FutureSchool

The Guthrie School principal (Kevin Chisum) and I attended two days of meetings in connection with the Texas High Performance Schools Consortium (TxHPSC).  Guthrie CSD was selected to be a member of that group about two years ago by the commissioner of education in Texas.  The original 23 schools in that consortium have now been joined by 70+ other districts in Texas to engage in that vigorous work in affecting school transformation (and the number keeps growing).

The work of the TxHPSC is dedicated to improving the contexts, processes, and culture of schools across Texas, in the interest of optimizing the learning of EVERY child.

To capture some of the ideas, conversations, and infectious thinking of the educators who attended that event, let me put it into a contrasting summary - things I heard the educators indicate an intention to do Less Of and things they expressed commitment to do More Of.

Less Of This Stuff:

• Mindless subscription to the pathology of a broken accountability system
• One-size-fits-all deployment models of education
• Dependence on superficial and meaningless measurements of learning
• Struggling independently and in isolation to affect school improvement
• Frantic instructional delivery aimed at covering mile-wide and inch-deep learning standards

More Of This Stuff:

• Efforts to customize and personalize the learning experience for children
• Meaningful engagement with the local community in defining educational intentions and deployment efforts at the local level
• Purposeful development/use of multiple measures of learning that give an authentic and meaningful view of a student's learning
• Inter-school collaboration in the interest of making schools in Texas all they can be
• Identifying fewer, robust high-priority learning standards and focusing instructional efforts at those standards to affect deep, meaningful, relevant learning experiences for students

It is at once powerful and gratifying and humbling to be able to work with such a broad range of diverse educators and school districts who have made the conscious decision to be absolutely all they can be for their students and their communities.  Extremely proud that Guthrie CSD is part of this movement.

Want to join us in this journey?  Click here.