It is amazing how quickly a school year goes by! Often, we feel like there is not enough time to complete all of the tasks we planned. But if you are staying true to your Long Range Plan, it’s a sure bet that you’ve been improving throughout the year and should communicate and celebrate the work that’s been done!Read More
Similar to meeting the varying needs of students in the classroom, it is also difficult to meet the staff development needs of teachers within a school building or throughout a district. Why not utilize the individual strengths of staff while providing local professional development? Read More
As teachers work to meet higher demand in the classroom and schools/districts struggle to meet increasing demands from the public, the PDK annual poll provides interesting perspectives. Read More
The WHY of any organization isn’t about making a profit. Instead, it is the purpose, cause, or overall belief of the group. In all types of work, change must take place to keep up. Providing a strong reason for making a change, and communicating it clearly with staff, will ease much of the pushback from those the change will effect. Providing your “why” will hopefully inspire staff to follow because they will have a purpose.Read More
Improvements in teaching and learning can be rather challenging to come by and to maintain over time, and in order to make systemic changes within your district, you need to have all staff on board and prepared to do their part. Our graphic illustrates the relationships between the various working groups throughout the process.Read More
In this month’s E-hint, we present a list of questions to initiate and open a dialogue regarding district-wide academic processes among stakeholders within a district. These challenging questions could help an administrative team affirm or evaluate their current curriculum structures and processes. The questions are posed from a first-person perspective from within a district.Read More
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) recently completed a year of full implementation. While the law is authorized to continue programs from the Elementary and Secondary Schools Act until 2020, there is speculation that funding amounts could change or even be eliminated due to priorities in the annual budget. Even though educators must play the waiting game in order to plan, it is still important to know the features of …Read More
The processes of curriculum, instruction, and assessment schools should use to assure student learning might be compared to the steps of building a house. Let’s look at those steps and compare them to best practices in education… from what is established at the district-level, through all the stages of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, to what is mandated of schools by the state or other accrediting agencies.Read More
Are you having trouble keeping your district leaders informed on what is going on in the world of education? The CLI Model has the expectation for leaders to continuously review externally mandated assessment and accreditation requirements. Finding time to do this can be a factor, so one solution is to have your Curriculum Coordinating Council (CCC) schedule 15 minutes or more each meeting for regular updates.Read More
In the current accountability age in education and looking down the road to compliance with the new ESSA requirements, it is clear that standards-aligned curriculum and assessments will play a key role. With four years of work behind them, Sheridan County School District #1 (SCSD#1), Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School District #307 (BBCHS#307), and other CLI client districts may be ahead of the curve in terms of being able to demonstrate such alignment, which also puts them on track to be able to meet other provisions of the act. As the work in these districts continues according to their long range plans, all subject areas will go through the new processes, celebrating the incredible accomplishments and persevering through the bumps and detours in the road.Read More