Resource Type: Guide

Bringing mindfulness into the learning space

Educators at SPARK School at Kyrene de las Manitas give students the opportunity to practice intentional mindfulness each day during Student-Selected Mindfulness Time.

Lead teacher role description

Lead Teachers are educators who guide the educator team in sharing responsibility for all elements of student support, instructional planning, and delivery; lead the team in maintaining high expectations for student learning; and ensure the team functions at a high level to serve all learners by strength and need. This description of the Lead Teacher role is intended to be customized based on the unique needs of each school district.

Aspects of teacher roles

This organizer breaks down aspects of how teachers experience their roles, starting with workday, collaboration, and duties. These aspects are the result of decisions about school system elements, or “levers.” This framing allows teachers and leaders to discuss how those decisions about school levers create aspects of the teacher experience that are enabling or constraining.

Family interviews

Big Picture Learning educators hear multiple perspectives on students’ interests, assets and challenges at the beginning of the year through a process they call family interviews. This is a key first step in meaningfully deepening and personalizing student learning.

Community culture questionnaire

Educators at Elm Street Academy created a community culture questionnaire out of their desire to ensure students had a voice in decision-making about community building, rules, policies and student leadership.

Student-led conferences

SPARK School at Kyrene de las Manitas has shifted from teacher-owned conferences to a student-led approach. This change supports the educator team’s goal of creating a student-centered learning environment in which learners own their progress and goals. This resource guides educator teams through steps critical to adopting student-led conferences.

Student-selected support

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.

10 Tips for planning team-based deeper learning

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.

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Six tips for engaging a community educator

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

Financially sustainable staffing models

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.

Do now, build toward

Leaders designing and supporting Next Education Workforce team-based models can use a “Do Now, Build Toward” mindset to make high-impact investments now that build toward a more diverse educator workforce, deeper and personalized learning and greater retention of educators.

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Elementary instructional blueprint: Authentic assessment work time

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

Next Education Workforce Teams in All-Remote Environments

In this resource, you’ll find several recommendations for how all-remote teams might deploy their educators to best meet the needs of students.

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Elementary instructional blueprints: An introduction

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

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Elementary instructional blueprint: Team-based differentiated practice

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

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Elementary instructional blueprint: Lessons with industry experts

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

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Elementary instructional blueprint: Thematic learning rotation

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

Green sketches

Personalized learning resources

Exploring a new topic can be exciting. We want to help make sure your exploration is productive, with targeted searches from reliable sources. This list, while not comprehensive, offers good resources for planning and implementing personalized learning.

Green sketches

Deeper learning resources

Exploring a new topic can be exciting. We want to help make sure your exploration is productive, with targeted searches from reliable sources. This list, while not comprehensive, offers good resources for planning and implementing deeper learning.

Green sketches

Levels of Student Autonomy

Levels of Student Autonomy is a simple system that supports student independence and personalized learning. The resource below explains how you might implement this system in your learning space.