Keep an eye on Vista Unified School District in California. You may want to add it to your list of visits for your teachers and administrators to see how learning is dramatically changing, even in schools with very significant challenges.
I have written extensively about Vista Innovation and Design Academy, and the dramatic positive changes there in just the last two years under the leadership of Supt. Devin Vodicka and his team. Then last fall, the district won one of the ten coveted XQ America super-schools awards for Vista High School. Yesterday, at the EdTech Teacher Innovation Summit I sat in on a workshop given by a team from Rancho Minerva Middle School, which, like VIDA, serves a population of mostly low income students. In the last four years they have:
- Adopted a 1:1 laptop and tablet program.
- Built a student-centered personalized learning approach using a range of tools and classroom approaches, including individual student and teacher playlists.
- Gotten rid of many textbooks and are building curriculum with open educational resources.
- Created a mentoring program where every student meets individually with a staff member at least once a week.
- Created a “swat” team of students to help teachers and other students learn to use technologies, and to partner with teachers in developing their curricula.
- Found 85 minutes a day for teacher team collaboration.
Like other schools I have worked with and visited that started these shifts from a place of low student engagement and performance, the student results have been very positive. And like other schools that adopt a deeper learning model, the teachers say that “they have never worked this hard and would not want to work anywhere else; this is why I got into teaching!” What impresses me is that, given good leadership and a strong, collective vision, these changes, even in schools with significant initial challenges, are happening in just a few years. That is light-speed in “school-time”. The models are out there!
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