Creating Change and Scaling Innovation

Session 6

Julie Diana, Margaret Powers, Kimberly Walker — The Agnes Irwin School

To make change part of the culture of our schools, we have to change the way adults work at school. Are we making the best use of faculty meeting time? Are we clear and efficient in our communications? How can we best use the time we have together in the schoolhouse to learn in ways that are engaging and dare we say it, fun? In our team-based approach to innovation, we have reimagined existing roles and carved out time, space, and resources to turn teachers’ ideas into action. We have focused on innovative pedagogies and created opportunities for teachers to engage in personalized professional development.

Flipping faculty meetings, introducing new communication and productivity tools for collaboration, and creating teams where the leadership is distributed, not hierarchical, are all ways of moving the needle towards innovative teaching and learning practices. We will host a conversation for educators to share methods that have been successful, and have a chance to workshop new ideas for supporting and sustaining innovation in our schools.

Conversational Practice

We will use Visible Thinking Routines from Harvard’s Project Zero to collaboratively come up with new ways of supporting and sustaining innovation in school.

We will use these routines as a tool to facilitate thinking and dialogue during the sessions - enabling participants to discover new ideas, reflect on their experiences, and find connections with others.