Myrtle Philip Community School
School Improvement Plan 2020-2021 (With COVID-19 Pivot)
What
Does the Research Say?
What research have you considered in selecting your chosen instructional strategies and structures?
There is a vast body of research that has informed our learning plan. A systemic piece came from The Global Search for Education: Education and Jobs (2013), where Tony Wagner discusses "the ability to initiate, discern, collaborate, persevere and solve problems creatively will be the qualities most in demand in the future." Wagner prescribes that we need to “coach students for skill and will in addition to teaching content." With this end in mind, we have targeted cultivating perseverance (students who embrace challenges and see them out) as a foundation of our school learning goal.
In order to achieve that goal, we utilized content from our Harvard course Making Student Learning Visible. Where a team of teachers have been studying the effects of effective documentation of the learning process. We are moving into and beyond simply displaying learning into a more robust and metacognitive process of reflection and documentation, whereby students and teachers are using the documentation of the learning process as a vehicle for reflection on the learning process.
To further this, we are capitalizing on some recent brain research to understand how to best prepare our students for healthy habits in their adolescent years.
Below are some links to some of the leading Educators and educational researchers that guide and inform our practice.
Growth Mindset
A lot of attention and interest has been placed into developing a culture of learners with a growth mindset. There are two types of mindsets we can cultivate. One that embraces problems as opportunities to learn, and one that avoids them, often out of fear to fail. People that avoid conflicts can be described as having a fixed mindset.
We believe all students can learn and we will not let any obsticle get in our way to make the happen.
My Channel
Thomas R. Guskey
"Professional development must be seen as a process and not an event.."
In the light of curriculum change it is important to honour the process of adjusting and changing practice in the classrooms. The work of Guskey speaks to the structures and supports put in place in this plan to support teachers in developing a reflective practice for students in their learning.