Template for Student Notes

I’ve written a lot about documenting as a facilitator in self-directed learning spaces. Every update of the ALC Network website or Starter Kit, I rework the section on documentation based on what I see day-to-day.

There are always more questions for facilitators to consider: How much documentation should be from you versus from the young person? How often should you add to your notes? Should you pay for an app or set up your own system? Are you using AI? Are there ways to format your documentation so that it helps the young person’s allies help them and at the same time protects their privacy and personal story from bad actors? Is the approach you would ideally take something that’s actually possible and effective? There are so many questions.

And this is not a blog post where I intend to play with any of them. Instead, I’m sharing a template that I’m testing right now. It’s for capturing and organizing my observations of a student, for sharing with the young person and their family. Likely this will be a document I send home quarterly, but while I’m testing this approach with a small group of students, I’m sending an updated version to each family monthly. So far, they are reporting that it’s helpful for keeping us on the same page, being able to see how the young person is growing, and that the kids like reading what I write. Key to this effect is the deliberate choice to write descriptions of what I see the kids focusing on and practicing rather than assessing their performance on standard things like helping clean up or following through on projects. For me, having this clear purpose and the format of the template helps me ensure the notes I’m sharing are both more focused than if I just wrote a narrative and more holistic than if I wrote only about what’s most obviously sharable to me. Having a guiding structure keeps me focused and rigorous in a way that feels right.

I may fine-tune this if I can find a way to simplify it without losing the efficacy, but here is the facilitator’s template for now:

The text next to each bulleted, bolded theme is there to prompt me, so I just replace it with my observation notes as I work through the sheet. I send each family their copy, and then I keep copies in my records.

So far, the kids haven’t been interested in writing their own reflections, and I have a crew that is just falling in love with literacy so I don’t want to push and make it a chore just yet. They’ve pretty consistently watched me do something — run hourly laps, write reflective pages each day, make doodle notes — and then joined in after a few weeks. Given that, I’ve just printed out a version tailored more to kids and have been leaving copies around. To be determined if they’ll use my prompts or come up with their own when they decide to jump in. Excited to find out!

Here’s what I have for them so far: