Personalized Learning : Student-Designed Pathways to High School Graduation

John Clarke began teaching high school English in Massachusetts in 1966. He moved to Vermont in 1977 to teach secondary education and help run a teaching improvement program at the University of Vermont. In 1995, he joined the research team in the Secondary Initiative at Brown University′s Education Alliance and Lab at Brown, focusing on student engagement and high school personalization. He helped create a system of professional development schools in Vermont, linking teacher preparation to long-term school improvement initiatives. For more than 20 years, he has conducted many workshops and organized statewide conferences on student engagement. For the same twenty years has been working to increase student engagement at Mount Abraham Union Middle/High School in Bristol, Vermont -- making presentations, teaching graduate courses, conducting research, conducting school development institutes, and serving on the school board. Now retired, he volunteers as a consultant, writing tutor and community mentor at Mount Abraham, developing a personalized pathway to graduation for students who are disengaged from conventional classrooms and practices. As Pathways students work on their personal learning projects, he sits at the same table with his own project, a book on high school personalization in the voices of kids and adults involved in school transformation.

He has written, co-written or edited 12 books on high school teaching and the process of educational reform, as well as many articles. With Russ Agne, he wrote Interdisciplinary High School Teaching: Strategies for Integrated Learning, explaining and illustrating performance-based teaching techniques in high schools across the U.S. (Allyn and Bacon, 1997), and a research study of change in five Vermont high schools. (Dynamics of Change in High School Teaching, distributed nationally by the Education Lab at Brown University (2001). With approximately 25 high school educators and reformers, he helped write and edit a book describing methods for engaging high school students in learning (Personalized Learning: Preparing High School Students to Create their Future (Scarecrow, 2003, approximately 4000 copies sold). He wrote two books guiding high school development teams toward personalized learning: Introduction to the Personalization Workshops and Personalized Learning, which are still being distributed widely by the LAB at Brown University. Working as editor and writer, he helped publish High Schools on the Move: Renewing Vermont′s Commitment to Quality Secondary Education, a guide to increasing student engagement. With Joe DiMartino, he co-wrote Personalizing the High School Experience for Each Student (ASCD, 2008), which has sold approximately 6000 copies since publication and is still in circulation. Education Leadership (Feb. 2012) included an article called "Invested in Inquiry," a description of the Pathways Program at Mount Abraham.

John has made presentations and conducted workshops on personalization at several national conferences, including at least two for ASCD, NAASP, and the Coalition of Essential Schools. He has conducted a large number of workshops on high school personalization and systems change in the Northeast. He has degrees from Princeton University (BA), Harvard University (MAT) and Northeastern University (EdD).