Published 9/13/2021 and 12/27/2022
The Agile Mindset with Jessica Cavallaro and Roslynn Jackson, co-founders of The Agile Mind and teachers at the Pine Crest School in Florida, show teachers how to use an Agile mindset to help students acquire the skills needed to solve real world problems while learning educational concepts.
Agile is not about knowing all the jargon. It is a thought process. It is rigorous.
“This makes your life easier. It is a win-win for everyone. You don’t have to know it all to be able to try it. Agile is a methodology. You can do it now. You can give your kid that power now. The more you know, the more you practice it. The better you get for your students.”–Roslyn.
Jessica, a middle school English teacher, is an innovative educator and curriculum designer. She is a PBL and Design Thinking champion who creates purposeful learning experiences, both inside and outside the classroom. Jessica is passionate about putting students first and developing real-life skills in the classroom. After experiencing hybrid learning at the beginning of the pandemic, Jessica was concerned about students’ lost connections and lack of human contact. She saw Agile as the solution to keep students collaborating, connected, creating, and learning. As a new system for her, Agile immediately showed its value because Jessica had more one-on-one time with students. She could circulate and meet students’ needs.
Roslyn, a middle school science teacher, believes that failures are the stepping stone to success. Roslyn, like Jessica, is a PBL champion and likes to make science fun while keeping her students moving around the classroom. Agile as a mindset helped her first. It allowed her to complete projects that had been languishing. It allowed her to develop more self-management skills and get over the finish line. Her personal experience gave her the confidence to use Agile in the classroom.
They explain that Scrum, Agile, and Kanban give students more autonomy and make learning visible. For Jessica, Scrum’s five rituals fit really well into a unit: sprint planning, sprint (work), sprint review, sprint retrospective, and the daily scrum (students coming together). As a backward design educator, she gave students the essential question and the rubrics. She put all the content in a document titled the task grid so students can plan everything themselves. Students had to build…
