From Ordinary to Extraordinary...

From Ordinary to Extraordinary... A Hero's Journey

That is our theme in the Coppell Independent School District this year.  Personally, I think it accurately describes the work ahead of us; transforming an ordinary/stale/broken educational system into something meaningful/engaging/relevant.  That's no easy task, and as the slogan implies, it will take a group of educational "heroes" to achieve such a gargantuan feat!

After attending the 2013-2014 CISD Principals' Academy over the summer, the administrative team @ Austin Elementary (Laurie O'Neill, Principal and Cooper Hilton, Assistant Principal) was charged with continuing to lead this transformation.  Though our professional learning for this year has only recently begun, we'd like to share a little bit with you from our learning on August 23rd and highlight some of the tools that are helping enhance our transformation.

Who's Asking The Questions In Your Classroom?

Some of the most meaningful and useful professional learning sessions share ideas/strategies that you can take away and immediately implement.  That's what Liz Malone (GT Facilitator & SEM Coordinator) and Cooper Hilton (Assistant Principal) set out to do yesterday afternoon for the educators at Austin Elementary.  They presented a session on promoting student questioning.  This was yet another piece of learning brought back from the National Learning Forward Conference they attended this past December.

The information and technique from their session came from a book called Make Just One Change: Teach Students To Ask Their Own Questions by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana and is based around the Question Formulation Technique.

Check out their Slide Rocket presentation HERE.

As part of the process in determining where we stood as a campus (what percentage of questions are student generated) and where we want to be as a campus (what percentage of questions SHOULD be student generated), Liz and Cooper experimented with a simple polling tool KwiqPoll.  It's an easy way to gather quick data using any device (iPhone, computer, etc) and could be a great formative assessment tool in classrooms.

If you would like more information on how the Question Formulation Technique could impact your classroom, leave us a comment!

A Big Success...

If you've been following us for very long, you know that we are in the process of fully implementing Dr. Joe Renzulli's Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM).  It is an integral part of our Operation Transformation as we challenge ourselves to create a more meaningful and engaging 21st century learning environment.  

One of our biggest hurdles this year in the implementation of SEM was conducting our first round of enrichment clusters and the subsequent enrichment cluster showcase.  It was a big undertaking for both our educators AND learners as we took much of the structure and ideas behind E-Time and dug deeper, but we couldn't be more proud of how it went! 

Below are a couple of resources for you to check out if you're curious about our SEM journey and want to know more about how our first cluster showcase turned out.

-Explore our Schoolwide Enrichment Model blog Lifelong Learning Made SEMple!.  It includes a video with footage/photos from the 4th/5th grade Showcase.

-Check out the following video- The Video Production Company  This 4th/5th grade cluster saw a real world problem (declining participation in our school bank Mustang Mutual) and used their talents and passions to address it.  Check it out!


As always, we welcome your feedback and input!  

Educators as Learners... @ The Learning Forward National Conference!

One of the things we frequently discuss as a staff is our dual role of Educator AND Learner.  This was evident recently as three Austin educators attended the 2012 Learning Forward National Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.  Kara Cadue, Liz Malone, and Cooper Hilton spent five jam-packed days learning from leading educators, researchers, and professors from around the country.  We suspect they also managed to squeeze in some time catching the city "sites." :)

We have asked them to each share a reflection from one of the sessions that they attended.  In addition, they will share their learning with the Austin staff at an upcoming professional learning day in February.

Parents Are Learners Too

Today is an exciting day at Austin!  We are starting off with the 1st of our series of 4 Parent Courses devoted to informing and involving our parents in the work we're doing with Operation Transformation.  Part of that work is a realization of the responsibility we have to build reciprocal relationships with our parents and community.  This is a great first step towards achieving that.

We've used a great (FREE) tool to help us organize the event and plan for our attendees.  SignUpGenius.com was an easy way for us to publicize the class and keep track of those attending.  It's a great tool for organizing volunteers, parent conferences, etc.

Check out the link below for the presentation that we'll use. 

Parent Class #1 Presentation

One item that the presentation references is the Campus Pedagogy.  The Campus Pedagogy is a component of the Transformation Plan that was developed at the summer Principal Academy.  In short, it outlines what we believe our school community should look like.  Take a look at the graphic version below, and give us your feedback!  It is meant to guide us over the next few years as we "transform" our learning environment.  Of course, it will change and evolve as WE change and evolve.

We Believe...

For the past few years, Austin has had Belief Statements that voice what it is that we believe about education and the needs of our learners.

Having since composed our Campus Guiding Purpose, we realized that we needed Belief Statements that reflect that Guiding Purpose and tell our community what distinguishes Austin from other elementaries, so we bravely undertook the task of reviewing our Belief Statements and updating them to be authentic reflections of what we hold to be true!  Our team leaders helped facilitate this process with their teams.  Needless to say, there was plenty of cutting, pasting, adding, omitting, and rewording.

We couldn't be more proud of our final product!  What we ended up with truly verbalizes how Austin is unique and strives to ignite passion in our learners AND educators.

Check them out, and let us know what you think.

 

Operation Transformation Is In Full Swing

At Austin, we are thrilled (and maybe a little anxious) by the announcement that Coppell ISD was selected to participate in the High Performance Schools Consortium.  Read the article here.  This means that we will play an integral part in the transformation of the public education system in Texas.

Fortunately, we have already begun working to transform our school to a 21st Century learning environment, but we will have a long road ahead of us.

As part of this work, we have updated our Roadmap.  You may remember last year's Roadmap to SEM from a previous post.  We found that this was a great visual representation of our vision and where we are headed as a campus.  Check it out, and let us know what you think.

As you can see, we've already taken several steps this year.  Most recently, the staff met to review our Beliefs Statements and evaluate their compatibility with our Guiding Purpose.  It was a tough process! 

Prepping for Clusters

After a successful implementation of E-Time (see E-Time posts), Austin is ripe and ready to begin digging even deeper with Enrichment Clusters!  Clusters are similar to E-Time in that they are both interest based and student driven.

Liz Malone (GT Facilitator & SEM Coordinator) has been working this week with our 4th grade, 5th grade, and support staff teachers as we prepare to kick-off the first round of Clusters with 4th and 5th grade at the end of October.  Additionally, we will work with our parent volunteers who have graciously agreed to share their passions and lead / co-lead a Cluster!

Here are a few of the things that our educators are discovering about Clusters-

Why are Clusters important?

• They support kids' interests.
• They help learners discover new interests.
• They challenge learners on different levels.
• Students learn from each other and from experts.
• Clusters support our Guiding Purpose of unlocking students' passion and cultivating their uniqueness.
• MANY more reasons!

Curriculum Compacting: A Tool For Differentiation In The Classroom

Since the beginning of the school year, we have featured a few guest bloggers and their reflections on their learning from Confratute.  To close this series, check out the article below from Liz Malone (GT Facilitator & SEM Coordinator) on Curriculum Compacting.  We are excited about the work she will do with ALL of our learners this year and the coaching/planning work she will do with our educators. 

Curriculum Compacting: A Tool for Differentiation in the Classroom

I was so excited this summer to once again attend Confratute, a week-long educational conference held on the beautiful University of Connecticut campus in Storrs, Connecticut, just outside of Hartford.  While there, I had the opportunity to participate in an exploration of Curriculum Compacting, led by Dr. Deb Goldbeck, a leading researcher in this area.  Dr. Goldbeck shared with us much of the research surrounding the practice of curriculum compacting as well as a wealth of information about the tools and resources that are available to facilitate the implementation of curriculum compacting in the general education setting. I have attempted to share just a taste of her wisdom in the paragraphs below, but I am looking forward to sharing more information as the year progresses. 

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is curriculum compacting? 

Curriculum compacting is simply another tool that can be used to differentiate classroom learning experiences so that we are able to effectively meet the unique needs of every learner.  Dr. Goldbeck defines it this way: “Curriculum compacting is a procedure used to streamline the regular curriculum for students who are capable of mastering it at a faster pace.”  In other words, we do not continue to require students to practice those skills and concepts in which they have already demonstrated mastery.  Instead, we create experiences which allow them to explore those concepts at a higher level of depth and complexity and in a way that relates to their own personal interests and talents.

Welcome Back!

To say that it has been an eventful summer for Austin teachers would be an understatement!  The professional learning began almost the minute school was let out and has continued up until school begins next week. 



Here are a few of the professional learning opportunities in which our educators participated this summer-

• CISD's Best Day Ever Summer Conference
• The Leadership Development Process through Learning Forward Texas
• Great Expectations
• Confratute (pictured above)
• The International Congress on Math Education
• Learning @ Lovejoy featuring Dr. Carol Dweck (author of Mindset)
• CISD's Principal Academy

As we begin the school year, we look forward to featuring a few reflections by guest bloggers from these learning experiences.

 

 

With a new school year comes new faces.  We are excited to welcome 8 new educators to our Austin family!  Each of these new educators is ready to join in and play a part in our transformation to a 21st century learning environment.  Help us in welcoming them to Austin!



Jensen in Coppell!



Last Friday, several staff members from Austin (and teachers from all over Coppell) were able to take part in a half day of professional learning with Eric Jensen (of Teaching With Poverty In Mind fame).  Check out this quick video for a brief overview of what Jensen speaks about. 

One of the things that stuck in my mind and kept popping up later was something that he said about our role as teachers.  "Kids no longer need us for our content.  Google replaced us there years ago."  I think that really struck home to what we are trying to do now as 21st century teachers. 

No longer will it suffice for us to teach our students "something" and then test them on it.  Chances are, that "something" is readily available already at the click of a button.  Instead, our focus should be on the skills and talents that will help them be successful in a global setting.

What were some other "take-aways" that some of you left with?

Laying The Groundwork...

Yesterday's Professional Development session on SEM focused a lot on laying the foundation for what is 21st Century Learning.  What will be required of teachers to effectively reach 21st Century Learners?  How can we teach and prepare students for careers and fields that don't yet exist?  These are all questions we attempted to tackle.  Check out these two videos we referenced:

Dan Brown's Open Letter to Educators
Changing Education Paradigms by Sir Ken Robinson
The videos above will certainly get you to thinking on the direction we're heading!
We then spent a large amount of time discussing how S.E.M. can address the needs of 21st Century Learners.  S.E.M. provides students opportunities to explore learning based on their own interests and talents... What could be more compatible with 21st Century Learning?
While it has taken us a bit of time to get S.E.M. "off the ground," we all agree that now is the time!  This will be an extremely laborious task and process (as we saw at Laurel Mountain Elementary), but we are ready to begin.  Check out our Journey to S.E.M. roadmap below.  It was part of the vision that was shared with the Austin faculty yesterday afternoon.

Thoughts???