School boards, curriculum councils, teachers, and administrators are under more pressure than ever. Parents and school patrons demand solutions to nearly unsolvable problems. Most of which involve virtual learning, social distancing, and learning quality.
As I reflect on the past 25 years or so of working directly with school districts of various sizes, I debated my last topic for an E-Hint. A staff colleague asked, “In your work, what have been the most important things districts can do to change school culture through curriculum…
The stressors of teaching kids in person, virtually, and often a combination of the two, are far beyond the many stressors that teachers have experienced. What has become abundantly clear, is that for today’s educators, the conditions and scenarios in which they are working, cannot sustain if we want to…
In this E-Hint, we present a series of questions to serve as a starting point for open dialogue between a school board and its district superintendent, curriculum director, and the staff at large. These challenging questions would also be appropriate for an administrative team to affirm or evaluate their current…
Are you tired of talking about COVID-19 and discussing how this pandemic has set your students back? One of the common complaints from teachers who incorporate any virtual learning is that grading is more complicated and challenging to maintain than when students are learning solely in person. I can’t help…
The “start of school” has come and gone, and school district officials have made some of the hardest decisions they have ever made. Decisions that require re-evaluation nearly every day. The building preparation, bus preparation, and schedule concerns have all been addressed to the degree that gets the school year…
Academic leadership need not rest solely on the shoulders of district and building-level administrators, but can often be more effective when shared with classroom teachers. Unfortunately, some teachers may feel less willing to go the extra mile or create quality work when tasks appear as a directive with no teacher…
Yes, the end of the school year is in sight. Teachers are worried about finishing the curriculum, checking in books, taking posters off the walls, entering grades, and all of their other year-end tasks. Administrators are ticking items off of their unique building goal lists and sending out reminders and…
One of the best parts of working with amazing school districts across the country is being able to highlight their awesome ideas for promoting positive changes in teaching and learning. Sweetwater County School District 1 in Rock Springs, Wyoming, identified a need to better communicate their district-wide expectations for teaching…
A teacher’s job has always included more than just what takes place while students are in the classroom—and always should. Besides the obvious lesson planning and grading, teachers need to be involved in curriculum development, data analysis of student learning, problem-solving, and other professional development activities related to teaching/learning research…
Eight years later, did the Common Core Standards help or hurt? This might be the million-dollar question with equal numbers of supporters on each side of the debate. While this question can be posed regarding any set of state or national standards followed by a district in the past or…
Districts are challenged more and more to develop or maintain a systemic culture for curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Very often, the first challenge is in determining the extent to which a systemic culture exists and in this E-Hint, our goal is to give you the questions and some tools to…
As the summer break from the classroom challenges continues, it is time to reflect on how to best prepare novice and new teachers for the school year ahead. After hiring a teacher, a school district has an obligation to make every effort to assure the students assigned to the new…
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…
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?
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
Most teachers do not see themselves as curriculum developers, nor believe they have been adequately trained to write valid assessments. Serving on a curriculum committee may seem like a lot of unnecessary work to a teacher initially; however, once they go through the process, they realize that thoroughly studying, clarifying,…
Since all district leaders were involved in creating the new vision for the district, they all needed a thorough understanding of the curriculum process and how to implement change. A number of the district leaders were selected to lead subject area committees through their curriculum and assessment work; thereby ensuring…
t’s been said that change is the only constant. This seems especially true in education. There is always a new initiative, textbook, program, policy, or new personnel coming and going within school districts. Sometimes it is difficult to preserve continuity in the midst of these types of random and frequent…
As we approach the start of another school year, there are many staff members who play a role in the success of the school. A CLI Model district has designated leadership teams with specific roles. The Curriculum Coordinating Council (CCC) is responsible for making academic recommendations for the district, while…
Yes, the end of the school year is in sight. Teachers are worried about finishing the curriculum, checking in books, taking down the posters from the walls, entering grades, and all of their other year-end tasks. Administrators are ticking items off of their own lists and sending out reminders and…
Within the last year, over half a dozen current and former CLI districts have opted to organize their local curriculums using the new CLI Online Curriculum Library, a Google Site template. The benefits for districts using Google (now called G-Suite for Education) are widely known: free email accounts (Gmail), file…
In current school accreditation models, the existence of a systems approach is valued and evidence of that approach is necessary for a favorable review. Accreditation teams are looking for indications of examining the whole system as well as documentation on taking care of the details. One accreditation team’s review of…
In a recent conversation, a principal at a Curriculum Leadership Institute (CLI) client district expressed concern about the sixth-grade math team. The district received state test results and it was clear that the sixth-grade students, as a whole, underperformed on one specific state standard. Unsure of the correct course of…
The keys to mediating conflict are to identify the signs of dysfunction, determine when to intervene, and provide the correct guidance to reach a resolution. When issues are more involved, it may require multiple meetings to come to an agreement. Using a systematic approach to meetings is just one dimension…
Analysis of relevant elements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) suggests topics of discussion for the CLI district’s curriculum coordinating council. Although those who prepared ESSA say the act places most responsibility for establishing provisions to ensure school accountability on states, many stipulations included at the federal level do…
“Curriculum” is discussed on a daily basis in conversations within schools among administrators, teachers, support staff, and outside stakeholders. Strangely enough, it is a term that carries fundamental misconceptions that make those conversations difficult. Unless everyone involved in the conversation has the same definition for curriculum, what is said and…
Reviewing the status of ongoing initiatives and planning for the current year should become routine. In the years following the development of curriculum documents, the implementation of curriculum, and the writing of assessments, there are often other initiatives that must come into play to further improve student learning. While we…
Recently, another educator used a really great metaphor about taking time to “mow the lawn” now and again. Mowing the lawn is perhaps one of the least hated chores that we have to do. Maybe it’s because freshly cut grass smells so nice or because we also get in a…
In honor of School Library Month, this E-Hint is inspired by a new book: The Other Side of the Report Card: Assessing Students’ Social, Emotional, and Character Development by Maurice Elias, Joseph Ferrito and Dominic Moceri (2016). As curriculum developers, we know that academic learning should be thoughtfully planned, and…
As an educator, you are often called upon to lead change efforts within your district. Even if you have not implemented the CLI Model, you know that all educators can be change agents and you have most likely already determined that in education, change is sometimes the only constant as…
Whether your district is already working with CLI, or is considering that possibility, it is important to know why CLI is the right choice in this new era of school improvement. CLI’s comprehensive and multi-dimensional Pathways to School Improvement Model fits nicely with all new and emerging recommendations for meeting…
Full of hope and excitement, we once again find ourselves at the beginning of a new school year! As reality hits and task lists grow, the excitement may soon fade; however, there are still spectacular things happening all over the country in education, as Jay Harnack, Superintendent in Sublette County…