Giving Compass' Take:

• The Hechinger Report discusses how a quarter-century-old school network called EL Education is offering some innovative ideas in the new push for personalized learning.

• What might other networks learn from EL Education? How can bring more social competencies into personalized learning programs across the country?

• Here are 6 key factors of personalized learning that will prepare today’s students.

On a recent fall morning in the library of King Middle School in Portland, Maine, four seventh-grade girls interviewed an immigrant from Peru named Luis Millones, now a Spanish professor at Colby College. One girl asked Millones what he missed about the country he left nearly three decades ago.

“I miss the sound of the language, because it kind of fades away,” he said. “I miss the sunset over the ocean. I miss the smell of earth in the highlands right after it rains. I miss also some tastes, like Peruvian chili and fruits like the lucuma, which I can never find anywhere else.”

The girls took turns asking Millones other questions. Why did he come to America? What were his first impressions? Did he ever feel mistreated as an immigrant? They split up other tasks, too, such as note taking, video recording, requesting photographs and emailing follow-up questions.

In the weeks ahead, the girls would weave the interview and their own research into four individual narratives about Millones, one of several immigrants telling their stories at King, where nearly a quarter of the students were born overseas. The writing and photos would be bound into a book and sold to parents and others, with proceeds donated to a local nonprofit helping new immigrants.

The project typifies the mix of personalized and social learning that’s been a mainstay for 25 years at King, a founding member of a school network called EL Education. It sets these schools apart from a more recent wave of personalized learning, which is often dominated by technology and dogged by  criticism that it isolates students from each other and from learning’s larger purpose.

Read the full article about blending personalized and social learning by Chris Berdik at The Hechinger Report.