Innovations in Personalized Education that Empower Every Learner

Transcript

Kris (00:00)

Welcome everyone to the Learning Loop Podcast, your best source for educational insights and trends. I’m Kris, your host. Today’s special guest is Adam. He’s a fifth grade teacher in Tennessee and a master at personalized learning. During our interview today, we will discuss what influenced his desires for excellence and the journey he took to be the educator he is today. Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam Maitland (00:33)

Hi, thanks for having me Kris.

Kris (00:35)

We are super excited to hear your story and hear your why behind why you’re an educator and what really influenced you to get there. I want to start by just throwing you away, back in the way back machine here. When did you first realize that you wanted to be an educator and what do you think made you kind of come to that realization?

Adam Maitland (00:54)

So originally I actually wanted to be a veterinarian and I started in high school as a kennel boy, worked my way up to a vet tech by my senior year and thought that was my path. And then I went to a community college, originally from New Jersey, moved out to Oregon, started community college, wanted a fresh start and decided that I didn’t really see myself in the vet position anymore. And so I actually have

My past in school was in special education. I had learning disabilities. I was identified with Asperger’s and ADHD. And so I was getting a lot of support to help me build my skills. But I had two incredible teachers that kind of were by my side the entire time. And so when I went into college, I really reflected back on them and realized how big of an impact they had on my life for me to be as successful as I was.

it really just became I wanted to pay it forward and that’s what led me into education. And I kind of got put on a split path because I couldn’t decide if I wanted to do gen ed or special ed. So I got certified for both because when you can’t make a decision then do everything. And so I just really found my niche with some of the placements I was put in, some of the students I got to meet. And I just knew that that was my path because

That was my way of really showing that what was poured into me to be successful was something that I could bring into other students to feel just as successful as I was given the opportunity to.

Kris (02:35)

Absolutely, that empowerment from those specific educators. I know myself as an educator, there’s always those teachers who you knew influenced you into that path, right? Whether it was elementary, middle, high school, there’s always somebody who…

touches you as a student in a way that sparks that educator inside of you. So it’s wonderful to hear that you had that background experience. And I know you talk too about your experience as a student. So I want to ask you a question kind of on those lines as well as, you experienced classroom and education in a specific way. How has that really shaped you as an educator today? And how does that shape the way that you teach in your classroom?

Adam Maitland (03:17)

Ultimately, I just see the potential in any student, regardless of what their skills are when they enter the door. I strive to give everybody a true learning experience in the sense that we’re not all coming into the classroom with the same type of background. So.

I can’t control that. What I can control is what happens in my classroom. And that was something that my teachers did for me. Every project we did, everything we researched, every book that was put into my hands was turned into some type of project for us to explore. I remember I had weird interests, not weird, but just varying interests. One month I’d be super focused on kangaroos and the next month I’d…

I think crocodiles are the greatest thing in the world. And my teachers always found a way to include that into my learning. And that’s what I really try to develop when I personalize the learning for each of my students. And even in a Gen Ed classroom, I still find ways to give each kid their way of showing their strengths. And then I do my best to build their pathway with support too.

basically build up their areas that they need to reinforce so that they can become stronger in all areas. But just in the sense of our, like one of my last units, we worked on fossils. So not everybody’s going to have the same experience. So I was able to get a grant together. Everybody got to dig out their own real fossil, got to experience what it looked like, got to do a write -up on it. And then as we moved into the next portion of it,

They put that fossil into a fossil record. And so everybody was now coming to this lesson with a similar background in what a fossil looks like and what they were able to learn from the dig. And it gave everybody kind of an equal ground. Quality of work’s gonna vary, but everybody was motivated and highly interested. And that’s something that I strive to do for any lesson that I plan in my classroom.

Kris (05:21)

Absolutely. And keeping in mind too, what they are interested in is so important in today’s world. mean, students, they come to school and they experience, you know, our shifts, our hours. They’re only here for like six hours. They might have to shift between different subjects and things like that. And then they go home to this super fun, rich environment where there’s TV screens and video games and, you know, all kinds of technology all around them. So I’d love that you’re trying to bring some of that interest from outside of the school walls in.

Adam Maitland (05:41)

Yes.

Kris (05:50)

and really use that as like an anchor to kind of build your curriculum around, build around their interests to make sure that they’re not only learning, but also enjoying that learning as well. I think that’s what I’m hearing you say most. And think that’s amazing to hear as a teacher and as somebody who’s really keeping the students in mind.

Adam Maitland (06:10)

Yeah, and it’s really essential today because we are basically battling the screen. I mean, as a teacher, we can’t just open apps and have a game ready to go for everything. So keeping that in mind, you know, engagement is a big piece to getting anywhere with a lesson.

Kris (06:29)

Thanks

Absolutely. I want to lean into a little bit about what you kind of talked about just right there and also what you’ve been leading into is, know, when you’re trying to strive for that excellence, when you’re trying to strive for meeting all the students’ needs and making sure that you’re building in their interests and really delivering something with this super high quality, can you just share like one or two things that help you to really design these lessons with excellence to make sure that your students are just going to absolutely

I love it. They’re going to walk away learning everything and you’re not going to lose them along this path of journey and personalized learning.

Adam Maitland (07:08)

Sure, so a lot of it just comes from my research that I did for my dissertation on curriculum and instruction, paired with a lot of professional developments, working with my instructional course coaches, and really pairing together what are the best strategies to help students just thrive in a classroom. And so through the last several years,

really building on a digital format that would work for my students. When I was teaching special education, which I did for nine out of my 15 years in the classroom, through the middle of that, I came across Seesaw, which helped me really develop.

an online engaging portfolio of curriculum for my students to be able to engage in because they were motivated by the screen, but I needed them to not just be on the screen watching videos or doing whatever they wanted. I needed them on a screen with a purpose and so taking what was constituted as high quality instruction, taking the state standards because I’ve lived in several states and taught in several states, so I’ve had to adjust as I moved around, but going from the state standards and

looking at what’s being taught in the Gen Ed classroom, what’s being needed in the special ed classroom and constructing around what real in depth or rich content looks like. I’ve been able to piece together the framework that allows students to not just get everything in bits and pieces or skill and drill or just isolated skills in that sense, but to actually build a process where they’re learning a skill that built onto

another skill that builds onto another skill and eventually creates a culminating project that shows everything they’re capable of doing. And using digital frameworks such as Seesaw and Canvas has allowed me to do that because I’m not doing worksheet after worksheet. I’m not trying to, you know, create all these little manipulatives that I can’t even keep track of, but it’s allowing me to put it in one place. It’s allowing me to give them something to interact with. And for me,

Adam Maitland (09:19)

their future is digital. So really not training them to be able to use technology in an efficient, purposeful meaning, you know, that’s not helping me be a strong teacher for them. And so having those different situations like when I worked in my low -incidence special education self -contained classroom.

They use a seesaw. were learning to manipulate, move things, write, type, and do all those different components. And those kids may have opportunities to do jobs in fast food restaurants. Well, them being able to do these steps on their iPad correlated to them doing those same types of steps in a fast food restaurant when taking orders or getting the order up so that they can prepare it. So it’s still giving them job skills as well as giving them real life skills. It still covers all my academics.

mixed skills.

Kris (10:14)

Wow, I love that, I love that.

the experience that I had around using that as kind of your anchor and your portfolio that really encompasses everything. But I also love the practicality you shared and not only that example you just shared there, but also when you’re talking about how do you build experiences for students that allow them to remain interested, allow them to really anchor into those standards, know, building and categorizing fossils, like those are very complex things. And I love that you found power in a tool that can really be

a one -stop shop for you and allows you to not have to spend time like you were saying. You’re not on a screen just absorbing multiple different apps and multiple different things. We’re in one space and we’re going to use this space really purposefully in a way that impacts us as a classroom and as you as a student. So I absolutely love that.

Adam Maitland (11:03)

Yes. Thank you.

Kris (11:06)

I want to lean back into a couple of these stories that you’ve shared already and I want to just kind of ask you a general question in general. This can be a student that you might have impacted in the past or one that’s really, really recent in your mind. Can you just share an experience in which you positively impacted a student and how that experience has sculpted who you are today?

Adam Maitland (11:29)

Sure. So I have one student that he’s kind of my go to story because he was really at the height of where I was bringing all my curriculum and all my skills together, like not my first year teaching, not my last year teaching, but right in the middle of my career. I took a position in a special education self contained classroom. I was told about this. I had three students at the time. By the end of the year, I was up to 10 because the program was

successful in meeting the kids. But when I took the program, I was told that I had some very high needs, high behavioral students in my classroom. And so this one student in particular had a rap sheet of, you know, being aggressive, being a runner, doing all the things that no teacher wants to really deal with. So I came in, I met him, we got a report going. I identified what his sensory needs were. I identified what skills he needed to start filling in.

I really started to understand who he was as a person. And a lot of his behaviors were met with the fact his sensory needs were not being met. And so by putting together the right formula for him, we started getting him into a routine where he went from being nonverbal, aggressive, and running to being an incredible student who was verbal and was able to express

what was going on, what he needed us to know, requesting things. He went from not doing any work, eating glue, eating crayons, to coloring pictures, to drawing pictures, to I got him on Seesaw and when he had his free time, he was using the different tools on the…

the canvas piece where he was able to draw and add different images and all these other things and just kind of really showed what he was capable of doing towards the end of our three years together. He was reading at a first grade beginning maybe second grade level. He was talking more fluently. He was

Adam Maitland (13:44)

Excited to be at school. It was no longer somebody who had to go out to the car to help him and his mom get him out of the car, bring him into school, deal with the meltdown. He was jumping out of the car and he couldn’t wait to be in the classroom. He couldn’t wait to learn something new and he was eager to learn. I would bring in instruments and he’s like, show me all of them. I want to learn it all. I would show him different dances. He wanted to learn from him. He became somebody that was so open to learning and so eager.

to take it all in that he…

he just really got to be who he truly was. And it wasn’t a behavior problem at all. He ended up becoming pretty much everybody’s favorite kid in the class. And everybody enjoyed him in school. Nobody was afraid of him anymore. Other kids were excited to play with him on the playground. And it just became a real eye -opener for myself to see how much my skills as a teacher had really developed from my first day stepping into a classroom and my TAs going, wow.

Love your thoughts, but we’re gonna need some more structure here to like, I walked in, I retrained my TAs, I reorganized the entire classroom and I gave this kid really a second chance to just show who he really was.

Kris (15:03)

That’s amazing. I absolutely love that story. It’s a true testament to what education really is in general. Whether it’s been education now or 100 years ago, education is more than just learning math, reading, science, social studies. It’s about learning how to contribute. It’s about learning how to interact with peers, about how to ask for things politely, or even just how to enjoy being around other people. I think that that’s such an amazing story

about how you spoke to the growth that the student had in their social emotional growth was so, so strong and how that is such an educational win versus it being strictly based on state testing and how you achieve these things. There’s so much more to education. And I absolutely love that story being really focused on some of those softer skills and really touching on the art of what it means to be a true educator and how you can

Adam Maitland (15:47)

Thank

Kris (16:03)

truly, truly impact a student for lifelong change that you clearly, clearly did. I love that. I want to ask you one more question here, thinking about how recent years in education have definitely changed. They’ve put different stresses on educators. They’ve put different types of challenges in front of educators. Can you just share about how your teaching style has continued to evolve?

Adam Maitland (16:09)

Thank you.

Kris (16:32)

And if there was anything that kind of helped to instigate some of these changes, can you just share a little bit about why those things kind of came up and how that shifted you as an educator?

Adam Maitland (16:42)

Sure, so one of my biggest shifts, and it’s kind of always how my brain has worked, is I look for efficiency. I’m big on innovation. I’m not one to do the same thing over and over again because that’s how it’s always been done, which can get me in trouble because a lot of people that are that way don’t want change. I don’t fear change. If I can do it better, if it’s gonna make a bigger impact on my students, I’m gonna try it out.

always going to professional developments or some type of training or watching things and gaining insight on how I can improve. So even if I come up with what I will consider at the one time a perfect framework, it’s going to change. Like it used to be kind of the common joke on my teams that we would have a snow vacation or we’d go on a break and they’re like, well, Adam’s going to redesign the curriculum this weekend. And I typically did. But what has really helped me

Concretely, a lot of what I’m doing now, building off of the concept of innovation and efficiency, is creating a e -learning experience where there’s still a need for the teacher in the classroom. I’m not just setting kids up in front of a screen and saying, watch this and answer these questions, but allowing them to learn how to organize themselves and conduct their learning through a digital framework.

And so a lot of it, again, started with Seesaw. I’ve tried other things like OneNote and Canvas, and a lot of them just seemed clunky and my brain wasn’t able to wrap around it. Seesaw gave me an insight into how I could still put something in front of my students, have them interact, still require the teacher to give feedback and give the instruction, but then keep all of their stuff organized.

keep data collected, and most importantly, my favorite part was to have a digital portfolio of everything they were doing by the end of the year. One of the things that I was most proud of was when I was in my special education class, again, I was working with students that were nonverbal, but I was still having them use their communication devices or I was still trying to get them to be as verbal as possible. So even if it was just sounds or sound effects or anything that they were producing, you know, I constituted it as some type of language.

Adam Maitland (19:06)

Well, what CSOL allowed me to do was when we did our reading samples each day, I was recording them. So I, by the end of the year, had a digital portfolio of most of my students going from being nonverbal to verbal. And I could show that to the parents at parent conferences. I could show it to other stakeholders to say how the program’s working and here’s the evidence.

And it was very cool to be like, okay, here’s your student in August. You can barely hear them or they’re barely using their device. And now here we are in October and they’re saying words. We understand what they’re saying. They’re becoming clearer and louder. They’re projecting more or they’re just being more fluent with their words or they’re being more fluent with their device. And so creating that type of digital portfolio just really gave me the efficiency, like I said, and the innovation to have

student work put together and easy to access. And so now, right now I still go back and forth. use Seesaw for my intervention groups and I use Canvas for my whole group instruction. I teach primarily science and social studies right now. And so my kids are able to have discussions like they would on Facebook. So they’re learning how to post with facts and text evidence. They’re learning how to reply to each other, how to have a pretty much online dialogue.

and then we have it in class. And then they go and they do their research. So they’re learning how to organize research information. They’re learning how to research correctly, how to create a Google doc, how to create a Google slide so that it’s more powerful. And we’ve now just merged with Canva. So now they’re even more excited because they’re even able to create bigger and better projects. And I’m introducing and having them use AI.

And so that’s even giving them a bigger boost because to me, if we teach them now how to use it appropriately, then as they go through the grades, they’re only going to get stronger at it. If we leave it to their devices, they’re not going to use it as effectively and we’re going to have to be doing a lot of reteaching. So I’m trying to set a better groundwork for it. But in general, creating that e -learning experience with purpose.

Adam Maitland (21:20)

with the need for having instruction and having them learn how to keep themselves organized with a screen in front of them, I feel has just been the biggest boost to what I’ve tried to accomplish and keep at an innovative level so that, again, it’s easy for me to change things, it’s easy for me to update things, and as I learn new things, I can continue to customize the learning experience for them.

Kris (21:43)

Amazing, amazing. I love it. As you continued to tell that story, the word that kept coming into my head was the word empowerment. You felt this empowerment using a tool that saves you time, that allows you to give your students experiences that you want them to have and really crave for them to have. And then it empowers your students too, to be able to do things in a safe space, allows them to try new things, allows them to really showcase what they know so that you can really have the best possible experience around education.

I just love, love that story and love the testimony and love where you landed. I think that’s such an important place for an educator today to be is to teach them how to use things effectively, teach them how to use technology to help them and not to be something that can create shortcuts, we’ll say, and can kind of circle around things. They can learn using these tools in a way that’s a tool for them versus a shortcut. So I absolutely love it. I love the empowerment, like I said, that you found within Seesaw in Canvas and really how that has sculpted you as an educator and what you do with your students.

Adam Maitland (22:49)

And really too, with you saying empowerment makes me go to one of my keywords right now is just, makes it more accessible. The technology that we have where it’s speech to text, where it’s read to them, where there’s so much more built in to give all of our students access to the learning versus having to create all these other accommodations to give them even a glimpse of it.

just feeds right into where you’re saying empowering because it’s true. My goal is to make everything as accessible for every person that walks into that door.

Kris (23:28)

Sure. Give them the experience that they all deserve. Love it. Amazing. Adam, we could sit and chat all day. I really would love to, but we are at a time. I do want to close up our episode. I’m sure listeners gleaned a lot of amazing ideas from you and just got inspired around your powerful educator heart. We just want to say thank you, Adam, for being here and sharing all of your amazing stories. Awesome. Have a great afternoon. Bye -bye.

Adam Maitland (23:31)

Yes.

Adam Maitland (23:49)

Excellent, thank you for having me. too, bye.