Audience: Elementary educators

In an effort to shift the ownership of learning from educator to student, SPARK School at Kyrene de las Manitas has implemented a system for students to reflect on their learning and progress, identify the academic support they need and schedule time to meet with the appropriate educator(s). This resource guides educator teams through steps to implementing student-selected support.

The educator team at Kyrene de las Manitas Innovation Academy co-plans project-based units that support deeper learning. The 10 tips appearing in this document are drawn from their approach to planning. To get started, consider how your team might implement these tips.

Community educators provide capacity and insight in service of deepening and personalizing student learning. They enrich learning environments by forging authentic relationships, sharing expertise and expanding networks. Use this template to guide your communication with community educators.

Next Education Workforce team-based structures can strengthen the project-based learning instructional approach. This unit planning template takes educators through the steps of designing a PBL unit, while also planning for how to maximize distributed expertise.

An asset map is a visual way to identify resources within your community. The act of creating a map of expertise can help you discover connections you already have, organizations you’d love to know about, and talents and resources near your school or available virtually.

Explore this resource to learn six tips for engaging a community educator in schools, community-based organizations and anywhere that learning happens.

Principled Innovation emboldens us to be able to ask the question, “We can, but should we?” This video, created by MLFTC’s Principled Innovation Team, introduces Next Education Workforce models and explores how their development is an example of principled innovation.

The Creighton Academy in Phoenix, Arizona serves about 300 students in grades K–6. Every student is a member of a covey: a multi-age group of 55–60 students. Students work with educators specific to their coveys and educators who work across coveys. In this resource, you’ll see the layout of their learning space.

The Creighton Academy in Phoenix, Arizona serves about 300 students in grades K–6. Every student is a member of a covey: a multi-age group of 55–60 students. Students work with educators specific to their coveys and educators who work across coveys. In this resource, you’ll explore their schedule.

The Creighton Academy in Phoenix, Arizona serves about 300 students in grades K–6. Every student is a member of a covey: a multi-age group of 55–60 students. Students work with educators specific to their coveys and educators who work across coveys. Here, you’ll learn how they’re implementing a team-based model.

At Sousa Elementary School in Mesa, Arizona, an educator team consisting of one lead teacher, three certified teachers, one special educator and three MLFTC residents supports a multi-age group of 104 first and second graders. In this resource, you’ll see the layout of their learning space.

At Sousa Elementary School in Mesa, Arizona, an educator team consisting of one lead teacher, three certified teachers, one special educator and three MLFTC residents supports a multi-age group of 104 first and second graders. In this resource, you’ll explore their schedule.

At Stevenson Elementary School, 75 third graders work with a core team of educators that includes a lead teacher, certified teachers and MLFTC residents. In this resource, you’ll see the layout of their learning space.

At Whittier, approximately 170 students in grades 4–6 will be part of multi-age learning communities called “houses.” Each house includes about 85 students and is guided by an educator team. In this resource, you’ll see the layout of their learning space.

In this Google Sheet, you’ll be able to describe your strategy, input the costs, make intentional shifts and see your choices summarized on a dashboard.

In this document, you’ll read about how two school leaders and one district-level leader make strategic shifts in funding and time to cover the costs of their new staffing models.

This resource, created in collaboration with MLFTC’s Principled Innovation Team, proposes a quarterly, one-hour protocol intended to help teams reflect together and build the “muscles” of empathy, awareness and resiliency. The protocol guides the team through sharing quarterly wins, reflecting on an intentional set of questions, debriefing and identifying next steps.

Design principles are four to seven ideas that align with the school’s mission and vision and act as a guiding light for the school-level team implementing change. This tool suggests steps a team might take to prepare for a design session on co-creating design principles, offers a protocol for facilitating the session and proposes next steps for taking design principles from draft form to final state.

Hear from MLFTC Dean Carole Basile about the relationship between deeper and personalized learning and teams of educators with distributed expertise.

Elementary instructional blueprints suggest ways teams of educators with distributed expertise might deploy themselves to better deepen and personalize student learning.

Elementary instructional blueprints suggest ways teams of educators with distributed expertise might deploy themselves to better deepen and personalize student learning.