Why does personalized learning sometimes feel impersonal?

Fourth graders aren't great at keeping secrets, but in Jeremy Crowe's class, they stand shoulder to shoulder and try to stay poker-faced as they pass a small beanbag behind their backs. A girl in the middle of their circle scrutinizes each face, trying to guess who has the toy.

The game is part of the class' morning meeting—based on the theme "How do we reveal ourselves to others?"—and the students' conversation wraps in role-playing for handling distracting friends as well as ways to create a new character for a class writing assignment on the Lexia reading program.