School/District Improvements

The big push in our district and school is global communication and learning. We have hired a global communications coordinator to facilitate this. Our goal is to establish connections throughout the world for our students to collaborate with. Our district is spending a lot of money training teachers on how to create global learning communities in the classroom. I just got back from BLC (Building Leadership Communities) in Boston with Alan November with a group of teachers from my district. We are going to take the information we learned and share it with our campus.

This is still in the works, but our appraisal system is about to change. We are going to start having online studies/groups to talk about what we are doing in our classroom. Teachers will keep track of what they are doing/learning to move forward in the 21st century. Because our district is so small, it is easy for our design teams to collect data from teachers to discuss how to move forward. We have a CLC (Campus Leadership Council) that meets throughout the school year to discuss plans for the campus. I actually sit on this council and help discuss improvements. Technology is the biggest push at our campus. We measure this growth through feedback from students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Our principal is always asking for feedback and ideas on how to move forward.

As a district, we are also moving toward assessment for learning/formative assessment. I went to a workshop with our design team on how to establish this in our building. I think this is a work in progress and something that you have to take baby steps toward. Many teachers are resistant to change and want to do the same old thing. As a design time, we are going to teach strategies that we can integrate in the classroom for formative assessment. We will measure our growth with feedback.

In my classroom, my goal is to continue having more formative assessment. I think it is so beneficial to my students. I definitely see great results from immediate and descriptive feedback.