AUDIENCE: K-12 School Administrators and Instructional Leaders are encouraged to attend.
The intersection between learning outcomes and the students we serve is where assessment does its best work. In this two-day leadership series, we will explore ways to ensure this intersection is helpful, hopeful, and powerful. Refining our understanding of leadership that builds assessment literacy is an important part of confident and effective leadership in classrooms, schools, and systems.
In last year’s leadership series, we explored the relationship between assessment and the students and teachers who use it, and we developed tools for leading assessment change. This year, we will revisit this learning and continue to build on the skills we practiced and the understanding we developed, to ensure that assessment lives within classroom spaces in ways that support learning for every student.
In each session, we will explore the research that illuminates effective assessment practice and ways this research might manifest within classrooms and schools. We will also experience first-hand, the practices and protocols that leaders can leverage in their daily work in order to facilitate adult learning. By the end of this series, leaders will have additional tools in their repertoire to support a personalized approach to assessment leadership and clarity about how to approach challenging conversations and complex contexts.
Session One: Nurturing a Culture of Learning
The culture of our classrooms and schools can either support or undermine any changes we are undertaking. As we move toward a focus on learning that will inevitably involve risk-taking, productive failure, and discomfort, we will need to build up an assessment culture that supports these critical aspects of deep learning and complex skill development.
In this session, we will explore ways to refine our assessment approaches so that we not only support learning but also the development of independent, resilient, and creative learners. We will experience strategies for shifting classroom and school cultures to advance holistic growth and build confidence, even when things feel difficult. We will examine assessment scenarios from multiple perspectives and generate productive responses that support a culture of learning.
Session Two: Navigating Change
We all know that change is complex and leading through change be filled with uncertainty and even discomfort. However, there are specific ways to facilitate conversations and stage learning, so the people involved feel confident and supported.
This session will explore creative and practical frameworks, tools, and strategies for leaders to facilitate assessment conversations and action-planning in non-threatening, emotionally safe ways while still moving in the direction of change and growth. Together, we will experience these frameworks, tools, and strategies, with time to then imagine how to adapt them to personally relevant contexts. We will also explore challenging questions that may arise and possible ways to respond to these questions. There will be time for elementary and secondary teachers to separately focus on personally meaningful topics.
