Build Student Perspective Into Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement can sound like fixing something that is wrong, but it is actually a structured process to strategize for success. It fosters a growth mindset, especially toward planning, evaluating, and adopting new practices to foster equity for students in your setting. Using state assessment and other student data is an essential part of the process. An overlooked and potent form of data is student perspective data. Student perspectives can be a crucial data point, especially in making improvements for educational equity.
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Sharing Problems of Practice Takes Courage
ELAP’s Peer-to-Peer Sessions provide a network for leaders to connect and support each other while examining equitable practices. Our latest session was an opportunity for leaders to share current problems of practice, or dilemmas. Sharing dilemmas can feel unsafe unless structures are in place to allow leaders to be vulnerable together. Using protocols creates an environment for reflection and openness. When peers engage with each other using collaborative protocols, such as Peeling The Onion and The Consultancy, they create an environment that encourages diverse perspectives, deep reflection, and insights into challenging problems of practice. These dilemmas are often common challenges, so participants can take away as much learning as the presenter.
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March 2024 CLEE News - Innovation for Improvement
Where will you focus your innovations for improvement this month?
Improve Online Experiences Using Adult Learning Theory
Learn Key Strategies to Collaborate for Equity in No-Cost Virtual Sessions
Sharing Problems of Practice Takes Courage
Apply to Principal Residency Network Today!
Overcoming Barriers to Equity Through Intentional Learning Communities
Build Student Perspective Into Continuous Improvement
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Improve Online Experiences Using Adult Learning Theory
How can we make learning experiences more enriching and time-effective? Like schools, CLEE looks toward ever-advancing technology to support our efforts. Recently, CLEE launched a new learning management system (LMS) to support the educators we serve. One of our biggest areas of learning is how important it is to design learning experiences in the LMS that utilize adult learning theory.
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Get Support to Enact Your Student Opportunity Act (SOA) Plan
As you know, the Massachusetts Student Opportunity Act (SOA) requires your district to create a three-year plan to rapidly address persistent disparities in achievement across student groups. One of the requirements of these plans is to select evidence-based programs to address disparities in outcomes. We can help your district with the implementation of your plans.
The Center for Leadership and Educational Equity (CLEE) has many evidence-based professional development practices that can help address these disparities and measure impact. We are a national organization located in Rhode Island with a local footprint in Massachusetts.
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New Year for Resolutions as a PDSA
As I think about setting my New Year's resolutions and goals, I am struck by the similarities between generating a resolution and the Plan Do Study Act (PDSA) cycle CLEE uses with schools to implement improvements. Many of us set goals - whether to exercise more, lose weight, volunteer, etc. We generate plans to reach our aspirations, take action, and evaluate if our plans work. Yet, when we endeavor to do the same in our professional work by using an intentional process - goal setting, plan development, and monitoring - it can appear overwhelming, leaving us wondering where to begin, or worse, causing our initiatives to stall.
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Community Success Needs Community Planning
A school or district improvement plan can just be another requirement or it can be an opportunity to set direction for increasing equity. CLEE’s strategic planning services engage stakeholders in a collaborative process to share their perspectives and help define strategic priorities. This tailored process guides you and your colleagues in identifying high-priority goals and strategies that increase learning and equity for each and every student. Together you construct a clear guide for the next phases of improvement.
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What are you Reading?: Talking Racial Justice in Education, Solidarity and Radical Ideas with TC’S Bettina Love
I am inspired to share a few of my favorite quotes from this interview:
“Anti-Blackness is not bigger than Blackness. Never question your genius, your humanity, your intelligence, your beauty. Never question it.” - Bettina Love, with words of encouragement for Black students.
This powerful quote is highlighted in the interview by author Sherri Gardner with Bettina Love, professor and racial justice scholar. This interview is an important read for everyone.
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Who are Courageous Conversations for?
To advance equitable educational outcomes, educators need to have direct conversations about why pervasive, disproportionate outcomes exist for underserved students (by race, income, perceived ability, and language). That used to be a controversial statement, and in some places it may still be. However, having these conversations can transform adults. They can make identities explicit, uncover hidden biases, and help educators identify inequities and strategies to overcome them in their school. However, they cannot be transformative if they only focus on educators.
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The Importance of Classroom Visits for School Improvement
Instructional Rounds are intentional classroom observations and in-depth discussions to give and receive essential feedback on leadership practices to inform instructional support. These rounds help leaders and leadership teams develop common understanding of key district and school priorities through unpacking “problems of practice” and developing strategies to address them.
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Harness the Power of Change Agents from Across the Globe to Create Continuous Improvement in Your Community
Continuous Improvement is crucial to our mission of transforming schools into spaces for joyful learning for each and every student. It is a cycle of actions to get us where we want to go. Recently, Michelle Li, one of CLEE’s program directors who specializes in Continuous Improvement, had a conversation with her mentor, Don Peuarch, a leader in the global Continuous Improvement movement and CLEE Board Member, about his new course/community, “Transforming Education in an Interconnected World”.
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January 2024 CLEE News - Reflect, React and Resolve to Make Lasting Change
Reflect, React and Resolve to Make Lasting Change
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Make Your Team Meetings More Effective with CLEE Practices
Do your team meetings feel engaging and leave you charged up with purpose and new learning, as well as suggesting tools and strategies to enact next steps? Do you get a lot done together in a short amount of time? Or do you find yourself thinking that could have been accomplished in email? CLEE can help make your team time more effective and help you advance your improvement goals.
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Equity Leaders Benefit from Peer to Peer Learning
CLEE’s ELAP program has been intentionally designed with equitable student outcomes at its core through the use of MA DESE’s Anti Racist Leadership Practices and honing in on the Instructional Core as drivers for the work. In addition to one-on-one coaching, part of the magic of ELAP is bringing together leaders from across the network for peer to peer sessions where educators have an opportunity to celebrate successes as well as receive feedback on some of the challenges being faced in schools today.
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Streamline the Strategic Planning Process with CLEE’s Proven Methods
Creating a strategic plan for my district periodically is not only a requirement, but an opportunity to make changes to improve outcomes for my students. The last time we created a district plan, we did it all ourselves. I was an Assistant Superintendent at the time, so I took on the task not only of leading the strategic planning process, but also creating a planning process for the district. It was like building an airplane and flying at the same time. It took over months of my professional life.
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December CLEE News - Leverage Collaboration to Reach Your Goals
Leverage Collaboration to Reach Your Goals
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Facilitative Leadership - Shifting from Expert to Coach
Recently a participant was grappling with the complex challenge of figuring out how to effectively engage in an equity-focused discussion with her staff. As an emerging equity leader she was at the early stages of making sense of our work together, and learning how to identify inequities within her own school. Her struggle is one that many school leaders grapple with when first engaging in equity-focused work; they are unsure how to navigate the complexities associated with leading the work
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Shared Leadership can Share the Load - Transformational Leadership Coaching
Leaders in education feel the weight of their responsibility to their teams and students. This weight can feel like it is theirs alone to carry and can impact their practice and decisions. What if leaders could have partners in this burden of leadership?
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Focus on the Instructional Core to Move from “Concern” to “Influence”
With so much in a school leader’s realm of concern, (e.g., regulatory constraints, budgetary and resource limitations, safety, bureaucratic structures, and staff retention) how can one stay in their realm of influence?
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