The five components of educational innovation driving MPCSD’s mission for every child to achieve academic excellence include learner-centered instruction, evidence and competency-based mastery, meaningful work, students’ wellness and agency, and collaboration for all.
The learner-centered component is about gaining a better understanding of students’ strengths, interests, and needs so that teachers use differentiation to adjust for learner variability. Through learning self-awareness and self-direction, students are more engaged and take ownership of their learning beyond the classroom environment.
The evidence and competency-based mastery component focuses on creating learning targets so that instruction is aligned with students’ learning, and pacing and depth determined by individual progress. Using frequent formative assessments and actionable feedback on the mastery continuum provides students with the space to iterate towards mastery.
Inquiry into challenging real-world issues driven by students’ questions is the basis for meaningful work component. Students share products with an authentic audience and homework, when given, is tied to individual learning goals.
Related: 5 big ideas for educational innovation in 2019
The student wellness and agency component underpin all of the other components as it is about implementing student-driven goal setting, student-led conferences, and student progress tracking that offers students opportunities to collaborate with their peers, teachers, and parents. This component also involves social-emotional learning which ensures greater focus and daily connections to the learner profile by introducing, practicing, and reinforcing specific mindset and skills.
Through the collaboration for all components, a safe community is created where teachers know that they are all learners and have permission to fail. This component also ensures teacher collaboration across grades and schools and scalable best practices throughout the entire district.
The path forward to educational innovation
Educational innovation is exhausting, but in MPCSD, it has transformed instruction and learning, Fox said. The district now has engaged and reflective teachers, learner-centered environments, and teaching practices where students exhibit greater ownership of learning.
Burmeister cautions, “Innovation is a four-letter word, as it takes people out of their comfort zone. It’s not saying that what we have done in the past is bad. It has been super effective and efficient, but what we also recognize that 20 percent of our students are still not achieving or graduating from high school.”
In MPCSD’s path forward, using Rogers’ Adoption Curve, district leaders plan to expand from innovators to early adopters in the 2019-2020 school year. By jumping the chasm of the learning curve, educators envision a school culture where the zones of innovation are no longer necessary and fall away.
Future action plans include early cohort mentoring future cohorts, more personalized pathways for educators to drive their growth, moving away from catalytic work, and empowering campus buildings to lead work through a shared vision. Only then, said Vodicka, can school districts move from an industrial education model of mass production, medium quality, and low flexibility to a post-industrial education model of mass personalization, high-quality, high flexibility, and educational innovation.
About the presenters
Erik Burmeister, Superintendent of the Menlo Park City School District in California, is passionate about innovating public education and ensuring our public schools offer students, parents, and educators a wide variety of high quality experiences that meet the demands of our rapidly changing environment. Erik served as the principal of two model schools—Union in San Jose and Hillview in Menlo Park—both award-winning institutions of rigor and innovation. In partnership with the Stanford Design School, Erik has become a leader in applying design to solve a variety of education challenges including closing the achievement gap, school redesign, technology implementation, and whole child support. Erik was named Middle Grades Principal of the Year for the Association of California School Administrators and one of the three finalists for the 2014 NASSP National Principal of the Year. In 2012, the Wiseman Group named Erik Multiplier of the Year in Education.
Theresa Fox is the coordinator for technology and innovation for Menlo Park City School District in California. She brings multiple perspectives to this work, informed by her 20 years of experience as a 2nd-8th grade teacher, a K-8 instructional coach, and an elementary assistant principal. She is passionate about engaging all students in deeper learning through inquiry (especially project-based learning and design thinking), integrating technology meaningfully, and supporting teachers’ professional growth. She is currently facilitating the work of the i3 Zones of Innovation team, a group of 20 teachers who are collaborating to “imagine, inspire, and innovate” to better meet the needs of all learners in their classrooms.
Dr. Devin Vodicka, Chief Impact Officer at AltSchool and former superintendent, is recognized as one of the most innovative educational leaders in the country. He is a three-time California superintendent of the year (2016 AASA, 2015 ACSA, 2015 Pepperdine), Innovative Superintendent of the Year, and nine-time White House honoree, both in recognition for district-wide achievement, and to advise and partner with the U.S. Department of Education. Devin is renowned for his unique understanding of how technology can help transform learning. As superintendent of Vista Unified School District, Devin led his 25,000-student community through district-wide changes that resulted in major improvements across every academic and behavioral metric. Now Devin is working to bring similar sweeping improvements to children nationwide through his work to help develop an education technology platform to accelerate learner-centric education.
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Leadership and Innovation is a free professional learning community on edWeb.net that serves as an online forum for collaboration on leadership and innovation in schools to meet the needs of the next generation.
This edWeb broadcast was sponsored by AltSchool. The recording of the edWebinar can be viewed by anyone here.
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