transformation we call learner-owned - are all impactful ways to give students control over their learning. Some schools are building agency by incorporating some kind of flex time into their weekly schedules. This is a block of time - whether an hour, half of a day or even a whole day - when students are given the opportunity to plan their time in the way they need. Flex time might include time for students to get additional help from a teacher, time to explore a new passion or work on a project. The point is - students plan for the ways in which they use their time. Waukesha STEM Academy , a middle school in Wisconsin, has incorporated several ways for students to have choice - developing agency - into their schedules. One of those is called CONNECT. “CONNECT happens at lunch every day, with students touching base with staff as needed or as requested. This is a very unique approach to lunch, because 100 percent of students have their lunch period at the same time. No one tells students when they need to eat or where they need to go. In this hour, students choose when they eat and which teachers they will go to connect with. At first, there were conversations about schooling this concept and telling groups of students when they needed to eat and where they needed to go. This quickly fell by the wayside when the mission of this time was looked at closely. We wanted to help our students build skills in time management and ownership of their day. When you do it for them and tell them when they can eat and where they need to sit, and make them raise their hands to throw their trash out or excuse themselves from the table, you have removed the ability and need to develop that sense of growth. Our goal was to build independence, not dependent students who didn’t need to think for themselves.” James Murray, Principal Ready to design? If you are interested in designing learning experiences and environments that develop that important sense of agency for your students, let us know. Contact us through our website or via email: ralbright@ovec.org, leckels@ovec.org or ccoleman@ovec.org. In the meantime, check out these resources - one being from Morgan Seely, a 4th grade teacher in Shelby County , who makes agency a priority in her classroom (a GREAT place for a visit for teachers of all levels!): The Drive Towards Student Agency: Empowering Students to Make Choices on Their Learning Pathwa y | Morgan Seely, Aurora Institute blog post (2024) Waukesha STEM Academy: Rethinking Space, Time and Reporting | Chris Sturgis (2020) Getting Started with a Learner-Driver Classroom: A Guide for Educators | Getting Smart (2024) Transformations: Simple Shifts for a Different Student Experience | See Learner-led and Learner-owned for moves especially focused on student agency. elevatED studios (2024) Agency by Design: An Educator’s Playbook | Aurora Institute (2023) The Promise, Practice and Power of Student Agency | ASCD (2022) Giving Kids Some Autonomy Has Surprising Results | Guest Essay,* New York Times (2025) *By Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop; their book on this subject is The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better (Crown, 2025)
Not So Secret Agency: How Students Make Mastery Their Mission
