Our guest is Julie Blaine. Julie is the Executive Director of the Missouri Central Regional Professional Development Center. She is also the current President of the Board of Trustees of Learning Forward.
How do we address the needs of all of our adult learners? How do we move from KNOWING to DOING? The standard Learning Designs focuses on DOING. Julie shares an example of a powerful learning design that she uses as she works with teams of teachers on writing. Working with collaborative teams that focus on DATA, they use the protocol of looking at student work. What do the team members see in the student work? What has worked? What has not worked? These are ONGOING collaborative team meetings that include the continuous cycle of improvement. This process can include many different designs – book study, lesson study, observations, online learning – depending on the specific needs of each team. The choices are made by the team members after they have looked at the data. The power comes when teachers share!! Another component of Leaning Designs is ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT. Again, what am I going to KNOW and DO? We want our educators to EXPERIENCE the new standards.
The next step is IMPLEMENTATION (Let’s do it!) in our classrooms; then, the evidence. What are we going to show that our work (learning) is making a difference in the classroom? What data can we share with others? Hard core on paper evidence!
Learning Designs support IMPLEMENTATION at the system level. As we know, it takes all of the standards to move from KNOWING to DOING. Many districts are now engaged in long-term, sustained, job-embedded professional learning. Celebration!! Districts are truly walking their talk – seeing the power of Professional Learning across time. Educators also want the WHY of change and that can be a challenge but it is happening in many districts who have embraced professional learning and the Standards of Professional Learning.
Reflection – Keep Moving Forward!!
Our window is WIDE OPEN for professional learning!
