Student Led…. Future Focused

Over the last few years, we started a conversation in Saline that would begin to transform the way we think about teaching and learning for our students. I shouldn’t be surprised, but in reflecting on where we are at as a school district we have already come so far.

Before I tell you a bit about the exciting work I’ve seen happening here recently, I wanted to make a brief announcement and send a “thank you”. Our administrative team decided from the outset of this year that we wanted to give our district’s new direction a name that we could all rally behind and be proud of. Moving forward, you’ll be seeing “Student Led… Future Focused” on communication from our district offices, and will notice it pop up on our social media. This term is replacing “Next Gen” for us.  It articulates our interest in student voice & choice in their learning and our push for constant progress.  We focused on the our compass-themed Learner Profile for inspiration. For you Twitter users, I encourage you to keep the conversation going using the hashtag #sascompass. Celebrate your students’ victories with 4-C’s instruction, or the successes you’re seeing while breaking down the walls of your classroom with that hashtag, and occasionally do a search for it to see the good news that will be rolling in.

And now, a quick story from a recent visit to Mrs. Ledford’s classroom at Woodland Meadows. I saw students working on projects that had chosen, collaborating and leveraging the technology tools in their classroom.  Students were free to find the spaces in the room that worked best for them.  I took the picture below as I was leaving the students were recording their thoughts.

Mrs. Ledford’s Classroom at Woodland Meadows

Finally, I want to thank every one of you reading this for your enduring commitment to our kids in this time of exciting changes. Change can be hard. We knew this work would come with several challenges, but we also knew that we had the right people to meet those challenges head on and overcome them. So far, I can’t express how exciting it is for me to see everyone’s hard work starting to be reflected in our classrooms. Thank you so much for reminding me so many times on a daily basis of the amazing things you are all doing for our students!