{"id":1939,"date":"2016-02-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/rsu2-entering-a-new-stage-in-building-a-high-quality-proficiency-based-district\/"},"modified":"2019-12-16T12:54:43","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T17:54:43","slug":"rsu2-entering-a-new-stage-in-building-a-high-quality-proficiency-based-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/rsu2-entering-a-new-stage-in-building-a-high-quality-proficiency-based-district\/","title":{"rendered":"RSU2: Entering a New Stage in Building a High-Quality Proficiency-Based District"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post first appeared<\/a> on CompetencyWorks<\/a> on January 5, 2016, and it is part of the Maine Road Trip series by Chris Sturgis. This is the first post on her\u00a0conversations at RSU2 in Maine.<\/em><\/p>\n

RSU2 is a district that has been staying the course, even \"Teamwork<\/a>through two superintendent changes (Don Siviski is now at Center for Center for Secondary School Redesign<\/a>; Virgel Hammonds<\/a> is now at KnowledgeWorks; and Bill Zima<\/a>, previously the principal at Mt. Ararat Middle School, is now the superintendent). This says a lot about the school board\u2019s commitment to having each and every student be prepared for college and careers. If we had a CompetencyWorks award for school board leadership, RSU2 would definitely get one.<\/p>\n

Given that they are one of the districts with the most experience with competency education (Chugach<\/a> has the most experience, followed by Lindsay<\/a>), my visit to RSU2 was much more focused on conversations with the district leadership team, principals, and teachers rather than classroom visits. My objective in visiting RSU2 was to reflect with them upon their lessons learned.<\/p>\n

It takes a load of leadership and extra effort to transform a traditional district to personalized, proficiency-based learning<\/a>. It\u2019s a steep learning curve to tackle \u2013 growth mindset, learning to design and manage personalized classrooms, learning how to enable and support students as they build habits of work and agency, designing and aligning instruction and assessment around measurable objectives and learning targets, calibration and assessment literacy, organizing schedules so teachers have time for working together and to provide just-in-time support to students<\/a>, building up instructional skills, new grading policies<\/a>, new information management systems to track progress \u2013 and districts have to help every teacher make the transition. I wanted to find out what they might have done differently, what has been particularly challenging, and what they see as their next steps.<\/p>\n

I began my day at RSU2<\/a> in Maine with a conversation with Zima (a frequent contributor to CompetencyWorks<\/a>); principals from all nine schools; Matt Shea, Coordinator of Student Achievement; and John Armentrout, Director of Information Technology. I opened the conversation with the question, \u201cWhat do you know now that you wished you knew when you started?\u201d<\/p>\n

Tips for Implementation<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Armentrout summarized a number of insights about implementation:<\/span><\/p>\n