The education community has frequently been accused of a swinging pendulum effect; implementing one initiative after another and then swinging back to the original. This has caused an inordinate amount of skepticism and apathy amongst long time teachers who don’t believe any innovation is worth implementing since it will just go by the wayside eventually, leaving all their hard work …
Communicating About School Change I have been thinking about marketing a lot these days. We want to communicate with stakeholders about school change projects but the language can be a huge barrier and can increase fear because it is so unfamiliar. I have been playing around with messaging and documents. I have been focusing on communication methods. But, I think …
I was recently in Texas for South by Southwest Edu and I spoke with some teachers who are bound by some very strict instructional limitations because of what they identify as testing requirements. At a recent conference in Baltimore, we heard from someone who was actually docked pay because of test scores. These people always say that they must teach …
Embracing Change I’m excited to take part in #IMMOOC, another brilliant and innovative idea by George Couros! This blog post is in response to the blog prompt “How are you embracing change to spur innovation in your own context?” Two years ago Vermont enacted legislation requiring high schools to use proficiency-based graduation requirements rather than carnegie units and seat time. …
As I work with teachers to rethink their classrooms considering proficiency-based instruction, it has become clear that instruction will naturally become more explicit. As people question how a transition to proficiency-based learning might impact students receiving special education services or less self-directed students, I am becoming more confident that because teachers are being so much more deliberate in their instruction, …
Many people get nervous when, in a proficiency-based system, the grade becomes less valuable. How will students stand out? How will they compete for college admissions? When we start looking at opportunities in proficiency-based systems more closely, it becomes apparent that there are many opportunities to stand out. One of the hallmarks of an effective proficiency-based system is that there …
If I could go back, what would I do differently? While I am certain that there are many paths to school transformation, I have been reflective recently about what we could have done differently in order to create a smoother transition. The number one foundational idea that I think needed more attention is that relationships are at the center of …
As we have been exploring ways to report proficiency based graduation requirements, we have started expanding our thinking about what reporting could actually look like. When we first started discussing this, we continued to consider a paper reporting method. When we started getting creative, we realized that reporting could look completely different. One of those options was exhibitions or presentations …
Solving Common Groupwork Problems If you have experienced common groupwork issues like one person completing all the work, these high impact strategies can be implemented tomorrow for use with just about any lesson plan you have in mind in order to increase participation, grit and perseverance. If you weren’t planning on groupwork, most lessons can be transformed rather easily. This …
Teachers and school communities are all too familiar with initiative fatigue. The education world is well known for introducing new initiatives and moving from one to the next without fully implementing anything. It’s not uncommon for veteran teachers to become numb to these changes and maybe a little bit cynical. In Vermont right now, we are working on some drastic …