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title: New Self Strengths Audit, CBE, and How to Transform Professional Learning
description: Wake County is taking professional learning to a new level; both Temple Independent School District, and Rochester School District have news about how they are implementing personal learning.
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 A leadership self-assessment, Rochester, and Temple Independent school districts, professional learning in Wake County

| Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here.           JULY 2018   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!   ON OUR MINDS   Move on When Ready: Deepening CBE through personalized learning in Rochester, NH 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. 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: Education Elements on Personalized Learning Amplified IT on Advanced Chromebook Management in the Admin Console Keynote Speaker: Philip Lanoue, 2015 AASA National Superintendent of the Year   Always Bigger in Texas: A Foundation for Blended Learning 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.   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   Setting Design Parameters for Personalized Learning   FEATURED BLOGS   Educators: Before you Recharge this Summer, Reflect 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.   Seven Things Education Elements Does to Support School Districts 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.      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    WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT US   How to Rethink District Roles to Support Blended and Personalized Learning (Blended Learning Universe) Platinum Partner Spotlight: Education Elements (The Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents) Partnering Externally to Cultivate Capacity Internally (The Learning Accelerator) Story of the day: "From the Classroom to the Campaign Trail: Emboldened Teachers Run for Office" (Choice Media TV)   Copyright © 2018 Education Elements. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy Education Elements   999 Skyway Road  Suite 325  San Carlos  CA   94070   USA You received this email because you are subscribed to Monthly Newsletter from Education Elements . Update your email preferences to choose the types of emails you receive.  Unsubscribe from all future emails   |
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