Blogs on Upper Elementary (3-5)

Editor's Note: Our guest blogger today is Erika Saunders who teaches 6th-8th grade special ed-learning support and mentally gifted kids at Joseph C. Ferguson Elementary School in North Philidelphia.

"If you build it, they will come." Not only does this apply to baseball fields and ghosts of players past, but also to theater and students. At least it does at Ferguson.

Personalized learning has been a lot on our minds at Edutopia lately. We just launched some major coverage on Forest Lake Elementary School in Columbia, South Carolina -- a kind of "little school that could" for differentiated instruction. It's an earnest, humble place (except for the slew of awards touted on the façade) full of earnest, humble people who are simply determined to teach each child as a unique individual. Through strong leadership, dogged grant-writing and constant collaboration, they've done it.

The learning landscape is shifting under our feet. It's an exciting and momentous time for technology advances in learning, from the explosion of interest in online courses to free videoconferencing to powerful new devices at lower cost, such as the iPod. Having worked in educational media and technology beginning in the 1970s, I dare say that more change has happened in our field in the last four years than the last 40.

"I look at [the tape], and I'm like, 'That is not me.' I have so much regret. I can't believe I did that. I let myself and my character not live up to what I should live up to and what I can live up to."