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.
How do we design tasks and learning experiences so that every student, every day, in every classroom, is learning and growing? What structures and models will create opportunities for teachers and students to learn deeply? Using authentic student work and tasks, we will explore how instruction and student learning are directly impacted by the design of the learning. Designing for equity also requires us to consider how to become culturally responsive in order to guide all students to competency.
Participants will evaluate tasks and student work to consider the intentionality of task design, instructional planning, and assessment practices in creating high expectations and cultural relevance. We will work in teams and share our thinking as we explore, examine, analyze, and create effective learning opportunities for all.
"Smithfield High School’s social studies department has redesigned what our 9–12 curriculum looks like and how it impacts students. For our students, we personalized the delivery of five foundation power standards which are transferable in nature. This has fostered conversations around everything we do. From professional growth to grading to formative and summative assessments to daily instruction, no stone has been left unturned. We have rebuilt our curriculum into a powerful program that has clear, definable, and measurable outcomes for graduating students who are prepared for their next challenges. This session will not only explore how SHS social studies built and refined this system, but how we live in both a proficiency-based and traditional grading world. We will explore how this not only impacted our practices but student learning, feedback, and supports with the hope of helping other academic teams and teachers meet these challenges within their own schools and districts.
Participants will leave with an understanding of the challenges and strategies when transitioning content areas’ traditional curricula into interactive curriculum guides that are standards-based and 21st century skills-focused which produce a graduate with specific and measurable knowledge and skills as well as a practical approach to balancing the reporting out of both standards-based and numerical achievement."
Bloomfield High School invites you to participate in an open and transparent dialogue about the benefits of structure and instructional practices. Topics include: building an effective and collegial professional learning community, ongoing job-embedded professional development, writing standards-based curricula, vertical and horizontal interdisciplinary data teams, ongoing formative and summative assessments, collaborative and calibrated scoring of student work, and providing specific and timely feedback aligned to standards-based analytical rubrics. When teachers reach a common understanding of what excellence looks like, a set of practices are put in place to achieve excellence at the highest level.
Participants will leave with the knowledge of how to build capacity in teachers to transform a school, utilize high effect sized instructional and assessment strategies to promote student achievement and narrow and/or close achievement gaps, and tailor data teams to serve as effective professional learning communities.
Rhode Island’s Secondary School Regulations have long supported student-centered learning. For example, for many years, regulations have required that school districts help students in grades 6–12 develop Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) that describe students’ academic, career, and social/personal goals and map out the path they will take to achieve their goals.
However, strong policies are not enough. In focus groups and surveys, many students reported that they did not have an ILP or that they did not see the value of their ILP because their schools were not using them as intended.The Rhode Island Department of Education is working to revitalize these plans to ensure that all students have plans that are meaningful. This session will focus on the tools and supports that have been created to support schools and districts in revitalizing these plans.
Participants will leave with concrete ideas about how to implement a meaningful Individual Learning Plan (ILP) that helps students translate their academic, career, and personal/social goals into a plan for how to achieve them.
I manage the Rhode Island Alliance for College and Career Readiness and coordinate a related Student-Centered Learning Leadership Table in Rhode Island. I believe strongly in the importance of student and parent voice and enjoy opportunities to interact with and learn from Rhode Island... Read More →
Onna Mechanic-Holland is currently the School Counseling Fellow at RIDE in the Office of College and Career Readiness. She is a middle school counselor at Ricci Middle School in North Providence and Secretary on the executive board for the Rhode Island School Counselor Association... Read More →
Bloomfield High School invites you to participate in an open and transparent dialogue about the benefits of structure and instructional practices. Topics include: building an effective and collegial professional learning community, ongoing job-embedded professional development, writing standards-based curricula, vertical and horizontal interdisciplinary data teams, ongoing formative and summative assessments, collaborative and calibrated scoring of student work, and providing specific and timely feedback aligned to standards-based analytical rubrics. When teachers reach a common understanding of what excellence looks like, a set of practices are put in place to achieve excellence at the highest level.
Participants will leave with the knowledge of how to build capacity in teachers to transform a school, utilize high effect sized instructional and assessment strategies to promote student achievement and narrow and/or close achievement gaps, and tailor data teams to serve as effective professional learning communities.