Three SC schools are piloting the use of the Profile of the SC Graduate Competencies with the support of the Office of Personalized Learning and reDesign. In this series of blog posts, we will follow the journey of each school as they work to make the Profile come alive for both teachers and students.
To read about the development of the PSCG competencies, as well as the overarching goals and process of the pilot program, read the first post in this blog series here.
Saluda Trail Middle School (STMS), a school in York County School District Three, started the pilot process of the PSCG competencies with an approach that first focused on the target area of the learner profile. The leadership team's (Ellissa Cox, Becky Funderburk, and Marlon Smith) first focus was on developing a competency-aligned learner profile template for incoming sixth grade students. This target area addressed the need for a place for students to reflect and track their skills while having the ability to share that learning with teachers.
Brainstorming Process
The creation of a learner profile, a tool where students could continually reflect on their personal learning as they move from 6th grade through 8th grade, was the first focus. The process began by discussing the purpose of the learner profile and how it could benefit students, teachers, and parents. Through these discussions, the team used the competencies as a guide for narrowing down the many ideas into manageable steps. The process began by using the Learner Profile Gist Statement Brainstorm document. Additional members of the leadership team were part of this brainstorming, including assistant principals, the reading specialist, and the technology specialist.
The team examined each competency and brainstormed ideas on how each one could be reflected in a learner profile. After these ideas were compiled, the competencies were narrowed down to the ones that would be the focus of this first pilot learner profile.
The team selected six competencies (three that are focused on academics and three that are focused on social-emotional skills) and identified key sub skills from those competencies. In addition, the team created the 6th Grade Cohort Learner Survey that would be distributed to incoming 6th graders in order to gather some initial data from students and parents.
After identifying the competencies for the learner profile, the STMS team needed to think about some logistical pieces of this final product: what this profile would look like and how to compile the information in a way that is student-friendly with easy access for parents and teachers. To start, a Competency Aligned Learner Profile Sample was created in Google Slides as a launching spot for creation.
Advice for School Leadership
For other school leaders undertaking this competency work, both Becky Funderburk and Elissa Cox shared advice to help support that journey.
Think about how competencies connect to your current work or can help fill a gap
Choose one or two to dig into deeply
Think about how competencies can connect to the entire staff and help connect the dots for people to make the competencies authentic
Match certain staff positions with certain competencies
Take an approach that fits your leadership style. Some leaders want all of the information up front and want to be wholly comfortable themselves before rolling it out. Other leaders have strong teams and are more comfortable in the “messiness” of the work.
Be mindful of how you communicate your message to your staff around this being a “grassroots” effort instead of a “top-down” initiative
Try to keep yourself in check. It’s important to slow down, dig deep, and make sure you are doing it well or you will lose the faculty in the process of moving through too quickly
The biggest challenge is perseverance at the beginning!
Looking Forward
As the STMS team begins to pilot the 6th grade learner profile, they looked forward to what they would need in order to provide the most support for success of this process and product. Some questions they used to guide their “forward thinking” were:
How do we keep feeding the parts of the profile and how does the implementation of those competencies evolve over the course of the year?
How do we support 6th grade staff in building their own capacity around these competencies along with students?
How do we begin to prepare for the profile to shift to 7th and 8th grade in the coming years?
How do we support teachers and assistant principals at all grade levels to build this capacity?
Saluda Trail Middle School’s journey in personalized, competency-based learning is well on its way, and we look forward to continuing to learn from them in their process! Want to learn more for your school, district, or classroom? Contact information for these team members is below:
Becky Funderburk (Instructional Coach) bfunderburk@rhmail.org
David Consalvi (STEAM Facilitator) DConsalvi@rhmail.org
The next post in this blog series will focus on the implementation of competencies at the high school level at River Buff High School! Stay tuned!
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