The Bolton High School Academic Leadership Team has been working the past 5 years to redefine the Bolton High School graduate. This session will introduce attendees to our journey and focus on the organizational structures developed to support the process. Emphasis will be on how to effectively use leadership teams to guide institutional changes, along with how to leverage collaborative professional learning communities to build professional capacity and support teachers as they explore mastery-based learning and implement new graduation requirements and scoring criteria. We will share agendas and materials from our Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and will engage with attendees in small "mock PLCs" focused on transferable skills, personalized learning, and mastery-based approaches. While not the focus of our session, we will also have information available about how we are communicating our academic expectations, student progress, and institutional changes to students, parents, and the community.
Participants will leave the session with PLC activities and suggested agendas focused on mastery-based learning and aimed at improving teacher buy-in and efficacy. They will also leave with a better understanding of how to use school organizational structures to develop a portrait of the graduate and implement new graduation requirements.
