This past Monday our Board of Education approved the final recommended version of our District’s Strategic Vision as developed by the Strategic Vision Steering Committee. This committee was comprised of approximately 40 stakeholders (Board Members, Students, Parents, Administrators, Teachers, and Community Members) who worked with the Impact Group beginning in April of 2019 in order to develop the vision. The process for developing this vision started with baseline surveys from both the staff and community and was completed with a preview of the vision to three different focus groups (comprised of parents, staff, and community members) who provided feedback. A few adjustments were made to the vision, based on the feedback, to create a final product that we plan to share with our staff on February 13, 2020.
The Strategic Vision Committee stressed the importance for the vision focusing on the whole child which aligns with the Ohio Department of Education’s “Each Child- Our Future” vision. We believe today’s schools must not only build a solid foundation of academic knowledge, but also nurture a deep sense of purpose and self in young people. These young people are not merely students, but LEARNERS with a skill set that prepares them to be successful in an ever changing world. This vision, Aurora Learners-Future Ready, is intended to serve as a guide or north star for the day to day learning taking place in grades PreK-12 and is composed of six competencies which help to support Aurora Learners to be future ready.
Innovative
-Explores learning with new and fresh perspectives.
-Uncovers resources as part of the learning process.
-Raises powerful questions that generate ideas and create deeper insights.
Collaborative
-Promotes an interconnectedness that allows the diverse skills of each contributor to add significance.
-Generates value through reflective listening and balanced participation.
-Harnesses group synergy to create momentum that empowers and propels each member to contribute at enhanced levels.
Empathetic
-Demonstrates sensitivity to and compassion for the unique needs of others.
-Listens to understand others’ perspectives and develops an awareness of how actions and behaviors impact the collective.
-Contemplates through a variety of lenses, locally and globally.
Resilient
-Perseveres through difficulty in a positive, uplifting and purposeful manner. •
-Establishes appropriate habits that will assist in achieving goals; willing to rethink chosen processes after reflection.
-Possesses an unwavering persistence and resolve to remain focused despite distractions and detractors.
Balanced
-Displays the social and emotional ability to develop positive relationships, remain self aware and understand available resources.
-Expresses an understanding of the importance of physical health and the ability to make healthy decisions.
-Exhibits an intellectual curiosity that fosters a commitment to lifelong learning.
Critical-Thinker
-Retains an open mind while examining situations and analyzes, interprets or combines information to draw conclusions.
-Relies on objective criteria to evaluate critical information.
-Applies creative thought to form an argument, to problem solve or to reach a conclusion.
You will notice that the vision doesn’t include information about the curriculum covered in each class or grade level. That information can still be found in our Course of Study Documents. However, the curriculum and the strategic vision are closely tied together. The curricula will serve as the medium through which our staff will nurture the skills leading to these six competencies identified by the Strategic Vision Committee.
We do already address many of these skills in our schools, but our plan is to be more intentional about nurturing these six. As an example,
Resilient
Our approach to math naturally fits with those descriptors listed under resilient. Instead of the traditional I do-We do-You do approach where Math teachers show students how to solve a problem, provide students a chance to work on problems together, and then give students a bunch of problems to practice individually, we reverse that and have a more student centered approach where step one is to give young people the chance to try to work through problems individually and then collectively in order to make some connections to prior knowledge while searching for mathematical patterns and relationships. After that initial time the teacher then gets more involved to help the students build upon their current understanding. This process promotes developing appropriate habits that will assist in achieving goals as persevering becomes the norm.
Empathetic
We can’t necessarily teach empathy, but we can create the conditions to nurture empathy and as adults in the school we can certainly model empathy. One of the more powerful ways to nurture empathy is through reading and this is where our K-8 Readers Workshop model approach, currently used in our ELA classes, come into play. Not only do students become empowered to be better readers by being in more books of their choosing, they also experience different lenses through the fictional characters' perspective or nonfiction experiences about which they read. They are then also given the time to share through conversations they have with their classmates.
Innovative
Our new Innovative Design course is the most obvious example of nurturing innovation in our district, but it is not our only example. Innovation does not necessarily equate to “coming up with the right thing” it is instead “coming up with the next thing.” So, providing time for students to form questions (both open and close ended) in class and encouraging them to go beyond the first idea or solution to a problem to instead find an alternative solution are two examples that take place in our classrooms to stretch students to become more innovative.
Balanced
This competency refers to the “whole child” emphasis from the strategic vision team and therefore goes beyond just being a scholar-athlete. I witnessed multiple examples of encouraging this competency at our Freshmen Parent Orientation last week. Throughout the program, the school counselors as well as our principal and assistant principal repeatedly stressed the importance of balancing social emotional wellness with academic rigor when creating a schedule for the upcoming school year.
Critical Thinkers & Collaborative are both important skills that are typically nurtured in school environments and this will continue to be the case with this strategic vision.
Our Administration Team continues to meet in order to focus on the next steps for the strategic vision which recently included a professional development day with our department and grade level chairs. At this meeting the Admin Team worked with the teacher leaders to first share the vision and then prepare for the rollout of the strategic vision to the staff. As mentioned earlier, the strategic vision will be rolled out to all of the staff at our February 13th Professional Development day where we will first meet as a district, then breakout into building meetings, and finally end the day in PLC teams. We will then use PLC time as well as potential curricular days this summer, if needed, to target the 2020-2021 school year for implementation of the strategic vision. This, however, will be an ongoing process as the strategic vision will serve as a north star and therefore a continual reference as we all work to nurture these competencies in young people each day throughout the school year.
One way we hope to support our staff, while at the same time nurture conversations about the strategic vision with both our staff and community, is through the creation of our ACSD Strategic Vision website. This site is designed to provide some clarity to “what” we are shooting for in each of the six core competencies. As you peruse this site you will notice there are a variety of videos, articles, blogs, etc. that have been vetted by the Admin Team. There is also a section titled Design Specs for Learning Environments. In this section there are five design specifications for classrooms and activities that should be considered when thinking about “how” to work toward nurturing the six competencies.
As you approach the end of this rather long blog, thanks for sticking in there, I suspect you are wondering why a district which has been labeled as being “successful” would want to pivot away from current practices that might (and will) cause some disruptions. I could refer you to Reaching A Tipping Point in the Information Age, which I guess I just did, for a 30,000 foot view as to “why” this shift is needed. However, locally, we don’t have to look any further than the first belief listed on our district’s website under the About Our District link. That first belief simply states “Kids Come First” and if we really believe this, which we do, then making steps toward this vision designed by our stakeholders is the natural, logical, and best next step. It has been said, "A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step" and I am excited that we are making those first steps to nurturing Aurora Learners to be Future Ready.
No comments:
Post a Comment