“What do students need to know and be able to do to be successful?” We posed this question to eight Educator Preparatory Programs (EPPs) across Arkansas as part of the work we are doing with ForwARd Arkansas, US PREP, and TPI-US. The Walton Family Foundation has funded the efforts of this Design Collaborative, consisting of eight EPPs, to grant up to a million dollars to those teams with dedicated plans for innovation, sustainability, and commitment to equity in transforming their pre-service programs. Specifically, 2Revolutions’ work is to push for broader, outside-the-box perspectives regarding what students and teachers need to know and be able to do to be successful in Arkansas and beyond. This perspective is a critical foundation for the transformative work each team will embark upon.

As educators, we strive to model what we hope to see in our students: compassion, collaboration, creative problem solving, critical thinking skills, a growth mindset, and more. If those skills and dispositions sound familiar, it’s because they are invariably included on Portraits of a Graduate that savvy schools and districts across the country have generated. The language of the portraits may differ, but the substance is pretty consistent; what school does not want to cultivate engagement, intellectual curiosity, a broad knowledge base, communication skills, confidence, and empathy in its students?

Coloradans are notoriously adventurous and independent and, as such, approaches to educational experiences for Colorado students are as varied and unique as the Colorado landscape. Fortunately, Colorado’s local control structure provides the opportunity for the state’s 178 school districts to make many significant decisions regarding K-12 public education; choices regarding curriculum, assessment, staffing, graduation requirements, and more can be largely customized to reflect local values, goals, and needs. Additionally, over the past 15 years, policies such as the landmark Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids (CAP4K), the Student-Centered Accountability Program, Individual Career and Academic Plan (ICAP), Graduation Guidelines, and many others have opened the door for districts and schools to establish learner-centered and equitable processes and practices. These circumstances made Colorado an ideal state in which to explore and support the use of authentic forms of student demonstrations of learning as assessment tools.

There is still a long way to go in the district before the school experience is truly transformed for every student, but we indisputably made progress. This past May, a group of district leaders revisited some of our guiding documents, including The New Normal, the Quality Work Protocol and descriptors, and the Performance Outcomes. We also looked closely at school defense rubrics to see how they compared to the expectations outlined in those original documents. It was refreshing to again focus on the bigger vision for the kind of learning experiences we wanted for our students.

When our district team proposed that we create our own digital vehicle for students to store and demonstrate artifacts of their learning, the superintendent and I reluctantly agreed, knowing that time was not on our side. But amazingly, the school year started and each student had a digital Backpack of Success Skills inside their Google Drive. Our newly formed Digital Innovation team was leading the way, creating lots of excitement within and even outside the district. Suddenly, JCPS, the troubled district that had been somewhat of a mystery across the state, was front and center. It seemed–to us at least–that everyone was watching, and more than a few wanted to join us. It was a new day in the Jefferson County Public Schools!

There is real beauty in being a little bit naïve. I had just accepted a position as the Chief Academic Officer for the 100,000-student Jefferson County Public Schools, and the newly appointed interim superintendent had no district-level administrative experience despite working and teaching in the district for more than 20 years. He had been principal of two different high schools–arguably one of the most difficult jobs in existence–but he had no experience leading an entire district, not to mention one of the largest districts in the country, complete with a powerful teacher’s union and a 7-member board.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to serve as superintendent in a Kentucky district of about 1800 students. There, with a forward-thinking school board who recognized the need for a very different kind of school experience, we began to explore.

Last week my colleague, Dr. Shamara Graham, and I traveled across the ocean to the UK–ostensibly as learners and operationally as leaders–seeking the essence of a practice called Instructional Rounds.

Mindset is defined as a mental attitude or inclination (Merriam-Webster). Since 2011, I've worked in education in some capacity–whether reading to kids as a volunteer, substitute teaching, running university-wide programming, directly teaching my own students, or leading as an administrator.

Take some time to live in the sit/think world. Not all the time. It only works if you float between the sitting/thinking and doing. Eventually sitting/thinking must influence your behavior.

I write as an educator.

I write as a parent of four public school kids.

I write as an American ashamed of a place where courage can’t be found in the halls of power to protect our children.

2Rev is currently experimenting with bringing a set of tools together to see how they collectively might promote greater coherence and alignment across the district, thereby making the concepts within these tools actionable. Each of these tools can turn words into behaviors and practice- for learners, educators and leaders. They provide a statement of purpose and a way to deliver on that concretely. All of these should be generated in partnership with stakeholders so that they are owned by those stakeholders.