For Kathy Healy, the joy of teaching comes from seeing the process of learning unfold in the classroom:

I enjoy watching students learn,” says Healy, a math teacher at Nathan Hale Middle School in Connecticut. “The AHA! moment, when they finally get it. That’s my passion.”

Healy is part of the instructional team at Nathan Hale that is reimagining how students learn math through personalized learning. Last year, the school launched Teach to One: Math (Teach to One) for sixth grade students in response to a structural problem that persists in schools across the country: Every year, teachers are asked to teach grade-level curriculum to dozens of students who come in with different levels of preparation and a range of learning needs.

At Nathan Hale, students made significant gains the first year, outpacing peers around the country by 1.3 times the national average on NWEA’s MAP Growth assessment. In other words, Nathan Hale students learned an extra three to four months of material over the course of the school year. This year, the school is expanding Teach to One: Math to serve students in all grades.

These student gains mirror district-wide achievements across Norwalk Public Schools, which has made personalized learning initiatives central to long-term strategic plans. It’s also consistent with promising impact data that Teach to One partner schools are seeing across the country. That includes a third-party evaluation conducted by Teachers College, Columbia University, which found that students made annual academic gains that were equivalent to a half year of additional learning compared to national averages. The evaluation found that English language learners and special education students accelerated their learning at an even greater pace.

Read the full article about personalized learning from America Forward