Craft Category: Artifacts

Getting Started Guides

When brainstorming potential solutions to a district problem of practice, it can often be helpful to look to others for inspiration. This set of introductory guides shares research and examples related to common problems of practice in education.

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February 4, 2021

Monterey Peninsula: Brainstorming Ideas for Flexibility, Personalization, and Student Sense of Belonging

Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD) sought to address a key problem in their district: “How might we increase flexibility and personalization to build a sense of belonging and connection within the context of our labor and policy constraints?”

In brainstorming solutions, the team identified six categories of solutions:

  • Engage students and teachers to design new systems. This set of solutions highlights the fact that equity requires those most impacted by teaching and learning – students and teachers – be involved in developing new systems. It also challenges the district to be resilient so as to adapt and flex to enable the new systems that students and teachers develop.
  • Revise policies. This set of solutions recognizes that sometimes, district policies are major barriers to equity in a district; certain policies like counts on seat time or grading expectations can limit flexibility and personalization. These solutions also demonstrate the district’s willingness to dramatically reinvent itself – even rewriting policy – so as to improve teaching and learning with equity in mind.
  • Focus on staff members’ sense of belonging. This set of solutions recognizes that in order for teachers to be able to foster students’ sense of belonging, teachers must feel that they belong and are supported.
  • Revise grading to be mastery-based. This set of solutions elevates the fact that traditional methods for grading are often not flexible or personalized (instead, grades are based on rigid scales, include non-academic behavioral measures, and are assigned at one point in time). A mastery-based approach to grading allows teachers to give more personalized feedback to students and gives students multiple chances to prove mastery.
  • Regroup students by academic need and/or interest. This set of solutions recognizes that each student has different needs, academically and beyond. It explores opportunities to revisit traditional structures (e.g., age-based grouping) and to instead develop systems that group students by targeted academic need and/or type of learning the student is interested in.
  • Build social-emotional activities into academic courses and set aside time for intentional community building. This set of solutions honors the fact that students’ sense of belonging and connection is an important precursor to academic learning. It also highlights the fact that building students’ sense of belonging cannot just be a “check-the-box” activity – it must be integrated throughout the approach to teaching and learning.
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February 4, 2021

Mastery Charter Schools: Brainstorming Ideas for Blended Learning that Foster Independence

Mastery Charter Schools sought to address a key problem in their district: “How might we build a blended learning model that fosters achievement and independence in our high school students?”

In brainstorming solutions, the team identified three categories of solutions:

  • Adopt practices that focus on teacher moves. This set of solutions honors the critical role that teachers play in the classroom and focuses on how to equip teachers with the support and materials needed to engage students via blended learning.
  • Adopt practices that focus on systems and processes. This set of solutions recognizes that a move to a blended learning model is a significant change across a network, and thus explores the ways that network-provided resources (e.g., sample lesson plans, new software/tools) may be important foundations for the change.
  • Adopt practices that focus on students. This set of solutions anticipates challenges high schoolers might face in moving from a traditional to a blended learning model, and suggests concrete ways to scaffold the student independence needed for success in a blended learning model (e.g., pairing students together, enabling student voice and choice in their learning, and promoting student goal-setting).
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February 4, 2021

Cedar Rapids: Brainstorming Ideas for Student Goal-Setting and Feedback

Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) sought to address a key problem in their district: “How might we provide relevant, standards-aligned feedback to students so that every student reaches mastery?”

In brainstorming solutions, the team identified four categories of solutions:

  • Connecting student feedback and grades more explicitly to the district’s profile of a graduate. This set of solutions would make learning more relevant for students (by connecting it to their future goals) and more individualized (as it would deliver more personalized feedback to students on their learning).
  • Get the community involved in assessing students’ progress toward the goals outlined in the district’s profile of a graduate. This set of solutions makes learning more relevant and individualized, as in the set of solutions above. However, it more deeply enhances the relevancy of learning by connecting students to members of their community – people with whom they share community culture and people who can speak to how learning will show up in a student’s future career.
  • Building space and structures for students to reflect on their own learning. This set of solutions would more deeply engage students in their learning by promoting self-reflection (versus just having a teacher assign a grade).
  • Explore other (non-grade-related) ways to gauge student progress. This set of solutions would give students more choice and flexibility in how they demonstrate their learning, especially as compared to traditional assessments, which sometimes cannot accurately assess learning and/or can have inequities baked in such that some student groups consistently outperform others.
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February 4, 2021

Monterey Peninsula: Problem of Practice on Belonging and Connection

Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD) interviewed a range of teachers and students to identify opportunities to improve teaching and learning. From those conversations, they identified the need to increase students’ sense of belonging at school and personalized support for students’ academic development. After reviewing themes from the interviews, the team summarized a key problem of practice: “How might we increase flexibility and personalization to build a sense of belonging and connection within the context of our labor and policy constraints?”

This problem statement challenged the team to find solutions that met the academic and social-emotional needs of each student. The problem statement also required the team to think about those things it could adapt and change, even amid constraints.

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February 4, 2021
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