Cohesive Instruction, Connected Schools: Scale Excellence District-Wide with the Right Technology

Greetings, everyone. We are so glad that you have taken time to join us today. We are all here today to talk about how can we ensure that students have access to high quality instruction. That's our goal today. My name is Sherra Johnson, and I am thrilled to be moderating today's discussion. I would like to first give our, speakers an opportunity to introduce themselves.

So we are joined by Jeff and Anessa. And I'm gonna let Anessa, if you wanna go first and just introduce a little bit about yourself and where you're from, that would be super helpful. Sure. Hey, everyone. My name is Anessa Fontenot.

I am a technology facilitator in Calcasieu Parish, which is in Lake Charles, Louisiana. We have about, sixty six schools in our district. We have forty five hundred plus employees, twenty five hundred plus teachers, and twenty five thousand plus students. And I'm excited to be here. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you. Jeff? Well, thank you. It is a it is a pleasure to be here as well. My name is Jeff Faust.

I am the chief technology innovation officer for Chesapeake Public Schools in far Southeastern Virginia, Chesapeake, Virginia. We have about forty seven schools and forty thousand give or take students, and about five thousand full time employees, including three thousand teachers in our school division. And I have had the distinct pleasure of being at Jeff's school, and it is fantastic and a beautiful community with great seafood, as I recall, and even have a souvenir cup when I came back. So thank you, though. Like I said, my name is Sherra Johnson.

I come to you from Nebraska. I am actually, a state leader. I help to support the Canvas consortium here in our state. We have a hundred and ninety nine school districts that use Canvas. Prior to that, I was a math teacher, curriculum director, all sorts of fun stuff.

So happy to be here today. Just a few housekeeping things I wanna make sure that to mention. We have two different ways to communicate. We have a lovely Vanna White behind the scenes, Joe, who is operating our chat and our Q and A session. I just wanna make sure that you're aware.

If you're using the chat, that's fantastic. If you have technical issues, that's where you wanna be. If you have q and a or questions that you'd like our panelists to answer, if you would please use the q and a panel. It's accessible through the tabs that you might see on your console. So if you have a direct question that you would like answered at the end of our time together, would you please please please, use that Q and A panel? That would be great.

Well, today our panel is here, and we hope to share some insights and strategies that will help empower both leaders and teachers because I'm sure we have both joining us today. We're gonna talk about effective professional development. We're gonna talk about leveraging the right technology tool at the right time. And just talking about how can we enhance the quality of our instruction, and how can we make sure that it's equitable. So by the end of this, I always hope that you walk away with one tidbit.

Whether that's one nugget, something practical, something actionable that you can walk away with, that can help to empower your school district. That's really the goal today. So we're hoping that you find value in our conversation. And like I said, if you'd like to ask questions of our panelists, please please please use that q and a session. Okay.

So and I apologize because I am not good at using this technology yet. So, we are going to first, we're gonna ask you to reflect just a little bit. I would like you, to just think about the district or the school building in which you work in currently. And I want you just to take a moment to think about, can you honestly say that you are ensuring that every student is receiving high quality instruction every single day? Is your leader ensuring that high quality instruction is happening every day within every classroom for every student, within your district? And I want you just to think about whether it's the school building, or the district in which you work. If you would take a moment to answer that poll for us, that would be fantastic.

After all, that's kind of why we're all here, to talk about how we can improve that instruction within our classrooms. So we're gonna give you a moment. Now if I look back, I love it. I love it. So toggling back and forth, you'll notice here that it says, yeah, we have we have some folks that are high on this mission that are really working getting the work done.

There's a lot of us that are still working trying to figure this out and trying to get this work done, and it's a process that never ends. Right? So it looks like a lot of us are deep in the weeds here. So hopefully some of our discussion today will benefit the work that you're doing currently in your buildings. Excellent. After all, we are short on resources.

Right? We think about, the different resources that we don't have access to. You'll notice that we have only a hundred and eighty days. Right? So not only are we short of resources, sometimes we're short on teachers, but we're also only given a finite amount of time. And we have a hundred and eighty days. And typically, when we think about those days, we get about in six instructional, you know, hours in the day, which leads to about one thousand eighty hours.

Now if you wanna think about it in terms of minute, I do believe it's, like, sixty five thousand minutes. So we wanna make sure that anytime we have contact with students in our buildings, in our districts, in our hallways, everywhere, that we're making every single one of those minutes matter. So today, let's start talking about, how can we ensure this high quality instruction. And we're gonna focus our attention around four key pillars. And the first one is really gonna focus on the heart of the manner.

So like our instructional framework. And the question is how can we establish, a common instructional framework? So I'm gonna start with Jeff, and I think just to even make it even more simple. Maybe what is a common instructional framework look like at Chesapeake Public Schools? When I say that, like, what elements might that include in your instructional framework? Sure. So, you know, I think we have to, take a moment and and respect the the history. If we just go back and what's what's fun about education right now, and I say fun, other people think, you know, it's the thing that makes their job really hard, but is is this the rate of change right now is faster than it's ever been in education.

I don't you know, much to the chagrin of some people that I don't suspect that's going to decrease anytime soon. But if if I think back, I did start my career as a classroom teacher, and I think back about my, you know, preservice education and formal training. You know? And we were taught to write three page lesson plans, and we were taught to, you know, keep our little two inch by two inch or one and a half by one and a half inch green lesson plan book on our desk and open. And, you know, if we think back to just where we were, you know, thirty years ago, twenty five years ago, It's amazing where we are now, and and I and I don't want to disregard what we've asked our teaching and education professionals to do and to embrace and to change. Because I just don't think in most schools, that's the high value activity for teachers anymore.

The open lesson plan book with two inch square of what I'm teaching today, you know, a three page lesson plan that I've written myself from scratch, that was quintessential when we started. And now it's more, taking often a prescribed curriculum, if you will, and making it dance and and and helping the students in your classroom to build the connections they need and recognizing the twenty four kids in your room as twenty four individual learners at different places that each need something different. So I think, like, kind of putting that on the table first and going, that what we can do today is accept that twenty four, twenty six, sometimes thirty or more kids at different places with different needs is okay. And for us as teachers, as educational professionals to honor that, it's not only okay, but it's what we wanna promote. And so, you know, I think for us, this the process started decades ago.

But what what Chesapeake has done is we've said, here is the standard pacing guide. You should be teaching this topic at this time. You should wrap this up by this week, by this, you know and and we've taken the resources that have been adopted as a school division. We've tied them to that pacing guide. We've placed it into a digital format that is easily accessible and downloadable for our teachers.

And we use Canvas as our LMS. And so with Canvas as our LMS, there's a wonderful sharing opportunity as well where a teacher can, you know, literally grab the entire course, download it into their course shell, and then make visible and or hide the modules that, you know, are next and to be worked on, as well as customize, as well as personalized. It may be a better word for it. So I have a particular, you know, fondness for teaching simple machines, and there's things that I do that are above and beyond what the curriculum, you know, has, prescribed and or provides as offerings. That's not a problem for our teachers to add that because that's a thing that I know I bring something unique, and it's a part of who I am that I get to share with my students in that time.

And the last thing we'd wanna do is is prevent teachers from doing that. But the idea that they can come in and there's you know, we we focus heavily on ILOs. You know, we call them we just called them objectives, you know, thirty years ago when I, started my career in education. But there and there's other acronyms out there, and I know that. But, you know, the intended learning outcomes.

So every single lesson, every single day presenting to students with, here's what I expect that you'll be able to do or show or demonstrate or or, you know, some understanding of by the time we're done with this lesson, this unit, this this thing. Those are all part and parcel of the learning, frameworks that we've created for our classes. And so that's available k twelve across subject areas, across grade levels, and I've been organizing these really nice packages for our, teachers and and instructional leadership to to access and, use use within their classrooms. I love that. And I love you're going back to history because I do remember going back, you know, my very first teaching assignment.

And don't you remember, and maybe it's just me, Here's your book. It's like, oh, we'll see you in May, you know, and and that was it. And so having I feel like what I heard you say was we have a minimum that we expect to be taught across the classrooms in our in our district, but that they're given the ability to be flexible. So if they want to add to or if they want to do those things that, you know, that that is able to be done. I guess that was kind of my next question is, it allows flexibility for your teachers, but not only for that, you know, for them as far as, like, their style, but also for the needs of the students as far as, like, what they need.

I mean, I I think that it it allows all of those things fairly well. Do you have anything else to add to that as far as flexibility is concerned? Yeah. I think that's critical. You know, the the worst thing we could do, is is, you know, turn teachers into just people who are whose whose job we perceive or present as just sharing information in a scheduled way with students. That'd be that would be awful for everybody.

And and that's and our teachers are amazing at looking at students and connecting with students and going, I know I know what will work for Susie. Susie needs me to connect this to this other thing because she gets that. That's what our teachers do and they dance. But if we can provide them with the resources, if we can provide them with the concrete material, it saves them. And I I remember there was this very shocking survey done by AWS back in the late twenty tens.

Exactly, I don't remember, but where teachers were spending seven plus hours a week searching the Internet for resources to use in their, content area. Well, if like, we need to stop that because, you know, we should be able to provide them with ninety five percent of what they need and let them do the thing that teachers are so magical with, and that is building the connections and building the relationships that make the the children in their classrooms want to learn from them and feel like they're supported in their learning. Absolutely. Okay. So let's go back.

You mentioned your instructional framework. Let's talk about the process. So when and this might be before you were at Chesapeake. But before that, when you were doing this work, who was all involved? I can't imagine it's just one office and one building. Can you talk about the different stakeholders that were involved in actually building that common instructional framework? Yeah.

So so curriculum writing, takes place, and and it's not a once and done process. It's a continual process. So, obviously, we do have you know, we're of a size that we have curriculum leads at different you know, for elementary and secondary across subject areas. Like, we're we're very fortunate to have that, but not every school system does. Sometimes there's a director of curriculum, for the school division.

Sometimes, if you're lucky, it's one actually has elementary and one has secondary. Right? Like, I know those situations are very real. So so, yeah, for all of those reasons, it cannot be on the shoulders of a person. It it you have to engage teachers. You have to engage school leadership.

You have to engage instructional leadership, subject area experts. And and so for us, that's something that happens annually, but arguably happens continually because one of the things we've seen, and and I again, I'll give a nod to Canvas for its abilities here, is a teacher comes up with this just amazing resource, a a module. Like, they take unit three, and they rework it, and they rethink it, and they bring in some brand new, materials, some brand new ideas, some brand new artifacts, and and assignments for the kids to create in order to demonstrate learning. What what we see happening now is that gets fed back up the chain to the coordinator of math, for example. And then that coordinator goes, this is amazing.

We're going to make this available, you know, to the teachers, and they could share it back out to commons with a simple message or announcement in Canvas. Say, hey. There's another version of module three or unit three if you wanna use it. And then that next summer when we tend to do our curriculum writing sort of as a focused effort for a couple weeks at a time with these work groups, they'll synthesize that into and and probably pair it back down to to one. So that type of fluidity where we can, you know, take from the people that are that are in the trenches and have great solutions and great ideas and re you know, make it available across the school division is is incredible and powerful.

So, yeah, it's you gotta involve multiple stakeholders. It's not, you know, just teachers, and it's not just instructional leadership. It's it's everyone bringing their expertise and their perspective to come up with the best product. And I know that I'm sorry. I didn't mean to talk over you.

But I I know in our district, or in our parish, we started, putting together with some of our lead technology teachers, what we call them starter courses. And it's not a a fully built out course, but it has about two units in it. So that if a teacher is brand new or if it you know, new to teaching in general or new to Canvas, we build those out in Canvas. Like you said, Jeff, we make them available in the commons after our, curriculum consultant has reviewed and approved those. And then it makes it nice so that, teachers that are brand new can go and download those, pull those into their courses so that they can see what other teachers are doing.

And then you have some of your more veteran teachers that maybe are just trying to get started with Canvas, that they can go in and look and see how other teachers are using that content and then, you know, start tweaking it or using it, in a way that can be beneficial to their students. And I love too how you can leverage technology talking about, you know, differentiating for students and providing, you know, personalized learning for them. I know Canvas, we've utilized mastery paths in Canvas so that we have students that are, you know, they'll they'll take a little, assessment, and it'll direct them down a a particular path dependent upon how they scored on that. And it can give them some remediation, and it really can provide them with, more individualized learning opportunities and learning at their own pace for some of your kiddos that are ready for that. So I think leveraging the technology for those types of things as well as making content accessible to our students, just really makes it, is is a big reason why we we advocate so much for utilizing the technology, not to overtake the teaching, but to be a support.

Yeah. And I so what I hear what I hear what we're saying is we kinda have a mashup. Right? We have this instructional framework that we've created, and this really lends itself to the next pillars, but that we can utilize Canvas or use utilize technology, not necessarily just Canvas, but we can utilize technology to help deliver that and leverage. So even in those starter courses you mentioned, you could take that instructional framework, and you could embed pieces of that, the pacing guide, different objectives that are gonna be taught in different units, and demonstrate and model that for your teachers. And what a great way to start instead of just handing them a textbook and be like, go forth and prosper.

Right? You're giving them the tools, which I appreciate. So let's let's do transit transition into the next question. So we talk about, you know, a lot of our conversation has lent itself to, you know, the technology that helps us to do this work, and we've mentioned Canvas a few times. We know that there's other things as well. So we've kind of Anessa, you kind of mentioned how you've used the technology to kind of, you know, do that standardized instruction.

But how else can we tech use technology to promote curriculum alignment across various courses or departments? Can you kinda speak to that a little bit, Anessa? Well, I know, like, for us, we have, we do have trainings. We have professional development that we do every year. We call it impact training. We, see one grade level, from the elementary side. So, like, this year, it's kindergarten.

And then we have middle and high school this year that's content area focused, and it's science. And so one of the things that we do during that training is whatever our technology focus is, we work with the consultant prior to developing the training, and we find an area that they want to focus on, in technology that will support their curriculum. And then we work with the teachers to really dig deep into that technology, and they build out an activity or a lesson, aligned with their curriculum. And then we collect all of that into a Canvas course and make those Canvas courses available to every teacher. So as a teacher creates one thing, and submits that, they leave with, depending upon the number of teachers that are, in training, ninety other activities, a hundred and twenty other activities that, are some things that they can plug into their, their lessons and have moving forward.

So it's it's a collaborative effort to get some, lessons and activities built out that will support their curriculum. Awesome. So who's all involved in that process? I know you mentioned classroom teachers. Are there other people that are also involved? So we have our, curriculum consultant for so our our middle school science consultant, I work specifically with middle school, so I work closely with her. We have three lead teachers that we, recruit to develop the model lessons.

And then as the technology facilitator, I'm one of six, but we have, teams of two in the technology department that work to, develop and refine those activities along with the lead teachers and the consultants. And so that's our team of people that works together. But, of course, we wouldn't have Impact Training without the the leadership that says, hey. We need a training like this. So, our CTO has been real integral in making sure that we have a strong showing of support for purposeful technology integration.

So when she, you know, comes up with the ideas and works with other district leaders to say, okay. What are our needs? And then they develop these trainings, and then we implement those. Awesome. So a lot of collaboration going on there across all levels. Yeah.

That's awesome. Okay. So let's speak a little bit past or or, Jeff, do you have anything to add to that point? Sorry. Yeah. Oh, I was just gonna say that, you know, when Anessa was talking, I thought two things.

One is, the the curriculum itself, the, you know, the the the framework, the standards. That might be the what. But but one of the one of the really tough things that we have to do is is the how. The the way in which we teach, that's the art, right? That's the magic, the secret sauce, if you will. And I think one of the things for me when we talk about technology and ensuring instructional consistency is that the right technology solutions in education, in my opinion, amplify the humanity and the connectivity and the connectedness of the people in the room.

I I I you know? Yes. I'm a chief technology officer. Yes. I've been working on the technology side of things now for the better part of two decades. But one of the one of my, you know, soapboxes that I get on all the time is that technology doesn't replace the fact that learning is social.

And we are hardwired. You know, after millions of years of evolution, we are hardwired as human beings to learn from one another. It is you know, there's and we know that we've all read the brain science and the and the different studies around that. So I just think it's really, really important that when we look at the technology, it's there to support the humanity, not to be an answer unto itself. So, Anessa, you mentioned the, your your technology integrators.

We we've called them technology innovation coaches, and they really do take on a coaching model where what they help with is when a teacher goes, hey. I'm, you know, thinking about doing this thing or, hey. I'm struggling with how to present or, you know, there's data that shows that something's not working, or something is working. The innovation coaches are there really to help with the the how. How.

So the curriculum is set. There's some some we we're pretty, pretty standard across all of our, you know, structures and the way that curriculum is is is framed. But the place where we still, I think, have a lot of work, and I I would hope and and assume based upon my own conversations, we're definitely not alone on this, is we see variance in in the how from classroom to classroom. And I think that's sort of the next big thing. So so one of the things that we look at is, like, common assessments, I think, are one of the most powerful tools that we have because it helps to focus and put some guardrails around what instructional, leadership as well as our teachers know that no matter what happens, at the end of nine weeks, I'm gonna get an assessment that's saying, are my kids where we think they should be along with the other, you know, eighty five third grade teachers in the school division? And I wanna make sure that I've done my job to get them there.

And so I do like from you know, for us, one of the things that was a a next step, a good next step, sort of a a next plateau was getting common assessments in place and beginning to really use them to inform what's working or not working within a school, within a classroom for a teacher, but also across the division, where we see, you know, people that are just really doing incredible things and and knocking our socks off, but also where we see, deficits and we go, wow. We we might need to, provide additional resources, supports, there, so that we make sure that something isn't inadvertently being missed or overlooked. And this technology oh, sorry. No. I keep talking over you.

Sorry. Oh, no. Technology is so nice because right back, takes some of the heavy lifting off of the teachers when it comes to the tedious task of grading and doing all of those kinds of things. So when we use, pair assessment, when we use Canvas, when whatever whatever we're using for our common assessments, whether it's the Amplify curriculum we use or the guidebooks, but we can go in and, when most of that can be automatically graded with utilizing the technology that we have now, it's so much easier for teachers to actually spend the time digging into the data. Right? And utilizing the data to see where are we having those successes or where do we have some misconceptions that I need to go back and reteach.

And I just wanna talk to one more thing that you said, Jeff, about it being you know, learning being social. I'm a former special ed teacher, and I always had issues with kiddos wanting to be you know, putting themselves out there, answering a question, or even, you know, contributing to a class discussion. And leveraging technology, for for me, one of the things that I used was, Pear Deck. And I love the fact that if I asked, my kids a question, I rarely had any kids raise their hand to to verbally answer. But when I pose the question on Pear Deck and then I can share out what everybody's answers are, I had a hundred percent participation.

Love it. And I see that And I see that even when I'm doing professional development with my teachers. And so it's a great way to say, hey. This technology tool is not it's not the answer. It's a tool to support and to get your kiddos moving from those kiddos moving from those passive learners to more active learners utilizing the tool to support what you're doing.

So I just think that it's exciting when you can look at it. Yes. We're these we're humans that need to be, actively participating and learning from one another, but we can utilize the technology to assist in that process or to kind of do a little bit of some of that heavy lifting for us in some of those tedious tasks. Absolutely. I love being able to hear the voice of everybody in the room.

Right? And I love going back to the data you talked about, about getting that data. And I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about, like, that like, it depends on the culture of your building as to how that data you know what I mean? Like, I feel like sometimes people think it's like a gotcha, but it's really an opportunity to grow. Like, grow teachers even. Like, if you're figuring out that you're struggling in one area or or maybe your students aren't doing as well, it's an opportunity for you to kind of band together and and grow that, but it does take a special leader to be able to have those conversations. And you know what I mean? Like, it it's sometimes that can be depending on your building, that data collection and data using that data to change instruction can be kind of a hard task, but it is so powerful.

Yeah. No. I think, that is is some of the really important work around, leadership in general, especially in education. But I do think you know, one of my mentors once said, there's no such thing as bad data. There's just data.

And it's it's a wonderful if you can actually get your building, your division to embrace that perspective, and that is just to say that this data just tells us what is. It's what is right now on that assessment on that day for those kids. That's all it tells us. And, getting more secure with the fact that because I have results that don't reflect what I had hoped as a teacher, that doesn't mean I'm a bad teacher. It just means that that's what is.

And how do we respond to that is the more important question than judgment of what did or didn't happen, in the past. And that is moving that and getting that to be widely accepted within any organization, education or otherwise, is an important, critically important, piece of work that I think we have to be doing these days. Yeah. Our our old superintendent our previous superintendent used to say it's growth, not gotcha. Like, it's I love that.

Yeah. That's good. It it's not meant to point the finger at you. You know? It we're we're here for a common goal of making sure that our students are being successful. We're all trying to grow.

So, you know, don't don't take it personally. It's here for it's it's here to help us. Yeah. I love that. And it's all about doing what's best for kids.

So before we wrap up this pillar, I just wanted to to kinda go back. We talked about the curriculum standards and how we can leverage technology to deliver, you know, those curriculum pieces and that common framework. But I wanna talk about the technology itself because, Jeff, we had an interesting conversation earlier, about your implementation of Canvas and what your expectations this year are versus past years and how that could also lend itself to really impact when we talk about, you know, building equitable learning experiences across classrooms, could really have a huge impact. So if you wouldn't mind sharing what you had talked about previous prior to jumping onto this call. Yeah.

So, so what we decided, this year was to, and in our case, it was for Canvas usage. And and I'll put on my own, like, trip down memory lane. When I was in middle school, I had a teacher who was was really, really big on binder checks. Well, guess who failed his binder check every single time. Right? That was a guaranteed f for me.

That wasn't my thing. Today today, we would have said, wow. He really has struggles with executive function. But the truth is it's not the way my brain worked, and no teacher was gonna change that about me, that putting papers into that three ring binder in a proper order did it. It was not helpful to me.

It didn't work for me. And so when we look at our students today, we say, oh, they're lacking executive function. But then we actually look at what we're tasking them with. We say, well, these two teachers are using Canvas. This teacher is asking them to write everything down in their notebook, and this third teacher is still hanging on to the the the daily agenda book that no other teachers are using anymore in the school.

So we're now asking our students potentially to remember what's due when across three different calendars, three different sources, three different solutions, and three different methods. Well, no offense. I wouldn't wanna be a student in that environment either. So one of the one of the things we can do for students is we can say, well, we can give you a in IT, we talk about single pane of glass. We can give you that single pane of glass that gives you everything that's due, everything that's coming up, everything that's past due or was in the past in a single pane of glass.

And the beauty for it is we can do that without adding any work to our teachers other than what they would already be doing, which is creating an assignment, putting the assignment into a grade book. These all happen every day anyway in every any classroom in America. So as long as we say to all teachers, whether you're band or PE or chemistry, you know, or US history, every assignment, every due date, every event goes into Canvas, then we provide for our students that single pane of glass, that cohesive experience that allows them to manage the work they have without losing the fact that, oh, shoot. I wrote that down in my binder, and I forgot about it. Or I wrote that down in my spiral notebook or my agenda book or my whatever.

So for us, it was an expectation of the curriculum that's been written will be used. That was one. And and, you know, trying to avoid, some of, what a colleague of mine refers to as hobby teaching, or, you know, teachers who go off on, I'm really passionate about planets, so I teach planets, you know, through and through to my first grade. Well, you know, we we don't teach planets in first grade. I'm I'm glad you love it.

But, so the curriculum must be used, infused and add and and customized those things that make you you, which is great. But that is one expectation. And the other one is that all assignments, grades, dates, due dates, whatever else, go into Canvas. And that way, students get that single and parents. And and we haven't really talked about the home school connection.

But parents are craving that transparency into what's happening in schools and what their students are being asked to do so that we don't have that conversation at the dinner table, which is, what did you do at school today? Nothing. Do you have any homework? No. You know? I I got all done in school, mom. You know? I got all done in school, dad. So that you know? Well, why don't you show me that Canvas is a lot is a lot, friendlier type of, and and factual result, I think.

So so those were a few things that we decided were really critical just to establish a standard across the school division, and and then uniformly enforce that, at the school level. I love that. Yeah. You're right. Because kids, they have they're having to, you know, do so many things with so many different technologies and so many logins and so many places, and not to mention the paper resources.

So I think you're exactly right. And how about their anxiety levels? Right? That has to that has to give them the ability to just kinda like, okay. It's all in one place. I'm not having to remember all these things and increase engagement, I would think as well. Well and I can, piggyback on that.

Like, for our in our district, we are trying to we don't have that standard yet, but we're working towards that. And what we're trying to push is for teachers from kinder all the way up to twelfth grade to get their students in a habit of going to Canvas every day. We have a lot of different tools, you know, at our disposal, but if we can get everyone consistently going to Canvas and that being our central hub of information for for our students, with our kinders, I'm working with kinder first and second just to get them logged on to Canvas, right, and finding an easy and seamless way for them to be able to access the resource and so that teachers can get them comfortable with that. We've I mean, we're down here in the south in Louisiana. We've had some crazy weather the last year couple years, and we had quite a few weather days.

And if we can get them used to going to Canvas, then when we have those unexpected days out of school, students and parents can know that my teacher is going to post whatever information I need to access on that day out or if I'm absent within Canvas. So I know, like, that's kind of been our goal, and we're working towards kind of refining that and what that looks like for each individual grade level. But that that takes buy in. Right? And and part of that buy in too is letting teachers know, hey. Once you start doing this and once you start building stuff out in Canvas, it's there from year to year.

So there might be a lot of work on the front end, but once it's done, then you can reuse that information and make whatever minor tweaks you need for each coming school year. And that's a big selling point for a lot of our teachers who just have things piling up on their plate and never anything being taken off. Yeah. So Yeah. And you mentioned buy in, so this is a great segue.

We're gonna go to our third pillar. And we're talking about, you know, technically, professional development, how we provide supports, but also leadership. And I'm actually gonna start at the bottom because you just said buy in. So when I think of buy in, you know, when anytime we're doing a new initiative, whether that's, hey. We're gonna rewrite curriculum or, hey.

We're gonna do an instructional model or, hey. We're gonna get this new technology. The question is always, like, how do we get the buy in? And and so how do you as a leader, like, how do you effectively communicate the why and how do you get buy in from your staff? Like, is there an art to that? What does what does that look like? Yeah. I can I can say from I mean, well, just from from my my role Yeah? The buy in that I get when teachers are coming to PD is how is this gonna make my life easier? For sure. You know? Where where is the efficiency here? And, am I gonna sit here for an hour of training or a day of training or two days of training? And what am I gonna leave here with that is gonna that I'm gonna be able to implement tomorrow, and that is gonna make my life easier.

And if I can do that for my teachers, then I can I can get them on board? That those have been two of the things. And one of the things that I've learned through professional development in the years that I've been doing this is less is more. Yes. We tend to overwhelm. I know in in previous years, we have just, okay, how much can we fit in this amount of time that we have them? That's not how that's not what we wanna do.

We wanna do this in in small chunks, in small bits of information that they can turn around and do, you know, without our support and go back into their classroom after they've gotten the instruction and make it that simple so that they can go back in and get it implemented in their classroom, so that they can see how it can make their life easier, how it can make it better, how it can engage students more in the learning process. And once we do that, then then we get the buy in. And once you get the buy in from the teachers, then it spreads like wildfire Yep. Amongst the other teachers. I mean, when we have, like, science this year, I'm hoping that once they come in and they get the instruction that we're gonna deliver, it's actually next week for us, that they start it starts trickling around to all the other content areas at their school because they'll hopefully go back and be excited about what they're learning.

And then we'll have more teachers that are wanting to to get on board and and utilize these tools, not just for the sake of using the tools, but because it makes their life easier, and it improves outcomes for their students. Yep. You have to show the benefits for sure. So we're gonna so, Jeff, I'm gonna ask you. How critical do you feel it is to have leaders? Like, we're we're talking about buy in and we're talking about professional development and making, you know, making standards.

You mentioned having things be, you know, standardized this year. How critical is it important to have leaders involved in all that work? So the I think the leaders are are where the rubber meets the road. We can have teachers excited as as they can be about something. But the truth is that will spread so far without a person who's basically saying it's an expectation. We are going to be monitoring this.

We are going you know, we'll accept nothing less than this. What happens is you get some fatigue over time and then things tend to wane. And and, Anessa, what you said about less is more, I think that we also have to look at the number of platforms, products, systems we're putting in front of our teachers too because that's another one where less is more. The right number of products, the right number of platforms, because there's so many boutique software solutions out there that do this one thing better than everybody else. And they do do that one thing better than everybody else.

But the cost of switching and logging into a new system and whatever else, becomes really problematic. So if we have all of the software that's overlapping, and it's like, well, this one does eighty percent of what this one does, but the the twenty percent difference, you know what? Pick one, run with it, and and get rid of the other one. So one of the things I I, you know, often find myself focused on when it comes to leadership and technology is you have to look at what what are you evaluating your school leaders on? Are you evaluating them on their ability to understand and, assess technology and technology systems and technology uses and technology integration. And and I will tell you in in ninety percent of the cases, the answer to that is no. In fact, you know, and I'll pick on Virginia a little bit.

You know, here in Virginia, our, standards for school leaders, don't actually have the word technology in them anywhere. It's a a a ninety two page, ninety four page document, that mentions Technology Zero. And and I know we're not alone in that. We look at the national organizations, and there's definitely threads around, like, the PSELs and things like that for, school leaders. But I think we need to do a better job here.

I think when we're looking at, principal preparation programs and and admin preparation programs in our higher ed institutions, what are we doing to prepare them to think in a world that's dominated by, technology systems and technology platforms that that the interface between, education and that system, that platform is only becoming more and more rich. We need leaders at School Leader that also have a proclivity and appreciation for and understanding of, because at the end of the day, they do have to sell it to some degree to their teachers, and, you know, you can't sell a product you don't love. So if you don't yourself believe in it, you're not gonna do a good job selling it. And I think that's a critical gap right now. You know and I know and anybody who's worked at schools, you know who your principals and APs are, that they get technology, they love technology.

But I think we all would also agree that that's probably not the majority of our principals and the majority of our APs. And there's there's something that has happened here that I think we do need to play a little bit of catch up on. We put a lot of burden on teachers to adopt technology, but we haven't placed that same emphasis or burden on our school leadership to understand their role as technology leaders. Yeah. I would agree.

And I was sharing with you guys before we came on that I I work with a lot of schools, and I had a gal who was one of one of my recent events, and she is a media specialist by trade, but she's the she's the campus administrator for their district. And she had had an moment during our time together, and she she almost looked like she was a klimt. And her words were, she said, my strength she goes, what I just realized is my administrator has always been super supportive, but he's not very helpful. And she talked about how she, how he wanted the, like, wanted the results. He wanted everybody to be using it.

He wanted all those things, but he wasn't willing to put forth the resources, the time, the money, you know, the support, making people accountable, but he wanted all the results. And I loved it when she just said, I'm I'm just getting that he's not supportive. Or he is supportive, but he's not helpful. And it gave her the power to go in there and voice that to her administrators and say, hey. I need your help.

Like, I need your help. You put me in charge of this, and I need help. And I think you're right, Jeff. We've had all of these initiatives thrust on teachers, but we as leaders also need to be taking that challenge and and really stay stepping up our game. Yeah.

I would agree hundred percent. Well, guess what? We're winding down time already, but I wanna make sure that we just touch on professional development a little bit. We were worried about filling the time. Let's talk a little bit about PD. And, Anessa, if you would I know you've kind of talked a little bit about your impact training and things that you're doing there, but, what you and you mentioned about less is more, but is there anything else you when you're talking about providing PD for your school and your staff, anything that's, like, evolving or do you you know, flexibility? What are we seeing in that front as far as, like, working with teachers? So one of the things that we do, as tech facilitators, we are, we send out, dates once every nine weeks to actually be, face to face on campus with our teachers, to support, you know, if they've been in Impact training.

Or we have iTech teachers who are our model technology teachers. There's a cohort of teachers that come for, they're in, like, two to three year cohorts. Our new teachers, we can go out and support them. That's at minimum we're there. But when we we go, we have a booking where they can actually schedule time with us one on one to go out and address whatever it is that they need assistance with.

So that's one of the things that's just more personalized and flexible to their schedule and meeting their needs. And, also, what we found is being within their environment is so much more effective. It's not they're just not in a training, sitting and getting, or trying to keep up on the computer, but they're in their space touching their equipment, working through some of those things, and that seems to stick so much better. The other things that we do, to support our teachers is we can go in and teach a model lesson as the tech facilitator on how to purposely integrate technology to support their curriculum. We can co teach with them.

And then, when we're not there face to face, they can schedule virtual bookings with us. And, again, they can do that as a group of teachers if they have a common, area that they need to work on, such as maybe reading progress or, their Promethean panels, and then we can provide that support in in real time when they need it and when they're available and not having to carve time out of their already busy schedule, trying to to fit into what we are offering as far as three thirty to four thirty webinars or having to get a substitute to come to attend our training. So those are the types of PD that we've we've shifted from, you know, having the, you know, let's come for a half a day or a full day of training on this. We're now getting out into their space and their environment and finding, number one, we're getting utilized a lot more. Mhmm.

We have a a jump in in our engagement with the teachers and their attendance to things, and it's just it seems to stick better. So those are the things that we're kind of shifting towards and and little little bits, micro trainings, if you will, within their within their space, and it seems to be a lot more effective. And I found too that working with schools that when I give them choice. Right? We talk about universal design for learning for kids all the time. But adults like choice too.

And so we even when we're doing sit and get, if we can involve some choice, whether that's different topics or different sessions or what they wanna learn about or how they're learning it, whether that's asynchronous or synchronous, that choice has been a huge deal in PD, here in Nebraska. We've also shifted our online we have online courses. And are you our online courses used to be, like, a month long, and they would come in and they would, you know, be released week by week. And we've shifted that to now our online courses are an entire semester, and you work at your pace. And so if, you know, the facilitator will just kinda check-in occasionally.

And if you have questions, they know how to reach out. But, otherwise, you work at your own pace. And then at the end of that semester, everything is is graded and you get we have a tech point system to try to incentivize some of our teachers as well. So when they attend training, they get tech points, and they can they can earn enough tech points to get different things like iPads or gadgets, Spheros. I remember what people will do for badges and points.

I mean, even as forty six year old, you know, teachers, I I'm always up for a good badge. I know. Yeah. For sure. So yeah.

Okay. Rounding out our time. We are, on our last pillar, we're gonna touch on this briefly, but we're talking about how do we monitor its effectiveness. And I know earlier when we first started, Jeff had mentioned, like, this is an ever, like, ever changing process, and it's continually we're continually having to improve. And this is not something that we just do once and say, hey.

We're done. But how do we as, leaders or how do we in this space, how do we continue to affect our you know, to measure our effectiveness, and how do we adjust and adapt and grow? Do either of you have anything that you wanna share with us as we're wrapping up today on this pillar? Yeah. I think, what I would say is the the PLC, in my opinion, is where the rubber meets the road on this one. And, again, PLC loaded. You know? When I call a PLC, someone else would just call a grade level meeting.

Right? And and so, the the idea that we're our PLCs are focused on data, that there are data systems in place that prevent teachers from having to do their own disaggregation. Like, to me, if we're asking our teachers to be data scientists, we've missed we've missed a memo somewhere along the way. And so to me, you know, we have to surface the data that tells the teachers the answers to the questions we know they're gonna have, Who learned what? Who didn't learn what? What items were good? What items were bad? Where am I? Where are my students? And where should they be? We need to present them with systems that allow them to then facilitate those kinds of conversations within their PLC. And the PLC needs to be attended not just by the teachers, but also by the technology coaches or innovators or integrators and also by school leadership. And maybe not every time, but maybe once a month.

Maybe we're just checking in to make sure that, the the the the progress and the and the focus is staying where we want it to be. And then I think that ideally, we're building systems that surface data to the to the, you know, school wide and division wide level as well so that we can address, like, wow. It really does look like we might have a gap in our curriculum Mhmm. You know, for standard, you know, seven dot two or whatever it is in math. And and so that kind of information, because we can get data points across thousands of students potentially, that's a big deal.

And our ability to bring the data to that level as well is critically important. To me, though, it is it is about our internal systems and internal practices more than it is about state standards and standardized tests because for us in Virginia, the standardized test, the end of course test, it's a post mortem. It tells us what happened last year. It doesn't tell us what is happening now or what isn't happening now. And that to me is the great, you know, the the the great paradox that we're living in right now, where a lot of emphasis and, priority is placed on those end of course tests across the country.

But the truth is by the time we get the results and they're all cleaned up and figured out whatever else, we're into the next school year. And all that all it really does tell us is what did or didn't happen the year prior. And at that point, the kids have moved on to a new teacher, a new curriculum, a new grade level, a new whatever else. So to me, this takes, you know, some purposeful ideation around what data do our teachers need to really have these conversations and PLCs be as effective as possible, and how does that also support the the needs of the school leadership and the division level leadership as well, so that we can identify strengths and weaknesses, and and respond and act accordingly. Yeah.

I love that idea of data conversations. That's great. And, Elsa, do you have anything to add to that? Well, I just know, like, here, in what what I hear sometimes is that the PLC the dedicated PLC time sometimes gets used for other things. And so I know what one thing Louisiana is doing is really trying to protect that time for the teachers because that is the time that they have to actually look at that information. I mean, I think some people well, people that aren't educators don't realize from seven forty five to to three o'clock, you've got well, at least for us, we have kids.

And so that little thirty minutes at the end of the day that you're just trying to, like, get your room ready for the next day, there's no there's no extra time in there. So you have to protect that time. And and like you say, Jeff, with the leaders being, you know, making sure that that time is protected so that they can utilize that for the purposes of what they need, which is to review that data and make sure that they're identifying ways to improve those, instructional outcomes for students and identifying addressed. So I know for us, that's a big push this year, and, we'll see how that goes. Hopefully, it is being protected for them.

That goes back to leadership, right, and having those moments, setting that expectation, and making people accountable. And leaders are so, so critical. And all of this work that we're talking about, you know, teachers are as well, but to set the tone, those leaders are just so important. Well, we've come to the time of our webinar where we are talking, we are looking at q and a, and I'm looking at the q and a. And I'm not seeing anything in this space that's asking questions, but I want to make sure that I'm looking in the right space.

We we kind of went a little longer than we intended, so we apologize about that. But I wanna thank everyone for attending our our webinar today. This was a great conversation. I just felt like it was the three us in a room, so I really appreciated that and getting to visit with you guys a little bit more. But we're hoping that today you walk away with some practical strategy or you heard something today that's gonna initiate a conversation.

I always talk about what's the one thing you're gonna do when you leave a training. I always whenever I'm doing anything, it's the small things. Right? It's the little things. I'm a forty six year old who just started piano lessons. I mean, like and it's it was a phone call.

I had to make the phone call. It was a goal, and I made the phone call. It's just what's your one next step. Right? So maybe you're gonna start PLCs. Well, who's the person you're gonna talk to to do that? Or maybe you need to work on your instructional framework.

Who are the people you need to gather to get that done? So what's gonna be your one step towards working that direction? So we hope today you glean something from our conversation that's gonna help, amplify your situation at your district and help to ensure that students are receiving quality education in every classroom and every building. We thank you for your time, and we hope that you have a fabulous rest of your week. Enjoy your Tuesday evening, and thanks for joining us. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Anessa. You're welcome. Appreciate that.