Making It Personal: Essential Elements of Hawk Ridge Elementary’s Personalized Learning Approach

Hawk Ridge Elementary School in Charlotte, NC is a designated Personalized Learning School that is empowering its students and teachers to make teaching and learning more effective. The school’s administrators and educators — along with parents, students, and other community and business stakeholders — are embarking on a range of efforts that are focused on the same vision: to personalize the learning experience to meet the individual needs and potential of each student.

At first glance, Hawk Ridge may seem like any other school with similar strengths and challenges. But after just a few minutes of walking through its hallways it quickly becomes evident that the school is anything but ordinary. From one hallway to the next, students are engaged in substantive discussions with each other and with their teachers. Creativity abounds — the school’s walls are covered in student developed products, and its halls are specifically designed as gathering spaces for student collaboration. However, this personalized and collaborative culture did not happen overnight. It is largely the result of a dedicated and distributed team of leaders committed to a vision and culture of personalized learning.

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Authors and Contributors

Alex M. Dreier

Dr Mary Ann Wolf

Projects

North Carolina Digital-Age Learning Initiative

The NC Digital-Age Learning Initiative builds upon the existing foundation of digital learning initiatives to develop a coherent long-term strategy that sets directions and priorities, supports innovation, and provides resources to enable the State’s educators and students to benefit fully from digital-age teaching and learning.

Published

June 1, 2015

Resource Type

Case Study

Published By

Friday Institute for Educational Innovation