Episode 45: Designing Schools for Blended Learning

When you think of the term “blended learning,” do you think of a hybrid or remote learning plan, perhaps in a format that became familiar during the COVID pandemic? That’s the impression many educators and school leaders have of blended learning, but as Catlin Tucker’s work demonstrates, blended learning is so much more than just splitting education into “onscreen” and “in person.” It may, in fact, be the solution we need to prepare our classrooms for the future.

Guest: Dr. Catlin Tucker

Resources, Transcript, and Expanded Show Notes

In This Episode:

• “Reserve that teacher-led instructional time for small differentiated group experiences, where we can be much more targeted and thoughtful about the vocabulary we use, the text we choose, the problems and prompts we present, the scaffolds we supply…If teachers are still trapped at the front of the room, feeling like my job is to transfer information, there's no time and space to really position students at the center, give them more responsibility and let them engage in the messy work that is learning.” (13:32)
• “ I try to put myself now as an adult in the seat of some of these students, where they spend seven hours a day at school, and they don't get to make a single decision about how they learn, what they learn, what they create to demonstrate their learning. Like that is not a space that most kids wanna be in. And it shouldn't surprise anybody that a huge, I wanna say it's over 70% of students were, report like negative feelings with school. And it's things like anxiety, being tired and bored, like that's where we're keeping them all day. It's heartbreaking.” (30:50)
• “I want teachers to rediscover, if they're not feeling it right now, their joy in this work, and there's so many, it's a, it's a challenging profession. It is complex and multifaceted. And for me, I want teachers to realize that now that we have literally limitless access to information and resources in our classroom, that we are allowed to reimagine our role.” (41:55)

Related Episodes: 40,  31,  28, 26, 23, 20, 3, Bonus

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