LiFT Learning<\/a> in recent years, to support our shift to a competency-based system through professional services and technology solutions. We have different seats on the bus but are driving in the same direction.<\/p>\nThrough our collective experiences, we\u2019ve learned it’s not just \u201cflip a switch\u201d and whether you’re using it or not. It’s starting the work in pieces and then bringing the system along with it. It\u2019s creating a vision with our community, developing a strategic plan to build capacity aligned with the vision, and taking one step at a time. We choose to celebrate successes and more challenging learning opportunities equally, always remaining committed to doing what is best for our learners. We\u2019ve also chosen to make this journey in partnership and to share our learnings along the way. All boats rise with the tide.<\/p>\n
In our journey to competency-based education (CBE), we want to share five takeaways with you.<\/p>\n
1. The journey starts with shifting mindsets, and look no further than your staff.<\/h2>\n
To make the shift to CBE, you need to personalize the CBE journey for your staff, so they can do that in turn for their students<\/i><\/b>. This may be the most important advice we would have for anyone trying to do this work.<\/p>\n
We are working closely with our educators to personalize their professional learning journey in support of our vision. This takes the form of coaching, small-group professional learning communities, and school-wide professional development. It happens as both formal and informal learning through self- and peer-reflection, and it has really pushed some of our staff to let go of long-held truths about the role of the teacher. We are finding ways to lean into uncertainty and embrace ambiguity by channeling a beginner\u2019s mindset fueled by curiosity. We are asking our teachers to do what we are asking our learners to do.<\/p>\n
We found that CBE can have many entry points, and we encourage our teachers to find their personal entry points. We have amplified the importance of backward design so that teachers can ultimately turn the design over to students as they build agency. For some teachers, focusing on enhanced performance assessments has been the next best step. For others, it has been embedding career and life competencies into the unit design.<\/p>\n
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<\/h2>\n2. The shift takes time.<\/h2>\n
K-12 education is like an ocean liner, it takes a long time and many moving parts to change direction.<\/p>\n
When we started this journey, we offered the opportunity to all staff in our district to participate in an initial project. We began with a group of teachers that wanted to be lead learners. About 40 teachers participated in our innovation cohort that researched CBE through the lens of our community. This group explored what we would want CBE to look like for Spring Lake Park and started the initial drafting of our competencies and rubric criteria.<\/p>\n
Once our innovation cohorts started the work in their classrooms, we then asked them to scale it in small ways. We learned from those that were implementing and innovating and used those learnings to refine our framework and our understanding. We’re still in this process. This year, we have teachers here who are in the process of tagging state benchmarks to our competencies and accompanying rubrics. They are continuing to make refinements and developing learning progressions that lead to those competencies.<\/p>\n
3. CBE follows the students, not the course.<\/h2>\n
In our most recent work, we’ve been trying to change the conversation away from grades and reporting that capture only one point in time to a more comprehensive understanding through portfolio assessment. We\u2019ve also been looking at how to think differently about how we group our teachers or students and use time and space differently to move closer to a true CBE system. We are questioning and evolving our organizational policies, and continuing our development of curriculum mapping and standards to competency alignment, all while continuing to innovate at the classroom level to give learners a greater sense of agency in their learning process. We are working to design a system that follows the student.<\/p>\n
One option we created for students at our high school is a co-created course where they work with a teacher side by side to co-create a learning experience. Co-created courses allow students to bring their passions into the course and guide how they will meet the transparent and mutually agreed upon learning outcomes. We are trying to create an environment where students and teachers identify the competency and create the learning experience driven by interests and passions.<\/p>\n
Spring Lake Park High School: Co-created course discussion<\/p>\n
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