Personalized Learning Through Innovative Scheduling & Systems
A Day H community assembly at FISW (Frankfurt International School Wiesbaden).
Day H at Frankfurt International School (FISW) in Germany is a special day.
On this eighth day of a rotating 8-day schedule, teachers and students are invited to design learning experiences that extend into the realms of inquiry, reflection and experiential learning. Based on the unique needs of each group of learners, teachers can design impactful, flexible experiences that help students become more independent, innovative and interdisciplinary thinkers and learners.
“We wanted more personalized learning time in our schedule and we had the idea of letting students plan their own time based on being in a community of learners with support from teachers,” explains Donny Hansen, a teacher at the FIS Wiesbaden campus on the outskirts of Frankfurt. “Day H was born from this vision. It’s allowing us to get started with innovative, personalized learning and it’s helping us create space to equip students to think about their personal purpose and the purpose of learning, and how these can be shaped in meaningful ways for each person.”
FIS has two campuses. The larger campus (Oberursel - FISO) is located north of the city of Frankfurt and offers IB programming for Pre-K to grade 12 students (approximately 1600 students in total). The smaller campus (Wiesbaden - FISW) is located about 40 kilometers from the city center and offers programming for 200 students Pre-K to grade 8. FISW has changed its schedule and FISO is in the planning stages for implementing schedule changes.
“At the Wiesbaden campus we are surrounded by fields and forest,” says Donny. “Our students are outdoors or in the forest a lot, learning from nature and engaging in outdoor activities. We have categories of experiences for learning in the forest that include adventure, gardening, learning & research, and spiritual connections of well-being. The forest can be part of what teachers plan for impactful Day H experiences.”
Donny came to FIS after spending 20 years teaching in Dubai (both at a start-up school and the American School of Dubai). While teaching there as an innovation and visual arts educator with his wife (teacher librarian and literacy coordinator), Donny became involved in redesigning the ASD program and schedule in the disciplines of innovation and visual arts.
“We created a new model where students would take skill-based courses in each discipline and then launch into independent and creative options for learning,” remembers Donny. “We called the courses modulars and designed our programs around key ideas, what we called golden areas, with lots of room for student inquiry and creative thinking.”
Donny’s work at ASD became the bridge that brought him to FIS, as leaders at FIS were looking for educators who could help lead change in systems-thinking.
“Learning dispositions are the pillars of learning, and the work at FIS is built around this,” says Donny. “This is where our partnership with Inspire Citizens has been so powerful. Steve has helped us develop framing and learning experiences to guide students to new thinking about learning and about themselves.This is the grounding of what Inspire Citizens does. They ask the important questions like ‘who am I?’ and “what do I care about?’. We can’t achieve greater impacts in the world if we don’t start with the inner person and the inner self - this drives everything.”
At the same time that Day H was being designed, FIS leaders asked its teams to consider the value of changemaking, and what they hoped for in terms of equipping students to become positive and purposeful changemakers and leaders. This led to a Changemaker Conference at FIS in March of 2022 and opened up valuable dialogue about changemaking with teachers and students.
“Last year the teachers at the Wiesbaden campus led a Changemaker Conference for grade 4 and 5 students. From that, we have been using Day H time for students to work with Steve around learning dispositions which are essential for independent learning, and they are learning how to lead others based on their personal strengths and dispositions,” explains Donny. “We are planning for our grade 6-8 students to lead all of the grade 5 students from both campuses in a November changemaker experience and this will lead to more student leadership in the Changemaker conferences that happen in the spring of 2023.”
Donny is also co-creating an interest survey for all teachers and students to see which types of interests are common; this will help him create groups of individuals who share a similar passion (adventure sports, as an example), and this may lead to additional Day H learning opportunities.
“Students might lead teachers or vice versa; it will be interesting to see what develops naturally in this space,” reflects Donny, adding that as Day H experiences evolve, he is gathering data about student learning that will fuel additional personalized learning initiatives in the schedule.
The key for FIS and its Day H plan is innovation. Innovative thinking, open-mindedness, flexible mindsets, receptivity to new ideas and a willingness to trust a student-centered approach.
“When people are personally invested in their learning, nothing is simply an ‘add-on’,” says Donny. “Once you are connected to what you’ve learned, and you see it in relation to your life and your future, it becomes a responsibility for you. It becomes something you intrinsically care about and act on.”
This authentic approach is leading to examples and stories of meaningful and beautiful learning on both FIS campuses.
As you read this vignette, you might be thinking about your own school schedule and how to inspire innovative approaches to the systems on your campus; to ideate about this, you can book a discovery call with Inspire Citizens. The spirit of what is happening at FIS can lead to ripples of change in campuses around the world.
