Fwd: Kick Off Your Week: Schools of the Future

Teri Ann Lin 6th Grade LA/SS Teacher    Wheeler Middle School   (202) 810-3025   teampueo.weebly.com

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From: Hawaii DOE <reply@hawaiidoe.org>
Date: Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 9:09 AM
Subject: Kick Off Your Week: Schools of the Future
To: 20048903@notes.k12.hi.us

VIEW EMAIL ONLINE Schools of the Future The state of collaboration among education organizations in the state of Hawai'i was evident during the 9th Annual Schools of the Future conference at the Convention Center last week. Over 1,000 educators came together for two days of learning and sharing — a collaborative of the Hawai'i DOE, the Charter School Commission, and the Hawai'i Association of Independent Schools, along with a number of dedicated sponsors. The conference is designed to provide opportunities to share best practices among and between our schools. The conference is noted for being agnostic to school type (i.e. public, charter, private), and instead focuses on the need for excellence across all district and school types to ensure access to quality education for all keiki in Hawai'i. While across the nation many states struggle to bring various school providers to the same table, the state of Hawai'i stands out for hosting an education collaborative of this magnitude by the education providers themselves. As is self evident in the name of the conference, the focus of this convening is to push for a forward-facing view of our education systems. The Hawai'i DOE/BOE Strategic Plan likewise represents this present and future view of our work by emphasizing the importance of our collective work as: Designers of schools Engagers of student voice Developers of powerful teacher collaboratives Students provide feedback on their learning experiences at the Schools of the Future Conference, Oct. 26, 2017. Our kuleana is to provide all students equitable access to excellent education. Classrooms across our state are delivering on this by keeping the end in mind: to prepare our students for college, career and community pathways of their design. As an education team with this student-driven focus, we are shifting our mindset to one where we are co-designers with students rather than for students. Many of these powerful practices were shared at the conference. The question for us now is, how do we bring a forward-facing, co-designer view of school design, engagement, collaboration and delivery models to all of our schools? We have a tremendous opportunity in Hawai'i. We already represent diverse portfolio models in our schools and academies such as IB, STEM, agricultural sciences, construction, culinary arts, health sciences, teacher academies, and so forth. To support our next advancements, we must ensure that the qualities that are evident across our most improved and successful schools are embedded in all schools, while allowing for diverse school models. In these schools, There are a lot of student-directed activities and lots of student talk about the learning, Student teams can be observed working on group projects and engaged in design thinking, The school campus and classrooms reflect a breadth of authentic and creative student-created products, The school has adopted flexible learning spaces — students are working everywhere not just in controlled classroom settings, Teaching is multi-disciplinary and co-teaching teams help students understand content as it is found in real practice, Technology is being used to research, create, design and share, rather than to generate a digital version of analog work that's already out there, Visual and performing arts are evident on the building, in the sounds of the hallways, in the courtyard and in the community, and The history, culture, values and languages of Hawai'i are embedded in student, teacher, leader, parent, staff and partner activities. If we boldly continue on this path of designing schools and learning opportunities around students, if we engage students in their areas of passion and interests, if we expand our construct around how we use time in school, if we redefine our thinking of instructional resources and student learning projects, we will advance toward a more forward facing view of a future that we know is already upon us. Continue to lead boldly and advance your school design. I look forward to continuing my school and classroom visits to learn about your work in designing schools of the future. FOLLOW US: Facebook | Twitter | Vimeo | Pinterest | LinkedIn | Google+      ONLINE: HawaiiPublicSchools.org This email was sent to all Hawai'i DOE staff. unsubscribe

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