NESSC High School Redesign in Action Conference

At Harwood Union High School, students are not only taking a proactive role in designing their own education and planning for future learning, but in serving as leaders in the school community responsible for creating the systems and structures necessary to ensure a personalized education is possible.

In this interactive session, administrators and teachers from Harwood Union will focus on the benefits of a shared leadership model in which adults and youth lead together. The presentation will provide the rationale for this type of shared leadership model and describe the practical elements as they relate to the implementation of personalized learning.

Participants will have the opportunity to construct a proposal or plan for instituting a distributed and shared leadership model inclusive of teachers and students in their school, and will leave with an understanding of the benefits of a distributed and shared leadership model inclusive of both teachers and students.

Transitioning to proficiency-based learning (PBL) may seem straightforward on paper, but getting there is hard!

In this workshop, presenters will share concrete tools, strategies, and examples that schools can use to build teacher capacity for implementing PBL in their classrooms and developing meaningful and usable graduation standards as teams. From a program that enables “early adopters” to build capacity in their colleagues, to in-house coaching and professional learning approaches, to templates that facilitate teachers’ development of proficiencies and their associated learning activities and assessments--this hands-on workshop will provide practical resources that participants can take back to their own schools. Presenters will describe their assets-based approach to helping teacher teams build on what they are already doing while shifting to proficiency-based content-area standards that emphasize transferable skills aligned with the Common Core and NGSS.

Participants will have a chance to try out and discuss some of these tools, and will walk away with access to all of the materials shared.

At Harwood Union High School, students are not only taking a proactive role in designing their own education and planning for future learning, but in serving as leaders in the school community responsible for creating the systems and structures necessary to ensure a personalized education is possible.

In this interactive session, administrators and teachers from Harwood Union will focus on the benefits of a shared leadership model in which adults and youth lead together. The presentation will provide the rationale for this type of shared leadership model and describe the practical elements as they relate to the implementation of personalized learning.

Participants will have the opportunity to construct a proposal or plan for instituting a distributed and shared leadership model inclusive of teachers and students in their school, and will leave with an understanding of the benefits of a distributed and shared leadership model inclusive of both teachers and students.

As schools make the shift to proficiency-based learning, students need explicit instruction and support to develop the habits and skills necessary to meet proficiency and pursue new learning opportunities through flexible pathways. While many teachers are routinely modeling and teaching meta-cognition and socioemotional skills in the classroom, others may not yet see those skills as an integral part of their work with students.

Presenters will share strategies for instruction on habits of learning in all classrooms, such as deliberate practice, building executive function, and self-regulation. They also will share key resources and lead a discussion about how teachers can help each of their students develop agency, social belonging, and optimism.

In this session, participants will unpack the Council of Chief State School Officers’ newly released Educator Competencies for Personalized, Learner-Centered Teaching and will leave with instructional strategies for meta-cognitive and socioemotional learning, a critical element of an effective personalized, proficiency-based system.

Hear from a group of high school students who have had the inspiration and opportunity to design personal-learning experiences. Learn why they feel all students should be given the time to explore their passions and interest--and to discover that one of those passions might just be learning itself.

In this session, student presenters will explain how interest and participation in Williamstown Middle High School’s Pathways program has grown organically rather than systematically, present examples of student learning pathways, and show how these pathways are supported and assessed to meet academic and personal competencies.

Participants will leave with planning and assessment templates and an understanding of how personal-learning experiences can be a challenging adventure that students embrace, rather than an additional course requirement.

In this workshop, teachers and students from Proctor Junior/Senior High School will highlight their efforts to change their school from a teacher-centered model to a student-centered learning environment.

Presenters will share several key efforts that have been part of this transition to a “learner-centered” paradigm, including the separation of work habits from academic expectations, capacity-building for students to track their own progress against content proficiencies and drive their own learning through formative and summative assessment, and the role that Proctor’s ‘earned honors credit’ policy plays in a larger proficiency-based approach to learning.

In particular, presenters will focus on transitioning to PBL in Math and Science courses, describing strategies such as an “asynchronous classroom”—in which students work at their own pace through a collaborative, inquiry-based approach to labs—and teacher-designed “playlists” that target specific learning intentions and provide students with choices in how they access and demonstrate learning.

Transitioning to proficiency-based learning (PBL) may seem straightforward on paper, but getting there is hard!

In this workshop, presenters will share concrete tools, strategies, and examples that schools can use to build teacher capacity for implementing PBL in their classrooms and developing meaningful and usable graduation standards as teams. From a program that enables “early adopters” to build capacity in their colleagues, to in-house coaching and professional learning approaches, to templates that facilitate teachers’ development of proficiencies and their associated learning activities and assessments--this hands-on workshop will provide practical resources that participants can take back to their own schools. Presenters will describe their assets-based approach to helping teacher teams build on what they are already doing while shifting to proficiency-based content-area standards that emphasize transferable skills aligned with the Common Core and NGSS.

Participants will have a chance to try out and discuss some of these tools, and will walk away with access to all of the materials shared.

Hear from a group of high school students who have had the inspiration and opportunity to design personal-learning experiences. Learn why they feel all students should be given the time to explore their passions and interest--and to discover that one of those passions might just be learning itself.

In this session, student presenters will explain how interest and participation in Williamstown Middle High School’s Pathways program has grown organically rather than systematically, present examples of student learning pathways, and show how these pathways are supported and assessed to meet academic and personal competencies.

Participants will leave with planning and assessment templates and an understanding of how personal-learning experiences can be a challenging adventure that students embrace, rather than an additional course requirement.

As schools make the shift to proficiency-based learning, students need explicit instruction and support to develop the habits and skills necessary to meet proficiency and pursue new learning opportunities through flexible pathways. While many teachers are routinely modeling and teaching meta-cognition and socioemotional skills in the classroom, others may not yet see those skills as an integral part of their work with students.

Presenters will share strategies for instruction on habits of learning in all classrooms, such as deliberate practice, building executive function, and self-regulation. They also will share key resources and lead a discussion about how teachers can help each of their students develop agency, social belonging, and optimism.

In this session, participants will unpack the Council of Chief State School Officers’ newly released Educator Competencies for Personalized, Learner-Centered Teaching and will leave with instructional strategies for meta-cognitive and socioemotional learning, a critical element of an effective personalized, proficiency-based system.

Project-based learning has the power and potential to transform the culture of a school community. At Cabot School, we are deepening our project-based learning pedagogy--and student learning--through rigorous, real-world, collaborative, interdisciplinary experiences infused with the arts and oriented toward social action.

This interactive workshop will provide an overview of exemplar projects that support students in building proficiency in the arts (e.g., National Core Arts Standards) and transferrable skills. Presenters will share and explore ways in which all teachers can be empowered to infuse arts standards and cross-cutting skills into their classes to ensure authentic engagement and deeper learning.

Participants will be provided with time to develop project ideas using a variety of tools, including a web app built by the presenters while on a 2014 Rowland Fellowship. They will leave with models, strategies, and tools to design learning experiences that provoke inquiry and fuel the creation of authentic products that are relevant to students and have meaning in our world.

In this workshop, teachers and students from Proctor Junior/Senior High School will highlight their efforts to change their school from a teacher-centered model to a student-centered learning environment.

Presenters will share several key efforts that have been part of this transition to a “learner-centered” paradigm, including the separation of work habits from academic expectations, capacity-building for students to track their own progress against content proficiencies and drive their own learning through formative and summative assessment, and the role that Proctor’s ‘earned honors credit’ policy plays in a larger proficiency-based approach to learning.

In particular, presenters will focus on transitioning to PBL in Math and Science courses, describing strategies such as an “asynchronous classroom”—in which students work at their own pace through a collaborative, inquiry-based approach to labs—and teacher-designed “playlists” that target specific learning intentions and provide students with choices in how they access and demonstrate learning.

Project-based learning has the power and potential to transform the culture of a school community. At Cabot School, we are deepening our project-based learning pedagogy--and student learning--through rigorous, real-world, collaborative, interdisciplinary experiences infused with the arts and oriented toward social action.

This interactive workshop will provide an overview of exemplar projects that support students in building proficiency in the arts (e.g., National Core Arts Standards) and transferrable skills. Presenters will share and explore ways in which all teachers can be empowered to infuse arts standards and cross-cutting skills into their classes to ensure authentic engagement and deeper learning.

Participants will be provided with time to develop project ideas using a variety of tools, including a web app built by the presenters while on a 2014 Rowland Fellowship. They will leave with models, strategies, and tools to design learning experiences that provoke inquiry and fuel the creation of authentic products that are relevant to students and have meaning in our world.