We too here in Tucson are also vigorously pursuing these kinds of
initiatives. Our faculty is reading Tony Wagner's Global Achievement Gap
this summer, and we are going to spend the fall seeking to understand
broadly the implications and applications of what Wagner calls "Schools That
Work."
It is good to see you emphasize learning *and* assessment. At St. Gregory
we are going to to use the principle of "what gets measured gets done," (and
backwards design), and focus primarily on assessment. We are going to
entirely revamp report cards and other reporting of student progress, using
Guskey <http://www.corwinpress.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book9645> and
Bailey's book as our guide. We will ensure our teachers are assessing and
reporting their students' progress toward mastery of 21st century skills,
with the belief that this will drive their better facilitation of such
learning.
We are also devising a dashboard of school-wide measurements of our learning
goals, and we will ensure that some of those measurements survey our
students' mastery of critical thinking, problem-solving, innovation, and
collaboration skills. We are just embarking and defining what all these
measurements will be, knowing that some will be alumni surveying, but we
have already implemented two important new measurements, the High School
Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE <http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eceep/hssse/>)
and, even more pointedly, the College and Work Readiness
Assessment<http://www.cae.org/content/pro_collegework.htm>.
We would love to participate in a wiki or blog where we can collaborate upon
these initiatives. You are also invited to my blog, www.21k12blog.net, at
which I will be regularly reporting on the progress of our work at St.
Gregory.
Onwards!
Jonathan
On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Earl Oremus <eoremus@mac.com> wrote:
> Hello Ally -
>
> We have begun the same process and are interested in communicating with
> others who have a similar focus. Several years ago we began the work of
> reshaping our curriculum and instruction to focus more on thinking than on
> remembering. We have also worked hard to increase student engagement
> through collaborative project-based learning, and through learning
> activities that connect students' thinking to important real world problems.
> We have invested a lot of hard work in this area but I think we still have
> substantially more 20th than 21st century teaching going on here. At any
> rate, please count me in on the collaboration project idea.
>
> Earl Oremus
> Headmaster
> Marburn Academy
> Columbus, OH
>
>
> On Aug 7, 2009, at 12:50 PM, Ally Wenzel wrote:
>
> Hello All -
>>
>> We are beginning explicit integration and assessment of 21st century
>> skills in our curriculum at Stevenson. We are hoping to begin networking
>> with other schools who are involved in this process to share information
>> and experiences in order to help each other.
>>
>> Any schools that are about to begin this process, are currently doing it,
>> or have already done it - please let us know. Perhaps we could set up a
>> Ning community, Wiki or blog to collaborate and share while we all go
>> through this process.
>>
>> Please contact me directly or reply to the listserv if you know of
>> something already specifically setup for independent schools. We are
>> tuned in with 21stcenturyskills.org, ISTE NETS and a variety of other
>> organizations setup such as novemberlearning.com.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Ally Wenzel
>> Director of Technology
>> Stevenson School
>>
>
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--
Jonathan E. Martin
Head of School
St. Gregory College Preparatory School
Tucson, Arizona
www.stgregoryschool.org
www.21k12blog.net
Twitter:@JonathanEMartin
520-327-6395
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