Instructor/Facilitator: Jay Nichols, Executive Director VPA
Dates: September 12, Oct. 11, Nov. 20, and Dec.17, 2019 Jan. 13, Feb. 13, Mar. 24, Apr. 15, May 15 and June 8, 2020
Time: 9:00-3:30 (includes light breakfast and lunch)
Leading Vermont Schools Cohort #6
This Principal cohort will meet once a month to explore how effective principals deal with the multiple roles and responsibilities of a Vermont building leader, balancing the practical daily issues while impacting student learning. Vermont’s leading experts, from Dan French, Secretary of Education, to Brad James, Education Finance Manager present to this cohort, giving these principals a personal connection to leaders in Vermont education.
Target Audience: Principals, particularly those in their first years in Vermont schools
Whether you are new to supervision and evaluation, new to Vermont education legislation, or need a clearer understanding of practical and important facets of building leadership, each session brings Vermont experts that will give you guidance and knowledge in:
• supervision & evaluation of teachers and support staff
• legal issues
• systems management
• fiscal management & budget development
• student management
• instructional leadership and curriculum and assessment
• effective procedural development
• community involvement
• student voice
• communication
• school safety
Books (included): The Prinicpal: Three Keys to Maximizing Impact by Michael Fullan and Leaders of Learning by Rick DuFour and Robert Marzano
Jay is a previous member of the Champlain Valley Educator Development Center Board and Executive Committee. Jay was on the Board and a member of the hiring committee that appointed Lauren Wooden to be the organizations second Executive Director. Jay has taught several graduate classes through CVEDC and Saint Michael’s College. Annually, he facilitates the Leading Vermont Schools: Understanding the Principalship Cohort group that provides year-long training in a course structure designed specifically to support new and relatively new Vermont Principals.
Facilitator: Luis Versalles, Pacific Educational Group/ FULL, waitlist available (please e-mail CVEDC to request waitlist)
Dates: September 24 & 25, 2019 Time: 8:30 am registration 9 am -4:30 pm (Breakfast and Lunches included)
Target Audience: Instructional leaders and coaches, special education leaders, curriculum leaders, select principals and school team members
Beyond Diversity is a powerful, personally transforming two-day seminar that helps teachers, students, and administrators understand the impact of race on our lives, our work and our learning. Interactive and stirring exercises strength participants’ critical consciousness of race and leads them to investigate the role that racism plays in institutionalizing achievement disparities. Most importantly, it models and teaches a protocol for discussing race in ways that are productive, insightful, and generative. We cannot solve the problems created by systemic racism without discussing race, and Beyond Diversity, a program with a 25-year history and over 100,000 alumni, imparts a method for having Courageous Conversations.
ENGAGE
In a thoughtful, compassionate exploration of race and racism and grapple with how each influences the culture and climate of our schools.
PRACTICE
Using strategies for identifying and addressing the policies, programs, and practices that negatively impact students of color achievement and serve as barriers to ALL students receiving a world-class education
DEVELOP
The knowledge and requisite skills for engaging, sustaining, and deepening Courageous Conversation about the impact of race and racism on schooling.
CORE SEMINAR TOPICS & CONCEPTS
· Courageous Conversation Protocol
· Racial Identity Development and Practice
· (De)Constructing Systemic Racism
· Adaptive Leadership for Equity
COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS FRAMEWORK
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race.”
-Hon. Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (2014)
Facilitators: Michael Berry and Vicki Graf
Date: October 2, 2019 Time: 8:30 registration 9:00-3:30 (light breakfast and lunch included)
Target Audience: Educational Leaders, Classroom & Foreign Language Teachers
We are fortunate that a local school district in Vermont is a model for others in the implementation of a Language Immersion Program. We know that children learn a second language more quickly than adults, and those who are immersed in it – through home or school, are able to benefit from the language in context and their own interests.
In our diverse, global world, being able to speak more than one language will serve our children well. This day-long workshop will help you think through:
· What Language Immersion is
· Where to start the conversation
o Committee/community
o Preschool
o Language selection
o School board
o Foreign language teachers
o Site visits
· Program Structure
· Pitfalls to avoid/ strategies to implement
· Partnerships to form
· Resources that can support your learning in this area
About our Facilitators:
Michael Berry is the Montpelier/Roxbury SD Curriculum Director and previously worked with CESU to start a Kindergarten Elementary full immersion class where subjects are fully taught in Spanish and the cohort continues immersion learning as they move through the system at the central office perspective.
Vicki Graf is the principal of Jericho Elementary School. She has guided the work of the immersion class in her school through its layers of implementation, including the hiring process, its structure, communication and refinement.
Instructors/Facilitators: Megan Grube, GISU Director of Curriculum Instruction & Technology and Jennifer Kennison, Franklin Northeast SU
(October 2019 – May 2020) 3 Graduate St. Michael’s Credits
Target Audience: Current and Aspiring Curriculum Leaders, Teacher Leaders
Dates: New Start Date-October 14! November 15, 2019, January 17, March 20, and May 22, 2020
Hours: 9 -3:30 pm (includes light breakfast & Lunch) *Additional participation in online discussion and reflection on learning and growth required for course.
Text: Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems by Michael Fullan and Joanne Quinn
Course Description and Rationale:
In order for all students to learn at high levels, schools must constantly evolve to meet the ever present as well as new demands of the educational landscape. Designing and building dynamic environments for students requires that schools, districts, and Supervisory Unions become learning organizations. Peter Senge defines a learning organization as a place “where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole (reality) together” (Senge 1992).
Curriculum leaders are the shepherds of continual learning in Supervisory Unions and School Districts. We are capacity builders, vision keepers, lead learners, framework builders, innovation catalysts, and more. In collaboration with other key leaders, we are the designers, teachers and stewards of the creation of learning organizations.
This leadership academy is designed to meet the learning needs of both current and aspiring Curriculum Directors.
Each session has a similar organizational structure. Each session will include an exploration of the focus area, introduction to a component of the final project, a takeaway tool to support your work now and in the future, and a personalized facilitated work session with “experts in the field”. Using the lens of continuous improvement, Fullan’s Coherence framework, tenets of the PLC process, current educational priorities and legislation, and other key resources, we will explore how curriculum leaders support the development of learning organizations and manage organizational change through their major work responsibilities. These include developing, implementing, and monitoring continuous improvement plans, state and federal grants, professional learning plans, articulated curricula, assessment plans, and more.
The major work of the course will be the development of a continuous improvement plan for an individual, a grade band, a school, or an SU as this work is the keystone of learning organizations; defining the why, what, how, and where of innovation efforts.
Major components of this final project include:
- A “living” shared vision
- Development of a comprehensive needs assessment and theories of action
- Development of goals and change ideas
- Resource allocation plan
- Implementation and monitoring plan
Megan Grube is the Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Technology for the Grand Isle Supervisory Union.read more….
Jen Kennison is an Instruction and Learning Specialist at FNESU read more...
Instructor/Facilitator: Ellen Dorsey, Washington Central Supervisory Union Instructional Coach
(October 2018 – May, 2019) 3 Graduate St. Michael’s Credits
Target Audience: New and experienced instructional coaches, administrators interested in developing a coach approach.
Dates: October 15 and November 13, 2019, January 8, March 17, and May 6, 2020
Hours: 9 -3:30 pm (includes light breakfast & Lunch)Texts: Jim Knight’s Corwin books: Better Conversations: Coaching Ourselves and Each Other to be more Credible, Caring and Connected and
The Impact Cycle: What Instructional Coaches Should do to Foster Powerful Improvements in Teaching
This course is designed to meet the learning needs of coaches with varying levels of experience. The learning opportunities are designed to fit within Jim Knight’s framework for Instructional Coaching and the Instructional Coaching Practice Standards developed by the New Teacher Center.
Throughout the course, participants engage in coaching cycles both as a coach and as a coachee as they dig deeper into their own coaching practice and goals. The individual sessions are structured to provide participants with opportunities to reflect, address problems of practice (or “coaching conundrums”) and share resources and materials that will improve their effectiveness as a coach. Using a cohort approach, participants will connect with one another and other skilled practitioners who can speak to meeting the varied expectations of those in a coaching role.
Through this course, participants will:
· Deepen their understanding of the processes and protocols involved in facilitating an instructional coaching cycle;
· Explore ways to engage teachers in collaborative, instructionally focused, problem-solving conversations and reflective analysis to promote teacher agency.
· Design a professional learning plan (PLP) outlining goals for coaching.
· Understand, reflect on, and strategically respond to problems of practice associated with instructional coaching.
· Contribute to the development of a collaborative Instructional Playbook that can be used during coaching cycles.
Visit CVEDC’s site for more about our instructor/facilitators.
About the Instructor: Ellen Dorsey
Facilitators: Andrew Jones, Ed.D. & Jen Stainton, Ed.D.
Date: October 17th & Nov. 11, 2019 Time: 8:30 registration 9:00-3:30 (light breakfast and lunch included)
Includes book: In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine (2019)
Target Audience: Grades 7-12 Educators, Principals, Curriculum Leaders
Description: What is Deeper Learning? What strategies and structures currently exist in schools that promote this kind of learning? What steps can educators take to allow all students to access instruction like this? In this two-day workshop series, participants will evaluate the traditional, industrial-era education model practiced in many middle and high schools by considering case studies of schools working to build a Deeper Learning culture. By engaging in the literature and in conversations with colleagues, participants will leave with an understanding of what defines a culture of Deeper Learning and how we can move towards this model of schooling to better support student engagement.
Participants will:
· Identify instructional practices that are not serving ALL students well
· Reflect on ways to shift away from a teacher-centered model of instruction
· Gain an understanding of the definition of Deeper Learning
· Compare the promises and pitfalls of Deeper Learning
· Develop action steps for building a culture of Deeper Learning
Andrew Jones is currently the director of curriculum for Mill River Unified Union School District in Clarendon, Vermont. Prior to being a district administrator, Andrew taught high school science at Mt. Abraham UHS in Bristol. Andrew is passionate about improving education systems to better meet the needs of ALL students, which means challenging the dominant conceptualizations about teaching and learning.
Jen Stainton, Ed.D. is a building-based Curriculum Coordinator for Woodstock Union High School and Middle School in Woodstock, Vermont. Jen has 20 years of experience as a high school science teacher. She is an education enthusiast who enjoys working with other educators to explore innovation and equity in our schools.
Facilitator: Leidene King, Pacific Educational Group/ Full, waitlist available (please e-mail CVEDC to request waitlist)
Dates: November 5 & 6, 2019 Time: 8:30 am registration 9 am -4:30 pm (breakfast and lunches included)
Target Audience: Instructional leaders and coaches, special education leaders, curriculum leaders, select principals and school team members
Beyond Diversity is a powerful, personally transforming two-day seminar that helps teachers, students, and administrators understand the impact of race on our lives, our work and our learning. Interactive and stirring exercises strength participants’ critical consciousness of race and leads them to investigate the role that racism plays in institutionalizing achievement disparities. Most importantly, it models and teaches a protocol for discussing race in ways that are productive, insightful, and generative. We cannot solve the problems created by systemic racism without discussing race, and Beyond Diversity, a program with a 25-year history and over 100,000 alumni, imparts a method for having Courageous Conversations.
ENGAGE
In a thoughtful, compassionate exploration of race and racism and grapple with how each influences the culture and climate of our schools.
PRACTICE
Using strategies for identifying and addressing the policies, programs, and practices that negatively impact students of color achievement and serve as barriers to ALL students receiving a world-class education
DEVELOP
The knowledge and requisite skills for engaging, sustaining, and deepening Courageous Conversation about the impact of race and racism on schooling.
CORE SEMINAR TOPICS & CONCEPTS
· Courageous Conversation Protocol
· Racial Identity Development and Practice
· (De)Constructing Systemic Racism
· Adaptive Leadership for Equity
COURAGEOUS CONVERSATION FRAMEWORK
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race.”
-Hon. Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (2014)
Facilitator: Dawan Julien, Pacific Educational Group
Dates: November 7 & 8, 2019 Time: 8:30 am registration 9 am -4:30 pm (breakfast and lunches included)
Target Audience: Instructional leaders and coaches, special education leaders, curriculum leaders, select principals and school team members
Beyond Diversity is a powerful, personally transforming two-day seminar that helps teachers, students, and administrators understand the impact of race on our lives, our work and our learning. Interactive and stirring exercises strength participants’ critical consciousness of race and leads them to investigate the role that racism plays in institutionalizing achievement disparities. Most importantly, it models and teaches a protocol for discussing race in ways that are productive, insightful, and generative. We cannot solve the problems created by systemic racism without discussing race, and Beyond Diversity, a program with a 25-year history and over 100,000 alumni, imparts a method for having Courageous Conversations.
ENGAGE
In a thoughtful, compassionate exploration of race and racism and grapple with how each influences the culture and climate of our schools.
PRACTICE
Using strategies for identifying and addressing the policies, programs, and practices that negatively impact students of color achievement and serve as barriers to ALL students receiving a world-class education
DEVELOP
The knowledge and requisite skills for engaging, sustaining, and deepening Courageous Conversation about the impact of race and racism on schooling.
CORE SEMINAR TOPICS & CONCEPTS
· Courageous Conversation Protocol
· Racial Identity Development and Practice
· (De)Constructing Systemic Racism
· Adaptive Leadership for Equity
COURAGEOUS CONVERSATION FRAMEWORK
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race.”
-Hon. Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (2014)
Facilitators: Andrew Jones, Ed.D. & Jen Stainton, Ed.D.
Date: December 3, 2019 Time: 8:30 registration 9:00-3:30 (light breakfast and lunch included)
Includes book: Essential Assessment: Six Tenets for Bringing Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement to the Classroom by Erkens, Vagle, and Schimmer (2017)
Target Audience: Grades K-12 Educators, Principals, Curriculum Leaders
Description: How reliable and valid are your classroom assessments? Do they accurately measure student proficiency of content and skills? This workshop focuses on how to align both formative and summative assessments with specific proficiencies so as to accurately identify student strengths and weaknesses. In working toward better alignment, we often discover it necessary to tweak current assessments or create new ones, ultimately improving reliability and validity of grade data in the process. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to an “Assessment Audit Tool,” and will use this tool to review and revise one of their own classroom assessments.
Participants will:
- Recognize the issues with “legacy” assessment practices
- Understand the process for ensuring that assessments are valid, reliable, and aligned with specific proficiencies
- Learn about and be able to use the “Assessment Audit Tool” to refine current classroom assessments and align them with proficiencies
Andrew Jones is currently the director of curriculum for Mill River Unified Union School District in Clarendon, Vermont. Prior to being a district administrator, Andrew taught high school science at Mt. Abraham UHS in Bristol. Andrew is passionate about improving education systems to better meet the needs of ALL students, which means challenging the dominant conceptualizations about teaching and learning.
Jen Stainton, Ed.D. is a building-based Curriculum Coordinator for Woodstock Union High School and Middle School in Woodstock, Vermont. Jen has 20 years of experience as a high school science teacher. She is an education enthusiast who enjoys working with other educators to explore innovation and equity in our schools.
LEADERSHIP FOR RACIAL EQUITY (LEADS) Seminar Descriptions and Learning Outcome/FULL, waitlist available (please e-mail CVEDC to request waitlist
Dates: March 13, April 9, May 8, September 29, October 28 and December 11, 2020 Time: 9 am – 4 pm
Prerequisite: Register for one of the two-day institutes Beyond Diversity (Sept or Nov) if you have not yet attended a Courageous Conversation session.
Note: For district teams of 6 or more, Superintendent registration is included. (not transferrable).
Book included.
LEADS Seminar #1 Introduction to the Theory of Transformation and Racial Equity Framework
Facilitator: Leidene King
Seminar 1 re-introduces PEG’s Systemic Equity Framework and Theory of Transformation (“Framework”). District and school leaders will utilize the language and tools of mindfulness to deepen understanding of the Courageous ConversationTM protocol and apply it in their personal and professional lives. In preparation for Seminar #1, participants should read chapters 1 – 3 of Courageous Conversations about Race (CCAR), 2nd ed., by Glenn Singleton. Learning Outcomes:
● Leaders will recognize and understand Courageous ConversationTM and Developmental Scale as essential tools and the foundation of systemic equity transformation.
● Leaders will be able to identify the Framework and recognize the interrelationship of its components, the training delivery model, their personal equity purpose, and their professional and organizational role and accountability as leaders for racial equity.
● Leaders will begin the process of creating the culture and conditions for achieving equity in their personal spheres of influence and understand it as a prerequisite to their professional and organizational development. Intersession Assignments (in preparation for Seminar #2): ● Read CCAR, chapters 4 – 7.
● Review and practice conditions 1, 2, and 3 and the Courageous Conversation Compass (refer to CCAR, chapters 4-7, as needed).
● Use Courageous ConversationTM (the Four Agreements, Six Conditions, an Compass) to explore a controversial topic.
● Read additional current topical articles to be assigned
LEADS Seminar #2 Using Critical Race Theory to Transform Leadership and District
Facilitator: Leidene King
Seminar #2 re-connects district leaders to Courageous ConversationTM as a requisite skill, and demonstrates its integral relationship to the “The Framework.” The seminar further examines the impact of race in schooling and introduces Critical Race Theory (CRT) – its importance, relevance, and application as an analytical tool for understanding race and the educational disparities resulting from systemic racism. CRT is established as a theoretical and requisite knowledge base in “Framework” for systemic equity transformation. Learning Outcomes:
● Leaders will deepen their understanding of Courageous Conversation as a skill and integral component of “The Framework.”
● Leaders will begin to understand CRT as an analytical tool for understanding social and educational inequity.
● Leaders will begin to understand CRT as a language and set of organizing tenets for examining personal and societal beliefs and behaviors connected to race. Intersession Assignments (in preparation for Seminar #3):
● Complete CRT Graphic Organizer
● Read CCAR Chapters 8, 9, and 10
● Read additional current topical articles to be assigned
● Revisit local racial disparity data
LEADS Seminar #3: Systems Thinking, Adaptive Leadership, and School Culture and Climate
Facilitator: Ismalis Nunez
Seminar 3 will review leaders’ understanding of critical race theory and begin a process of applying it as a tool for analyzing personal, professional, and organizational manifestations of systemic racism in their lives. Leaders will begin a process of internalizing adaptive leadership as a method to lead staff in identifying current organizational strengths and weaknesses for systemic racial equity transformation. This process will enable them to challenge existing systems and uncover underlying beliefs and assumptions that interfere with achieving racial equity. Leaders will be introduced to systems thinking and organizational learning, and will become acquainted with Peter Senge’s Ladder of Inference and Iceberg as tools for leading staff through individual and organizational introspection and uncovering racial inequities.
Learning Outcomes:
● Leaders will personalize adaptive leadership at a beginning level for purposes of understanding, engaging, and leading organizational learning for racial equity.
● Leaders will understand and be able to make personal, professional, and organizational connections to Critical Race Theory and its applications for interrupting inequitable systems.
● Leaders will understand and be able to apply systems thinking tools to surface beliefs and analyze the current racial equity challenges in their spheres of influence.
● Leaders will be able to assess the climate and culture of their district and schools with respect to racial equity strengths and challenges. Intersession Assignments (in preparation for Seminar #4):
▪ Read CCAR, chapters 11 – 13
▪ Read additional current topical articles to be assigned
LEADS Seminar #4: Creating Culturally Relevant Schools and Classrooms
Facilitator: Leidene King
Seminar 4 engages leaders in dialogue about the intersection of Race and Pedagogy. Conversations are facilitated to support and challenge participants’ thinking about the role of leadership in creating culturally relevant environments using “The Protocol.” Critical Race Theory, systems thinking, adaptive leadership, and organizational learning are revisited and connected to race and pedagogy. In seminar, participants will experience and deconstruct a professional learning environment in which teachers and administrators have balanced opportunities for reflection and productive disequilibrium. Leaders are introduced to Collaborative Action Research for Equity (CARE) as a method for transforming learning and teaching, and improving the participation and performance of all students, especially underserved students of color.
Learning Outcomes:
● Leaders will understand the Learning and Teaching domain of the PEG “Framework.”
● Leaders will recognize and understand Courageous ConversationTM as an essential tool for developing a culturally relevant environment.
● Leaders will understand CARE and be able to identify systems necessary to support the transformation of learning and teaching. Intersession Assignments (in preparation for Seminar #5):
▪ Read additional current topical articles to be assigned
LEADS Seminar #5: Empowering Families and Engaging Communities of Color
Facilitator: Cortlandt Butts
Seminar 5 engages Leaders in dialogue about the intersection of race and family/community empowerment. The seminar examines the often tightly held beliefs, mythologies, and pathologies that serve to marginalize and disenfranchise students, families, and communities of color. Using The Protocol, and informed by their emerging understanding of adaptive leadership, Critical Race Theory, systems thinking and organizational learning, participants will be challenged and supported to disavow these beliefs and engage with people of color in more authentic ways. Leaders are introduced to PASS (Partnerships for Academically Successful Students) as a process for developing effective relationships and partnerships with families and communities of color.
Learning Outcomes:
● Participants will be able to apply The Framework as a way to understand how to advance from parent involvement, through family engagement, to empowerment of communities of color.
● Leaders will be able to analyze and uncover systemic racism in schools, and engage in reflection and dialogue about its impact on family participation and student success.
● Leaders will understand PASS and be able to identify processes necessary to support a transformation in the relationship that school and district personnel share with families and communities of color. Intersession Assignments (in preparation for Seminar #6):
▪ Using the list from the seminar activity, explicitly plan and execute one of the suggested items. ▪ Using the terms of Critical Race Theory, discuss what systems in your school may be contributing to the marginalization of families of color, creating barriers to their authentic participation in the education of their children?
▪ Examine the ways in which your school currently is, or could be, utilizing the efforts of PASS to support culturally relevant pedagogy.
▪ Identify interventions and programs (past and present) specifically designed to address racial achievement disparities and parent empowerment. Include indicators of success and specific evidence documenting what has changed (or not) and the degree of success or impact on eliminating racial disparities.
▪ Review all previous LEADS seminars, then reflect on and articulate ways in which schools marginalize underserved families and communities of color through your understanding of CRT, CCAR, systems thinking, and adaptive leadership.
LEADS Seminar #6: Theory to Action: Creating a Framework for Accelerating and Sustaining District-wide Racial Equity Transformation
Facilitator: Dawan Julien
Seminar 6 prepares Leaders to move from racial equity theory into intentional practice. A major thrust of this seminar is focused around leaders assessing their understanding of and engagement with The Framework at a personal, professional, and organizational level. Participants will create a personal equity leadership plan and develop a distributive leadership structure for racial equity in their school or district department, and will begin the process of selecting Equity Teams to guide equity-focused professional learning. Leaders will also be introduced to an emerging district plan for equity transformation and will discuss how to anchor their own school or department improvement plans to the district’s overall equity transformation plan.
Learning Outcomes:
● Leaders will demonstrate mastery in understanding and applying The Framework.
● Leaders will demonstrate ownership for racial equity leadership and will have a plan to accomplish their work at the personal, professional, and organizational level over the next year.
● Leaders will be able to differentiate between delegated responsibility and distributive leadership and articulate their own personal and professional, as well as the organizational, will, skill, knowledge, and capacity to lead for racial equity.
● Leaders will understand the role of school-based Equity Teams, and the process and criteria for selecting E-Team members.