Part 3: Assessing and Refreshing PLCs – Creating alignment between district priorities and teacher needs

How DO district and school leaders refresh professional learning communities (PLCs) mid-year? The final part of this three-part series focuses on how districts create alignment between high-profile district priorities and the everyday issues being surfaced in PLCs.

Part 2: Assessing and Refreshing PLCs – Making mid-year course corrections

How DO district and school leaders refresh professional learning communities (PLCs) mid-year? Part Two of this three-part series focuses on how districts assess the impact of their PLCs and gather the information needed to make adjustments mid-year.

Part 1: Assessing and Refreshing PLCs – Building and maximizing time for PLCs

As a company partnering with districts to assess impact, we brought three education leaders together to explore the answer to a big, essential question: How DO district and school leaders refresh professional learning communities (PLCs) mid-year? Part One of this three-part series focuses on how innovative districts are building and maximizing time for PLCs within limited school days.

Blast walkthroughs: how to build protocols that make the most of observation data

One of the most powerful data collection strategies a district can employ is walkthroughs. They can provide clear, actionable feedback about how professional learning efforts are translating into the classroom. But making them effective requires setting up strong protocols and building a culture of teacher buy-in so that they can serve their purpose as formative assessment without feeling too evaluative to teachers.

A Conversation About Professional Learning Efficacy

As a company of facilitators, practitioners and technologists, KickUp is excited to launch a panel style webinar series to create a conversation and address these substantive concerns surrounding the efficacy of professional learning in K-12 education. Join us for our next webinar.

Building a data-informed culture that makes teachers feel supported

When Lorenzo Rizzo returned to Belton School District--the school district he’d once attended as a student--to become their new Assistant Superintendent of School Improvement, he wanted to build a culture in which professional learning was explicitly aligned to strategic priorities. To do so, he needed to capture data that would help his team assess progress. The main challenge? Shifting the culture to embrace this data required a thoughtful approach designed to build trust.

Houston Independent School District

Adam Stephens

Officer for Innovative Curriculum

Houston Independent School District was entering its final year of a federally-funded STEM initiative and needed to both provide evidence of impact and maximize the PD teachers received. Using KickUp, Houston ISD was able to track progress during the year, make real-time changes, and report positive results to stakeholders in their leadership team and the federal government.

Ladue School District

Jennifer Allen

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction

After collecting feedback from teachers in the spring, Ladue School District is using KickUp to improve district-wide professional learning sessions and to monitor teacher growth during the 2017-18 school year.

Belton School District

Lorenzo Rizzi

Assistant Superintendent of School Improvement

Belton Assistant Superintendent Lorenzo Rizzi needed a way to keep up with what was happening across all of his schools. Using KickUp, he was able to determine which aspects of his strategic plan needed more attention and create an improvement plan that he could monitor using teacher feedback, classroom walkthroughs, and community feedback.

Client Spotlight: Pleasanton Unified School District

Ken Rocha, Director of Secondary Education at Pleasanton Unified School District in California, needed to select a new ELA curriculum that reflected 21st-century learning and district-wide priorities. In addition to making the right decision, he also needed to make sure the process was transparent and resulted in a group decision that reflected student, teacher, parent and community voices.