Leadership 2.0 Conference

It is my first week as the Director of Professional Development of ESSDACK, a service center in Hutchinson, KS, and one of the projects I have the privilege of taking on is helping coordinate the upcoming Leadership 2.0 conference scheduled for August 3, 2012 at the Ramada Conference Center in Hutchinson.  This conference is designed for superintendents, principals, lead teachers, technology directors, curriculum directors, school board members, and any other leader responsible for helping lead and manage change in a school district.

The theme of this year's Leadership 2.0 conference is engagement.  A great deal of thinking about educational change as it relates to student achievement and engagement is framed in terms of  preparing students for college and career, which is an essential piece to the puzzle.  Another piece to the puzzle is being mindful that our youth's engagement in school is also affecting the quality of their daily lives and experiences in the present.  Their level of engagement is affecting their habits.  Habits to persevere.  Habits to take initiative.  Habits to be intellectually engaged.  Habits to be life-long learners.  This year's event will have sessions that help leaders learn and collaborate about ways to increase engagement in their schools.

You can find more information about Leadership 2.0 on the following website: http://leadership20conference.com/.  Register today for this great day of learning and collaborating!

Free Secondary Content Resources

HippoCampus is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE) that provides high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects for high school and college students. All of the resources are free for students and teachers.

Homework Helper

Homework Helper is a free service to all Kansas students sponsored by the State Library of Kansas. Students can connect to tutors from 4:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., seven days a week. HomeworkKansas is also available in Spanish, Sunday through Thursday, from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Help is available in the following subjects:

Math: elementary, algebra I, algebra II, geometry, trigonometry and calculus
Science: elementary, earth science, biology, chemistry, physics
Social studies: American History, World History, Political Science and more
English: spelling, grammar, book reports, essay writing and more

Early Childhood Parent Training Modules

As we create a mutli-tier system of support for our students, supporting children's development before they get to kindergarten is crucial. The Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL) has created Parent Training Modules which provide information for families on promoting children’s social and emotional skills, understanding their problem behaviors, and using positive approaches to help them learn appropriate behaviors. The modules are available online at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/csefel/parent.html

Kansas Career Pipeline

Several counselors, CTE staff members, specialists, and I met with Steve Wyckoff to review the Kansas Career Pipeline. Below are a few highlights from the meeting.

1. Colby, KS has a process in place where all ninth grade students have a career plan and add to that plan during their 9th-11th grade year. During their junior year of high school, they have a parent night where the counselor shares with parents the KCP and then students walk their parents through their career plan and they explore options for post-secondary training.
   


2. The Kansas Career Pipeline is a tool that districts can use to help students prepare for post-secondary training (college, trade school, community college, work, etc.). The site offers three, free assessments for students and adults. The assessments include the Career Search with People Match, Skills Assessment, and Work-Values Inventory.
   


3. It is recommended that districts get someone trained to be a Career Development Facilitator (CDF). Train the trainer model can then be used so that more staff members are involved in the process of helping students prepare for life after high school.
   


4. There is a Kindergarten through adult planning timeline that shows important behaviors and possible tasks for schools to help prepare students for life.
   


5. Tools like Skype (a free, web-conferencing tool) can be used to help students and staff partner with business and bring experts into the classroom.

Curriculum Director's Meeting (January 2009)

I recently attended KSDE's Curriculum Director's Meeting in Topeka. The hot topics were: Career Technical Education (CTE) and 21st Century Learning. Below, you will find the meeting highlights and the possible impact on learning at Valley Center:

• State committees are working on integrating the CTE/21st Century Learning Skills with the academic standards. Their hope is to build the assessments along with the standards and have the math and reading done by July 2010. As we have conversations about curriculum integration, we will learn more about Career Technical Education and the 21st century learning environments and skills. What are we currently doing to create a 21st century learning environment?
  
• Career Technical Education is the new "Vocational Ed" under the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006. The goal of this initiative is to help ALL individuals have a strong academic foundation and the ability to apply academic and technical skills to real-world situations. This will require our schools to continue utilizing project-based learning (integrating technical and academic skills), emphasizing 21st Century Learning environments where students are more self-directed and collaborative, and creating systems of support for varied learning styles, abilities, and interests (MTSS).
• The state has adopted a CTE model that emphasizes 16 career clusters and over 80 pathways. The state department is working closely with the industry to determine the high skill, high wage, and high demand jobs so that Kansas schools can emphasize these pathways in their schools (i.e. health field, education, etc.). KSDE recommends us asking the following questions: 1) Why does our program exist? 2) What is it doing for economic growth?
• The state emphasized the difference between OTL and Second Opportunity. Reading and math are the only subject areas where students get a second opportunity to meet standards. Opportunity to Learn refers to ALL subject areas and it allows each HS to determine when to give the science, history/govt., and writing assessment. Students do not get a second opportunity to pass these assessments.
• There are science and social studies formatives on the CETE Formative site.
  

Communication

Communication is key to our learning organization as we strive to become the best district in the state of Kansas. I have started a blog to share information about Valley Center curriculum, instruction, and assessment happenings. This will allow all staff members to post comments, questions, and ideas. This blog will update you on local and/or state initiatives, highlight learning in our district, and share possible CIA (Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment) resources!