New Schools Project Summer Institute 2008

I just spent 48 minutes in an interview with a writer for The Innovator, The New Schools Project's email resource. I appreciated the opportunity to think about the great work we did in Winston-Salem a couple of weeks ago. I hope I was articulate and accurate.

During the SILSA Faculty Retreat August 11-13, those of us who were at the Summer Institute will present our list of Learning Outcomes for SILSA Graduates. I am so proud of this document. We spent several hours thinking about the five to seven outcomes that SILSA should focus on. We were charged with deciding on outcomes with specific measurements and with beginning to list the supports that we would use to help our students achieve those outcomes.

Our NSP Summer Institute binder included several exceptional examples of other schools' graduate outcomes. These models were helpful as we began our work. But it was very important to us, especially to me, that our list be tailored to our students and our school.

We worked very hard to ensure that all of our voices were heard during our work sessions. Our group's facilitator Heidi Lyne encouraged us and helped us meet our goals for our time together. I am extraordinarily pleased with the document we created. In particular, I am thankful that we were willing to step up and make some promises to our students and their parents, and I am thankful that our document is written simply, without a lot of educational jargon. When we all reach consensus, we will have a list of Graduate Outcomes that are easy to remember and to articulate to others. I can't wait to share our list here.

I can't do that, yet, though. Those of us who were at the Summer Institute will present our work to the entire faculty in a month. When we've reached consensus as a faculty, then we will bring the document to the SILSA SPMT. It's crucial that all of the SILSA stakeholders work together on these outcomes since they will serve as the common vision from which decisions about our school are made.

I love my work.