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Education Elements
 

JULY 2018

 
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FEATURED NEWS

 

Assess Your Strengths and Growth Areas with our New Self Strengths Audit 

The NEW School Rules hit Corwin's bestseller list this spring and now thousands of leaders around the country are reading and thinking about how to improve the way their teams and organizations function. These leaders want to improve their meetings, have better systems for decision-making, increase their team's learning rate, and better manage roles and accountabilities. But often they don't know where to start.

Our new NSR Self Strengths Audit helps answer that question by providing an opportunity for leaders to gauge their current practice of The NEW School Rules. Each section of the audit includes a reflection on one core mindset and two core skills for that rule. We hope this audit will help you know which skills to focus on in developing yourself as a more responsive leader. Let us know what you find out by sharing with @6newschoolrules!

NSR Newsletter
 

ON OUR MINDS

 

Move on When Ready: Deepening CBE through personalized learning in Rochester, NH

Rochester NH Logo.png School leaders and teachers in Rochester, NH are harnessing personalized learning as a means to further their competency-based education (CBE) implementation. CBE requires students to demonstrate mastery of content and skills before moving on to the next chapter, so it is a mastery-based rather than time-based approach. We believe that by deeply implementing personalized learning, students will take ownership of their academic journey by reflecting on their academic data and be better prepared for the individualized pace of a ‘move on when ready’ classroom experience. We’ll put this theory to the test in a pilot at a local high school in the 2018-2019 school year.
 

Google For Education - California Education Summit

Google for Education is hosting its first ever California Education Summit on July 31st at the Google Campus in Sunnyvale to bring school districts from all over California together for a day of innovation, collaboration, and transformation.
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District leaders across California are welcome!
Please register by July 9th. Due to space constraints, only 2 attendees from each district may attend (the intended audience is Tech/IT leaders and EdTech/Curriculum leaders). Please ensure each individual submits his/her own registration.

Raising the Bar: Get Inspired, Get Tangible Ideas and Concepts, Grow the Google for Education Community

  • Keynote Speaker: Jaime Casap, Chief Education Evangelist at Google

  • Designing for Your District - Experience an EDU focused Design Sprint from the Sprint Master Academy

  • Breakout Sessions with:

  • Keynote Speaker: Philip Lanoue, 2015 AASA National Superintendent of the Year
 

Always Bigger in Texas: A Foundation for Blended Learning

Temple Independent School District Logo

Over the past school year, we have been fortunate to work with the Temple Independent School District to lay a foundation for a district-wide shift to blended learning. This foundation includes a project roadmap with a unique design: each school will begin the implementation with a cohort of teachers (a grade level or content area team) and add successive cohorts of teachers over the next three years. To prepare for this shift, the district has developed its own blended learning guiding principles and provided training to the school board on blended learning strategies. Teachers across the district will also be able to engage in a Discovery Phase during the 2018-2019 school year to explore blended learning.

 

DESIGN SPOTLIGHT

 

Wake County - A New Approach to Professional Learning

Districts come to us when they want to tackle a big organizational change, but are unsure of how exactly to approach it, who to involve, and what process to follow. Many times these leaders are seeking an external partner for various reasons - to facilitate their team’s work, to incorporate leading practices, and to share experiences from doing this all over the country. These strategic planning projects are some of our favorites because we get to flex our brains in new ways and design a custom consulting engagement!

Wake County Public School System reached out last year to collaboratively design a new professional learning system for their instructional staff and 160K students, which included rethinking funding models, organizational design, processes, and evaluation metrics. Over the course of 4 months, we followed our strategic planning framework which is grounded in our design thinking approach and our belief that we are planning for change and not for perfection.

July NL Design Spotlight

 

While we uncovered many opportunities to improve the professional learning experiences of instructional staff, we worked with WCPSS’ design team to prioritize and align behind three areas of growth:

  • Increase focus on planning and evaluation to move beyond professional learning delivery
  • Support collaborative teams and distribute authorities
  • Develop standard processes and budget procedures to align the interests of teams delivering professional learning

Based on these priorities, we collaboratively developed a roadmap that the WCPSS team could use to guide communications, manage change, organize teams and set expectations for new professional learning experiences. The roadmap represents a set of initiatives to close gaps to achieve their future vision for professional learning - along with incorporating activities to push the envelope and innovate in the way professional learning is supported throughout the year in schools and in classrooms.

 

RESOURCES

 
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Setting Design Parameters for Personalized Learning

download the Infographic

 

FEATURED BLOGS

 

Educators: Before you Recharge this Summer, Reflect

Rocks on the water

By Gabrielle Hewitt
Our company is known for having a unique organizational culture. We have eliminated the traditional organizational hierarchy of direct managers; we employ a self-organizing team structure; and if you attended this year’s Personalized Learning Summit, you know we also view trivia and dancing to 80’s music as valuable team-building time. Something that is not as widely known is that we also have internal monthly challenges. During the month of November, our CEO challenged us to meditate for five minutes every day.

Read More

 

Seven Things Education Elements Does to Support School Districts

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By Amy Jenkins
One of the most common questions I answer about Education Elements is, “So what do you guys do?” If we have an elevator ride that goes to, say, the top of the world’s tallest building, I can give a fairly satisfying and comprehensive answer. If, on the other hand, we are just waiting in a short line for a cup of coffee, I tend to say something like, “We help districts solve their biggest challenges,” which, judging by the reaction I often get, is not nearly the level of detail people are looking to hear. 

Read More

 
 

EVENTS WE'RE ATTENDING

 

July 11-13
Utah Rural Schools Summer Conference
Cedar City, UT

July 18-20
TASA Executive Planning Session
Bastrop, TX

August 1-3
BOCES Chief School Administrator's Conference
Canton, NY

August 21
TOSS New Superintendent Happy Hour
Nashville, TN

Want to meet up at an event? Email ben@edelements.com 

 

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