PD Model and Letter

Dear faculty and staff,

We realize that the previous two years have brought lots of changes in our district, including multiple new technologies. Many of you have expressed concerns that there have been too many new technologies to learn in too little time. We have heard your concerns and we hope that our plan for professional develop around the technology space will be much smoother this year.

Over the summer, the admin team has been working hard to develop a professional development model that will ensure two things. First, it will ensure that we are using the most appropriate technology tools to enhance our pedagogy. To this end, the district put together a committee in January composed of at least one teacher from each content area, administrators, technology integrators, and a selection of students. The purpose of the committee was to identify a new assessment platform to replace PowerSchool Assessment, which we have been using for a few years. The committee immediately went to work to focus on the first two phases of the new technology roll out as outlined in the infographic attached to this letter. The team spent a lot of time on phase one of the model by exploring several different assessment platforms and experimenting with the features of each one. This was time well spent since we were seeking to provide a product that was user friendly as well as a robust suite of reporting functionality to meet our goal of data informed instructional practices. The team finished up phase one of the program by choosing MasteryConnect for the reasons mentioned previously.

The committee spent the summer working on phase two of the implementation model by meeting with the product vendors and learning about all of the features and functionality of MasteryConnect. During this phase, the committee has also been working tirelessly to create training materials that are both engaging and immediately useful to deliver during our upcoming professional development opportunities. A handful of super users have also been identified over the summer from each school and they are excited to help you with the implementation phase when we return to school in September.

We will start our year as a faculty exploring phase three of our model, which is the planning phase. In our first faculty meeting of the year, we will be gathering feedback from each of you about your preferred method for professional development delivery. We hope to offer several different methods of professional development that are conducive to your individual learning styles. Some examples might include whole group training, podcasts, electronic modules, and one on one support. During this phase we will determine our training timeline based on your feedback as well as the most appropriate target date for implementation. We hope to have phase three complete by December.

After the holidays, we will dig into stage four of the model by asking those of you who feel comfortable, to test the software in your classrooms. This is not mandatory, but we hope that you will take advantage of the opportunity to explore the product on a voluntary basis before full implementation next year. We will look at the best practices that you come up with during your testing as well as potential barriers to full implementation the following year. We are ready to provide recertification points to any teacher who takes advantage of this testing phase and develops model lesson plans that can be ready to go during full implementation.

Finally, beginning with the next school year, we will focus on stage five of the model, which is full implementation. By this time, all teachers should feel comfortable with the software and have a few lesson plans that integrate the software ready to go. During this phase, you will also be responsible for training our students how to use the new software.

We believe that this phased roll out of MasteryConnect will be much more manageable than the technology rollouts we have had in the past, which left many of you frustrated and overwhelmed. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions. I look forward to a successful year with all of you!

Sincerely,

Jason Collins

Karen Richardson says:

November 18, 2019 at 4:25 pm

I do think the phased roll out is a good idea. Plus, the details about how you determined the focus help teachers see that you took a deliberate approach with stakeholders represented on the committee. You are clear about the expectations and the idea of asking them about their learning preferences models a practice you would like them to use with THEIR students. You might consider making everyone at least get logged in to the software and do something in the spring as those who are reluctant users won’t sign up for the test. They may need some mandatory deadline for getting setup and prepared for the new year: maybe a summer boot camp or something for that second year.