Blog
School in Uncertain Times
In response to the challenging time we are living through now, we at 2Revolutions feel that it might be helpful to share some thoughts on what schools might want to consider as they manage through the completion of the 2019-20 school year and consider operating next year. We hope that sharing our thoughts will be of some use to those of you facing this unprecedented challenge.
Public Education Cracked Open
Is this a watershed moment for public education in America that can positively shift a paradigm for teachers and learners? How do we keep our foot in the doorway of public education and leave open the possibility of real shift? Might this be a learning experience from which to do school differently for all learners, putting them more in charge of their learning, moving away from content coverage to content depth, appreciating the opportunity and necessity of training educators for “move on when ready”? Might this be an opportunity to shift from assessments happening to learners to assessments providing opportunities for coaching and support?
Creating a “New Normal”: Unpacking Lessons About Change During a Pandemic
Now that we are weeks into a global pandemic, the entire planet has been thrust into unprecedented waters and is frantically trying to adjust to current circumstances. While we are also in the process of figuring out a new path forward, it has become so clear how polycentricity is thriving as our system transforms to accommodate new ways of living, learning, teaching and working. While many are anxious for “things to go back to normal” (as quickly as possible), I am left wondering how we might instead pause and use this moment to interrogate the “normalcy” we left behind with a more critical eye, investigate the ways in which change is already transforming our systems, and find ways to harness this change for good in launching us into deeper transformation for the future.
Stoking the Learning Fires: Agency and Equity
Everything we are focused at 2Revolutions looks at the work through the prism of increasing agency and equity. I cannot think of two more important elements that should be driving all of our work in transforming learning in K12 education. How do we, at 2Rev, work to ensure that happens? How do we, as a capacity building provider, engender ownership in our district and higher ed partners in ways that increase the probability that agency will be a core belief and an enduring outcome, ultimately manifesting itself in the learning experience?
Transforming Education: “You Can’t Wrestle a Cloud”
As we work with partners who want to transform their systems, schools, and capacity, one common denominator runs as the central challenge in all of our work: managing change. In each context, our partners want drastically different outcomes for students. While our desire for education innovation drives many school transformation efforts, we believe that in order to truly unlock system transformation, we must approach the challenge of change with a new understanding and from a different perspective.
Transformational Coaching
Our coaching model supports the development of educator instructional practice, while integrating the core skills and dispositions that are needed for innovation and change. It’s part equity work, part capacity building, part change management.
Authentic Community Engagement Takes Longer...Or Does It?
Not surprisingly, most of our transformation work with partners begins with efforts to engage stakeholders — either broadly (full community) or more narrowly (a specific school team/community) — in the task of envisioning the future and then co-constructing a broader definition of student success to which future efforts can be anchored. There is no “right” answer, but in our experience, this work is essential, and shortcutting the process usually comes back to bite you.
Transforming Education Systems WITH (not just FOR) Students
Youth voices matter. Far too often, transformative education efforts, albeit with the best intentions in mind, happen in service of students, but fail to truly center youth voice within the work. What would happen if we not only included youth and students as central end users in our work, but intentionally amplified their voices to transform their own education system?
That’s precisely what happened in Denver over the past few months. Our partners at Turn Corps (in collaboration with RootEd and the Denver Scholarship Foundation), spearheaded a community-based outreach effort that intentionally amplified recent alumni and student voices in efforts to transform schools.
Leaping into 2020!
As we launch the new decade here at 2Rev, we enter with hope...as well as some anxiety and a growing sense of urgency. Given the volatility and uncertainty thrumming in the world around us - including the fact that 85% of the jobs that exist in 2030 have yet to be invented - we are more eager than ever to support K12 and higher ed learners to become more agile, resilient and successful.
Sharing Our Story: Innovative & Integrative Community in Virginia Beach
How might we build an integrative, innovative community? What does it look like to actively dismantle fragmentation in a complex education system? Over the past two years, we have been working to answer these questions through our partnership with Virginia Beach City Public Schools, as a grantee in the Carnegie Corporation’s Integration Design Consortium.
Change is Hard?
The challenge of this work isn’t to train teachers and leaders in these instructional practices; but rather to change minds and do so at scale. In order to support educators in transforming learning, our team has needed to learn from a broad range of research on the complexity and difficulty of managing change. A few key insights have emerged that are increasingly shaping our work; I share now in the hopes that it can impact your work in support of transformation.
Transforming Professional Learning: A Conversation with the Field
During the spring of 2019, we held a webinar series exploring the future of educator learning. Our goal was to inspire schools, districts, and organizations to reimagine professional learning and to provide tools and examples to support implementation.
