Westside Personalized: A Personalized Learning Podcast

In this episode, Dee Harrell will inspire listeners as she reflects on her role with Westside Community Schools CAPS program (Center for Advanced Professional Studies) and shares her unique perspective as someone from the business-world stepping into the role of an educator in a classroom setting. This conversation looks not only... Read More

This episode delves into several units taught as a part of the Global Geography course at Westside High School. In the pod, Amy shares about how she and her teammates approach the design of these units that focus on skill development as much as they do content. With that value... Read More

Holly and I discuss her implementation of a practice known as Number Talks as a way to teach learners how to develop their own individual strategies for solving math problems in a personalized way. This approach to teaching math personalizes the learning process for students and fosters within them a... Read More

In this episode, Hannah and I discuss her implementation of personalized learning along with some of the scaffolding steps she utilized to support her learners as they acclimated to her personalized model. Hannah's passion for education and insightful reflections on personalization make this pod a fun and useful resource for any... Read More

In this episode, Amber and I share the details from our collaboration on the flexible-seating, learning space redesign that we employed in her 1st-grade classroom in the Spring. The pod delves into the specific choices we made with the seating options, the positioning of that furniture, the implementation of that design (and... Read More

Join Dustin and I for an episode on differentiated instruction that focuses on the use (and creation) of instructional video content to offer learners a choice in how they access new information. Some students learn best from direct instruction, others from video content, others from reading or discussing or listening... Read More

In this episode, Carrie shares her expertise on sketchnoting and advocates for educators to consider making sketchnoting an option for their learners as a way to engage new ideas and content shared through direct instruction. Together, Carrie and I discuss the value of first teaching students a variety of ways in... Read More

Tara M. Martin joins the pod this week to explore a fun and creative, alternative way to annotate, #Booksnaps. In this episode, Tara shares her story that led to the creation of #Booksnaps, she delves into the brain research that supports #Booksnaps as a viable educational strategy, and she and... Read More

Camille Akers, with the help of personalized learning collaborator Katie Sindt, created a personalized novel unit for the book "Esperanza Rising" for Camille's 6th-grade learners. This episode shares details about the design and implementation of the unit, and educators at any level can learn from Camille's unique approach to choice... Read More

In this episode, Craig shares his implementation of personalized practices into his strength and conditioning three course through students setting long-term fitness goals and then designing a personalized workout plan in an effort to achieve those goals. Join us as Craig elaborates on the process he uses to scaffold for... Read More