Everyone is capable of mastering any competency when given the appropriate amount of time and support. This is a fact supported through a variety of research, including Ericsson and Pool’s book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise.

In order to have an effective personalized learning environment, the students need to have agency. Learner agency refers to the ability for the learner to feel as if they have control over what is going on around them; more specifically, it is their ability to set lofty goals, forge a path towards the goals, reflect and revise the path or goals, and be ability to reach their goals (Poon, 2018). Below are a couple of strategies educators can utilize in their classrooms to promote both learner…

The development of our students’ executive function may be our most important task as modern educators. When we talk about executive functions, we are referring to the high-level cognitive skills that people use to manage their own behaviors (Weill Institute for Neurosciences, 2020); this includes ensuring that students have the ability to self-regulate their learning - especially over long periods, such as for a project. In the music classroom, our students are part of a perpetual…

As I learn more about personalized learning and mastery-based teaching, I feel it is appropriate to outline my plan for personalized learning in the upcoming school year. This should serve as accountability for myself, and as a guide for other teachers in the present and future looking to implement personalized learning in their classroom.

Whether it’s called mastery-based or competency-based education, the premise is the same: education should focus on teaching in a way that each and every student truly masters the content before they moving on to the next thing.