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.

ELO Woonsocket is an upstart school-community partnership that empowers students to become leaders in learning through the creation and completion of credit-bearing projects, off-site, during out-of-school hours.

Last year, presenters shared the story of how Expanded Learning Opportunities (ELO) Woonsocket came about. They shared the journey of how a small, local arts program became the force behind the design, implementation, and management of a multiple-pathway program at their city’s high school.

This year, presenters will go deeper into the technical and pedagogical dimensions of ELO Woonsocket, including structure, methods, and assessment, as well as their students’ qualitative and quantitative outcomes as compared to district averages.

Schools or districts interested in implementing cutting-edge proficiency-based and student-centered learning strategies will leave this workshop with an ELO toolkit and exercises that allow for rapid progression through the startup process.

A competency-based learning model can lead to an array of authentic learning opportunities for students. When implemented in a Career Technical and Agricultural Education (CTAE) pathway, these opportunities involve solving real-world problems that require the integration of rigorous industry and content area knowledge and skills.

In this session, presenters will discuss how they have ensured that CTAE courses in Henry County are aligned to industry and content area standards and performance indicators. Presenters will also describe how they design assessments that require students to demonstrate their learning in novel, performance-based ways and how evidence of their learning in different settings is judged against common and clear scoring criteria.

Participants will learn how to develop and use common learning expectations and design CTAE learning pathways for grades 6-12 that maintain the intended level of rigor. They will share their learning with one another, recognize and honor the role CTAE plays in competency-based learning, and leave with their own ideas as well as the Henry County CTAE competencies.

Presentation linked here.  

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.

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.