Teaching and Learning: January 2018

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From: Supt. Christina Kishimoto <reply@hawaiidoe.org>
Date: Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 12:24 PM
Subject: Kick Off Your Week: Teacher and Leader Development Opportunities
To: 20048903@notes.k12.hi.us

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Teacher and Leader Development Opportunities

Last week I shared with you some thoughts about teacher recruitment and the desire that we must move from a recruitment and retention challenge to a highly desirable and competitive education pathway that attracts and retains educator talent in Hawai'i. An important component of a multi-faceted recruitment and retention plan is a systemic design for continuous capacity development of our staff to lead the work that results in high student achievement by ensuring quality instructional designs for our keiki. I would like to share a few thoughts about professional development and how we move toward a design where we both learn from one another, and serve as a national thought leader on education matters.

There will never be enough time to engage in all of the professional learning that we all desire in order to accomplish our work with greater knowledge and expertise. Yet, it is the commitment of all educators to be lifelong learners to improve our practice on behalf of our students; this is what makes our education community a dynamic learning environment. This is part of the allure of the education profession - we are a dynamic teaching and learning community, where employees are both teachers and learners.

As we consider our driving priorities around school design, student voice and teacher collaboration within an empowerment decision-making and accountability structure, how might we reconsider some of the driving assumptions about how we design professional development opportunities?

Who Should Be the Primary Providers of PD

One of my assumptions of practice is that we should draw upon the broad and deep expertise that we have internally at HIDOE. Our teachers and leaders around the state are engaged in model practices with tremendous impacts on student engagement and learning, and we should utilize our professional development structure as a means of sharing these practices.

We also have a diverse community of educators who bring a broad range of experiences within and outside of education as lifelong educators, second career educators, and former military, with experiences within state, in other states and internationally. So our professional development system should draw upon our collective wealth of experiences.

I have been so impressed with what I am seeing across many classrooms that I've visited over the past six months. I want to create a system where we maximize the opportunity for teachers to learn from teachers, and likewise among our other employee groups.

How We Structure Professional Development

My classroom visits give me pause to reflect on how we better design a system where we are learning from internal best practices. One consideration is to think about establishing a cadre of teacher leaders that includes representation from all of our public schools who become the voice and connection between state level leaders and the school level. This type of state to classroom connection along with an increase in site-based PD in the form of coaching, small group and teacher initiated design has the potential of increasing our opportunity to share powerful instructional practices.

One of our challenges in education generally is shifting from traditional professional development models that train everyone on the same materials and information, to a more differentiated small group model that trains teachers and leaders on more school specific and real time needs, with quality embedded coaching. If we are committed to being an empowered learning organization, we need to start engaging in some of these shifts in practice.

Additionally, we need to be more purposeful around when we engage external experts. The role of the external professional development provider should follow a design where we move quickly through a process that allows us to build and extend internal capacity initially and then transition to evidence of increased internal capacity.

Extend/Grow Capacity → Build Internal Capacity → Maintain Excellence Through Internal Expertise

Consider a Shift in Our Standards of Practice

Based on feedback from the field about effective and less impactful professional development, here are some potential standards of practice in professional development design moving forward:

Establish a guaranteed program of support for the first two years of teacher induction
Ensure a cadre of high quality, well trained HIDOE teacher coaches to deliver induction and peer support
Develop an internal speaker's bureau of teachers available to provide instructional modeling sessions and small, high-touch peer group professional development
Replace traditional stand-and-deliver professional development sessions by external providers with partners who want to work with our internal professionals on specific capacity development areas, with a time specific hand off of the work internally
Include student voice often in our professional development sessions through presentation of their student work products as exemplars
Identify inspirational speakers from our HIDOE team of educators who can embed local context, values and stories of community impact
Provide greater emphasis on sending speakers out to showcase Hawaii's great models of practice nationally
Develop an internal structure for leadership succession planning and pipeline development using an aspirant program design

During this legislative session, I will begin to look at how our professional development funds are currently allocated and distributed, and how well they are aligned to our strategic plan priorities. I look forward to discussing these ideas with teachers over the next few months.

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Supt. Christina Kishimoto <reply@hawaiidoe.org>
Date: Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 1:01 PM
Subject: Kick Off Your Week: Talent Management
To: 20048903@notes.k12.hi.us

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Kick Off Your Week header

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Yesterday's holiday was a day of reflection on the civil rights movement in this country that left so many lives changed and brought heightened attention to human rights. The work continues today!

Talent Management

Education is a people-centered field where success depends on teachers and leaders who can provide high quality, relevant and engaging learning experiences for our keiki. A continued shortage of teachers will hurt our mission if not mitigated. Our goal is both to fill all teacher positions with well prepared, certified teachers and to create a highly desirable and competitive education pathway that attracts and retains educator talent in Hawai'i.

This has been the topic of discussion over the past three months of the Teacher Education Coordinating Committee (TECC). TECC is a collaborative of all public and private higher education institutions and organizations who provide teacher preparation programs in our state, along with representatives of related agencies such as the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board and Hawai'i P-20. The TECC shares information and vets ideas around how best to support Hawai'i's teachers. The TECC has committed to work together this year on a five-year teacher recruitment and retention plan that diversifies our approach to address the teacher pipeline challenge with a vision of teaching being a competitive profession of first choice. To frame the major components of this cross-organization plan are several guiding questions:

How do we build capacity locally to fill and expand teacher preparation program seats?
How do we operationalize a diverse approach to teacher recruitment, e.g., troops-to-teacher programs and international teacher hires?
How can we increase satisfaction of in-service teachers?
What are some ways that we can provide meaningful incentives for teacher recruitment and retention? How can we effectively market the teaching profession in Hawai'i?

As we continue to explore these areas, our conversations have included the topic of high school teacher preparation academies, distance/blended learning, teacher housing, teacher compensation packages, new teacher mentor and support designs, multiple pathways to licensure, early college opportunities for students interested in the teaching profession, externships for teachers, tuition assistance/loan forgiveness, support/coaching structure for special education teachers, and statewide marketing of the teaching profession.

Take a look at this interactive map by the Learning Policy Institute that provides state-by-state comparative information on teacher supply factors: https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/understanding-teacher-shortages-interactive

Opening of 2018 Legislative Session

Opening Day for the 2018 Hawai'i Legislature is Wednesday, Jan. 17. Over the next few weeks you will hear about bills being considered that impact education directly or via other state agencies. Please note that since this is the second year of the biennial budget, the HIDOE's focus is primarily on supporting the continuation of our strategic work.

Teaching and Learning

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

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