One Big Idea: Kyair Butts on Small Group Wednesdays (S2E10)

If you could share One Big Idea to change the future of education, what would it be? 

In the 10th episode of Future of School’s One Big Idea series, our guest is Kyair Butts, a sixth-grade teacher from Baltimore City Public Schools in Maryland. Kyair was Teacher of the Year in 2019 and 2020, largely because of his passion for adopting technology in his classes, his stellar mentorship of his students, and the facilitation of great minds and wisdom.

Kyair shares his big idea of Small Group Wednesday. This was an idea developed by the BCPS teacher advisory council along with the district’s CEO, and it proposes that Wednesday should be a half day of school in which, rather than teaching new content, the teacher will bring together small groups of students to focus on a particular skill based on what the teacher observed Monday or Tuesday, or based on data from recent assessments. It’s an opportunity to be more responsive to students’ personalized needs. In the afternoons, teachers would collaborate across grade levels for vertical planning, making sure that students in every grade are being equipped with the right standards-aligned skills. 

Kyair presents his idea in response to the sentiment, common in some places, to get back to “the way it was” in schools following the pandemic. He explains that the traditional way of doing things didn’t work for all students, and now is when we must seize the opportunity to do not what was, but what could be. “Why not us, and why not now, to perfect education as something that it could be?,” he asks.

What’s your One Big Idea to transform education? Connect with us on social media or on our website, www.futureof.school, to share! Follow Future of School on Twitter @futureof_school and follow Amy Valentine @amyvalentine555.

Learn more about Future of School and its mission to mobilize change in American K-12 education from a one-size-fits-all system to one that ensures all students reach their unbounded potential no matter where their learning takes place at www.futureof.school.

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