Teaching and Learning: September 2017

Monday, September 25, 2017

Fwd: Kick Off Your Week: Powerful Community Engagement Partnerships

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From: Supt. Christina Kishimoto <reply@hawaiidoe.org>
Date: Mon, Sep 25, 2017 at 10:00 AM
Subject: Kick Off Your Week: Powerful Community Engagement Partnerships
To: 20048903@notes.k12.hi.us

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Powerful Community Engagement Partnerships

As I visit high schools, I am excited about the school design models that are either in place or are in progress as Principals, teachers and school staff work together to create powerful teaming practices to deliver on opportunities in health, STEM, computer science and coding, animal and plant sciences, business and finance, culinary arts, construction and electrical engineering, teaching, and environmental sciences among many other exciting areas. Just last Friday I was at Roosevelt High School with previous visits to Waipahu High, Kealakehe High, Leilehua High, Radford High, Aiea High, Olomana School, Kea'au High, and Farrington High. I thank these leaders for pushing the agenda in school design and leading their school models through powerful, reflective, change practices designed around students! 
What is driving this work? The restructuring of high school classes into purposefully designed pathways. Pathway designs are a continuum of studies at the high school level that are mapped back from college and career opportunities and courses of study. These college and career pathways accelerate our students' readiness and their competitiveness.  
Some of you may not be aware of a team at HIDOE that will be playing a key role in advancing our agenda around school design pathways, particularly at the secondary level. Within the past few weeks, I empowered the Office of Community Engagement with the charge to serve as the arm for the HIDOE in extending our capacity through valuable corporate, industry, family and community partnerships that advance our school design work.
As we look at expanding our pathway opportunities at the secondary level, we know that we need to think differently about how we deliver our core instruction based on these pathways. College and career pathways provide powerful learning opportunities for students to understand:

     •   the prerequisites they need to fulfill to be well-prepared for a career path,  
   •   the diverse opportunities available within a career path,  
   •   the relevance of the curriculum for success in the career path, and 
   •   the ways in which they can impact the world by problem-solving within that career path.
To provide this type of learning practice, we need business and industry partners who can help us extend learning beyond the classroom to include: opportunities for authentic research and applied learning, internship opportunities, opportunities to complete industry certificate programs, early college classes, job shadows and summer employment. This model reflects the modern secondary classroom. In addition to this expanded definition of the high school classroom, business and industry partners also provide valuable feedback and content through industry-vetted curriculum. It is through these powerful learning practices that we see the greatest impact on student engagement and achievement. 
Next month, the HIDOE Office of Community Engagement, in partnership with higher education, foundations, business and industry, multiple state agencies, P-20 Council, and the chamber of commerce, will gather to continue the work of C2C or Connect to Careers, a partnership that has come together to support pathway designs. Among the targeted projects of this collaborative, the chamber brings together partners by industry to talk about and plan for the continuum from K-12 education to each industry. The goal is to provide high level readiness through rich opportunities and well-defined pathways for our students as future leaders and decision-makers across industries.

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Monday, September 18, 2017

Fwd: Kick Off Your Week: Talent Management

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From: Supt. Christina Kishimoto <reply@hawaiidoe.org>
Date: Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 10:53 AM
Subject: Kick Off Your Week: Talent Management
To: 20048903@notes.k12.hi.us

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Talent Management

You may have noticed that the job posting for the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources is now posted as the Assistant Superintendent of Talent Management. This is the start of a collaborative conversation around who we are as a collective team of professionals charged with an important public education mission of providing quality education access to all our students. This is about ensuring that we are a high performing team that delivers on outcomes based on our mission. So what is Talent Management? Well let's begin by first defining School Design because Talent Management is about supporting our School Design models.

School Design is the purposeful design of schools to ensure that every student is highly engaged in a rigorous, creative and innovative academic curriculum, in their learning environment, and in powerful applied learning practices aligned to college and careers.

As we examine ways to support our schools who are exploring, transitioning to, or scaling up various programmatic designs, I want to encourage us to continue to look at staff capacity and readiness for these various levels of implementation. Whether a school is adding a set of STEM classes, expanding CTE, implementing a blended learning approach, adding PK classes, going to wall to wall academies, or looking at project-based learning approaches, we need to think about what these new and growing opportunities require from us in order to ensure implementation success. Our need to continuously innovative, keep up with technologies, and ensure that we maintain the skills and capacity we need to do our jobs well is something we must commit to together as a learning organization.
Human Resources plays an important role in partnership with school Principals in managing our human resource talent. From staff recruitment for particular school designs, to recruiting high school and college students to pursue the teaching profession, to professional development around research-based student engagement strategies, to staff collaboration time to think about resource and facilities utilization, to the recruitment and preparation of our leaders, to grow-your-own models, all of these are important talent management components. Talent Management is grounded in a growth mindset about how we all work together across the organization of the HIDOE to develop and maintain the workforce we need to get our core work done - to ensure student learning success. I look forward to exploring this concept further with our HIDOE team as we think about how we innovate together to create powerful learning experiences for all ALL of our keiki in Hawai'i while engaging in powerful learning practices as a staff.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Fwd: Kick Off Your Week:

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From: Supt. Christina Kishimoto <reply@hawaiidoe.org>
Date: Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 9:19 AM
Subject: Kick Off Your Week:
To: 20048903@notes.k12.hi.us

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Inspiring school models

As I continue my school visits, I recognize that I have a unique vantage point as I get to see the instruction occurring across our public school classrooms. I am enjoying my discussions with our students, teachers and principals. Very few people get to see the breadth of school models, great teaching, the student engagement, and the leadership decisions across our schools that impact the lives of our children and youth every day. Very few people get to see what it means to educate every child, from keiki who need additional supports, to keiki with multiple disabilities, to keiki who are gifted, to keiki who change schools many times as the children of active military, to keiki with and without means, to keiki who do not speak English or who speak multiple languages, to keiki who are curious to learn. We serve all keiki. This is an honorable mission!

I am reminded, as I observe and interact with the myriad of great student-centered school design models that make up our great HIDOE system, that we must find a way to tell our stories. Our stories include great successes and continued development as we reflect in practice and design around our students. Here are a few school models from around our state.

'Ohana-Based School

Last week I visited Maunaloa Elementary School in Moloka'i and I had the opportunity to sit with two parents during breakfast. They shared with me how special their school is to their agriculture-based community, despite its very small size of 40 students. The students and staff began their day at the flagpole singing Hawai'i Pono'i. Students left their shoes at the classroom doors, and began their collaborative morning activities. This was followed by instruction in multi-grade classrooms (necessary because of the small enrollment) where teachers organized students in learning centers. Maunaloa is a very small 'ohana-centered school where the love and care for students is a core assumption of the school design. Rather than see the small school as a deficit, the principal and school team use the intimate size to create a rich learning environment where students, teachers, staff and parents work together.

Effective Middle School Model

Later in the week, I visited Kailua Intermediate, a school located within a thriving commercial area in O'ahu. Students participate in a rich middle school learning design that includes diverse exploratory options at the start of each morning, from STEM projects to visual arts to design technology. Students walk confidently throughout the school from learning centers within classrooms to learning spaces for science experiments and performances in the courtyard. Teachers have designed this school around students. All middle school students need rich, hands-on, creative learning opportunities both within the school day and in after-school enrichment offerings.

Small School Support Setting

The third model I will highlight truly showcases how we serve all of our young people in Hawai'i, including those who need second chances. We know the challenges of being a teenager, an important developmental transition to a more independent self. For teenagers who have become distracted from their studies, or for those who may have made poor choices, this time period can be extremely difficult. When I visited Olomana High School, I saw the love and care that a team of educators give to young people who need second and sometimes third or fourth chances. This school welcomes our teenagers, builds their collaboration skills and engages them in a hand-on industry-grade learning curriculum that re-empowers them through learning.

Hawaiian Language Immersion

Finally, I want to highlight our Hawaiian Language Immersion program for 7th and 8th graders at Moloka'i Middle School. With a focus on biliteracy, the Hawaiian Language Immersion program provides a rigorous, culturally infused learning approach to students who want to develop their proficiency in the Hawaiian language through content instruction. Students may continue their studies in Native Hawaiian through the 12th grade and earn a seal of biliteracy. The goal is to graduate students who can critically think, reason, speak, read, write and engage with proficiency in two languages. Hawai'i's program is unmatched nationally.

These are only four examples of the breadth of school models that we have in Hawai'i, but I hope that it reminds you of our important calling as a team of educators, and highlights the pride with which we serve our keiki. We educate, support, nurture, and inspire about 180,000 students within their communities. We will continue to honor our students as learners, infusing their language, culture, community and history into how we deliver education.

If you are an active tweeter, tag your great school-based stories with #HI4PublicEd. Share your story!

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Fwd: Kick Off Your Week: Visits to KKP schools

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Supt. Christina Kishimoto <reply@hawaiidoe.org>
Date: Tue, Sep 5, 2017 at 10:44 AM
Subject: Kick Off Your Week: Visits to KKP schools
To: 20048903@notes.k12.hi.us

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Visit to Na'alehu El, Kea'au High

A few days ago, I visited two schools on the Big Island that made me reflect on our priorities and the important work that lies ahead of us as an education community. I have a deep commitment to deliver on a vision of access to quality education for ALL Hawai'i keiki through three driving strategies: School Design, Student Voice and Teacher Collaboration. I hope that you share this commitment because only a community working together can ensure academic success for all students. There is no work more meaningful.

When I visited Na'alehu Elementary School and Kea'au High School, I was invigorated as I talked with students about their aspirations to contribute to the world, to their local communities and to their families in significant and powerful ways! There are many questions what we will need to answer together:

How do we help students find the pathway to achieve their personal goals?
How do we design schools that deepen their areas of passion?
How do we develop in them the skills and mindset to meet critical benchmarks on the way to becoming our future engineers, teachers, electricians, and software designers, as they articulated to me that day?
What are the experiences that need to be part of their instructional studies?
What content areas do they need to master to reach those higher level courses that will open up those opportunities?
Who are the people that they need to interact with; the materials they need to be exposed to, manipulate, create; the concepts they need to struggle with, research, question, and work through?
What opportunities do they have to create and design?

At Na'alehu Elementary School the 6th grade students filled a classroom and opted to meet with me instead of taking their recess. (Yes, hard to believe — but perhaps their principal had something to do with this.) They had so much to share about their love for their school, their excitement about their future and their ideas about how to improve their school. To the question, "If you were principal, what would you change about your school?" I received the thoughtful and enthusiastic response, "We want more science!" While they also wanted a trampoline, the conversation focused on their love of science and wanting more time with science instruction. This is a testament to several things:

Teachers at Na'alehu are doing a great job of exciting students around science;
Students are eager to learn and create; and
Students are very thoughtful when asked to provide feedback about instruction and their learning.

Among the staff I spoke with at Kea'au High School, I had the pleasure to talk with a science teacher who is interested in developing a robotics elective. She has been teaching computer science, coding and robotics concepts, but in conversation I learned that she has had no formal training in coding, which I have also heard from teachers at other school visits. I need to ask, how are we supporting our teachers who are teaching these cutting edge technologies utilizing design thinking approaches? How does a teacher with impactful ideas around student engagement create a collaborative with other teachers around a new instructional approach? Where do teachers go to for innovation funds or to vet an innovative teaching concept?

My time at Na'alehu El and Kea'au High helped me to reflect on the conditions that make great school designs possible in Hawai'i while also raising questions around how to provide quality support structures for students, teachers and leaders to continue to advance innovative practices in professional development, student empowerment, career pathways, applied learning, design thinking, technology infusion, and collaboration models.

How does our collective focus on School Design, Student Voice and Teacher Collaboration impact how you deliver and structure your work this school year?