Hire for Mindset
CompetencyWorks Blog
Human capital. It’s not one of my favorite terms, as thinking of people as capital seems to be a dehumanizing place to start talking about creating an empowering culture of learning where individuals feel safe and respected. So I’m just going to go back to the old stand-by of human resources.
No matter what you call it, human resources is a major issue for districts and schools that are converting to competency education. First, there is the effort to help the current set of educators make the transition and start on a personalized pathway toward skill building – organizing personalized classrooms with empowered students, increasing assessment literacy, instructing based on learning progressions, enhancing cultural responsiveness and de-cluttering the mind of bias, coaching habits of work, preparing units that provide student more choice and voice, etc. The list goes on.
Districts then find they need to upgrade their teacher evaluation to reflect the new set of values, assumptions, practices, and skills. (See article on Windsor Locks Public School District.) Some are also building personalized, competency-based professional development that builds upon the evaluations so that teachers are becoming learners as part of their job. (See article on Charleston County School District.)
Hiring practices need to be upgraded as well. Virgel Hammonds, Jaime Robles, Deanna Sinito, and Brian Stack have all spoken about the importance of hiring. They seek candidates with the same set of beliefs, value those who want to work collaboratively, and have created more intensive hiring practices. However, it’s tricky, since just because someone says they have a growth mindset or that that they value collaboration doesn’t mean they really do…or at least in the way we think about. So how do you assess within the hiring process that a candidate has the beliefs and dispositions you need in your school?
DaVinci Schools, with the support of the Next Generation Learning Collaborative, have created a tool to help districts and principals “Hire for Mindset.” The hiring practice described has three elements:
- The process centers on a performance-based experience.
- Students have a strong voice in the selection decision.
- A candidate’s fit with the school culture has at least equal weight with the individual’s performance and content knowledge.
DaVinci Schools describes the mindsets they want as collaboration, cultural relevancy, whole child mindset, and the growth mindset. When you think about your school, what are the mindsets that you want your new hires to have?
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