Dr. Lyn Sharratt, Feb. 25, 2017 (updated June, 2017)
How does a district move from pockets of improvement in some schools to improvement in most schools and most classrooms, then importantly to improvement in every school, in every classroom? In other words, how does a system or district move to ALL students showing growth and achievement? There is much hard work involved as you build your learning culture and develop staff capacity over time. It must be our common goal to enhance learning outcomes for students wherever they happen to be learning. That is why we have taken our collaborative process to an international audience.
As I have worked “Putting Faces on the Data” in Australia, educators in many other locations have also become involved. It has been exciting to work with colleagues in Australia, Chile, Spain, the USA, and across Canada. We have learned many things together, such as: the importance of using Protocols when developing cultures of learning; the specificity needed in deconstructing Learning Intentions and co-constructing Success Criteria; creating Data Walls and collaboratively taking students’ FACES to Case Management Meetings to know every student; and how to use assessment data to inform instructional practices the very next minute.
On May 3, 2017, I was in Perth, Scotland along with my colleagues Beate Planche and Maggie Ogram to participate in the Scottish College for Educational Leadership (SCEL) conference where we focused on Collaboration Networks for Learning. At our session, participants learned about the practices that help schools move forward on their collaborative learning journey individually and as networks. The latest international work we have each undertaken continues to inform the work we are doing together to find the most successful collaborative approaches.
If you were unable to attend, please get in touch so we can determine how to get these effective practices into your school district.
Stay tuned to this blog for further updates on upcoming international sessions.