Early Educators Leadership Institute 2015: Workshop 1, Part 1 of 3

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This institute is a about leadership. It is about connections, celebration, change and transformation.

When I think back on the past 6 weeks- the period of time that we have had to plan the Institute-I am reminded of several events that link to these 4 important concepts.

Leadership. We had the privilege to honor one of our greatest leaders of all time, Martin Luther King, as well as all of the presidents that have served our country.

Change: We just welcomed in the beginning of the Chinese New Year.

Connections- we celebrated Valentine’s day – a time to connect with special and important people in our lives

Transformations—we saw a Team win the Super Bowl-a team that appeared washed out in week three of the NFL season and whose decades of success were deemed by many as over.

We saw our landscape transformed in just three weeks with record snowfall amounts, rendering even the most familiar of sites unrecognizable.

Leadership, change, transformation and connections are not only linked to special events, they part of our daily lives and we have placed them right at the forefront of each of the 4 Institute sessions. Let’s take a minute to preview how the four sessions connect and build on one another.

Day One introduces the Birth to Grade Three context and movement.

Day Two grounds the Agenda into existing Massachusetts initiatives from both a policy and advocacy perspective.

Day Three is anchored in needs assessment, action planning and implementation of the Birth to Grade Three approach.

Day Four begins with assessment policy and specifically how Birth to Grade Three assessment works and links to standards and instruction. In the afternoon, the lens opens on families, their roles and decision making power in moving the agenda forward and culminates with a focus on child outcomes.

Across these four sessions, we want this to be a meaningful and relevant experience that provides you opportunities to network, share your own experiences and stories, engage in action planning and make plans for sustaining the work once your time with us ends.

Each of you has intentionally and strategically been selected to participate in the Institute because of your leadership role and your potential for moving the agenda forward.

So let’s see who is attending?

Ask various groups to stand

A full list of attendees is included in your notebook. Take some time to review the list and network, network, network.

For the first part of the day you are sitting with participants from different parts of the state– representing the first networking opportunity of this series.

At your Tables are boxes of fortune cookies. Each fortune cookie contains a quotation especially chosen for this Institute linked to some aspect of leadership and change.

Take a cookie, read the quotation inside and share it with a few people at your Table.

Next we will spend about 10 minutes at our Tables brainstorming from a leadership perspective what Birth through Grade Three Alignment means.

The entire activity will take about 20 minutes.

A MA Dept of EEC representative or ECA Team member is sitting at each of your Tables. to facilitate the brainstorming and share one or two of your responses with the larger group

Show this slide when the groups are working on the warm-up.

Debrief is one minute per table.

Our work is about closing the achievement gap and improving long term outcomes for children.

The goal is to replace the Mickey Mouse Model on the left (Mickey Mouse Model- is slang for duct taped and loosely put together- with a concentric circle model. The center circle is the vortex -it is high in energy created from movement in and between the outer circles.

It is characterized by equity, quality, sustainability and replicability.

The Birth -3rd grade elements include:

Access to programs and opportunities beginning at birth
High quality teaching grounded in research about young children’s unique developmental needs and ways of learning
Alignment of standards, assessment, curriculum
Supportive engagement with children’s families and caregivers
Strong Data Systems

There is a significant body of research and policies related to the Birth to Grade Three agenda –I cannot possibly review all of it with you in 15 minutes so I have taken Snapshots of some of the work so that you can build your own repetiore of resources.

The research and our knowledge of how the brain develops in the early years is foundational to the work we are doing. Children need to develop lots of connections and relationships early in life. Interactions with others and with environments are essential. In sum, the first five years of life lay the foundation for language, academic, social and emotional development.

Turning the Page, gave us pause to really look at the achievement gap and what it means for the futures of our children. Children who fail to master reading by the end of the third grade are not only more likely to falter in later grades but to drop our before they enter high school. The concept of shifting program design and resources to intensify and up the dosage of programs is particularly compelling.

NAEYC Position Paper on Birth to Eight features 12 principles of developmentally practice and guidelines for implementing them. A resource that keeps us grounded in child development principles and practices. It is contained in your binder.

Published by Child Trends and the Alliance for Early Success, this research base is extraordinarily rich and detailed. It is a uniquely comprehensive framework that carefully examines 3 policy areas-health, family support and learning.

Leading Pre-K-3 Communities-Competencies for Essential Principal Practice—describes 6 competency areas essential for principals to lead the alignment efforts which apply to most leaders in the early education and care fields as well. We have used these competencies in part to shape the content of this Institute. The Executive Summary is in your binder.

Early Childhood Systems –Transforming Early Learning: Presents A diverse assortment of perspectives on systems building Of particular interest is the last section—Looking toward the Future—Finding Common Ground on System Building

Framework for Planning, Implementing and Evaluating PreK3rd Grade Approaches (Kristie Kauerz and Julie Kauffman)

Is a framework for reflection and self-assessment that organizes the alignment work in 8 categories deemed essential to high-quality and comprehensive PreK-3rd grade approaches. It is used in MA Birth to Grade three Alignment projects.

National Governors Association has a must view website which contains a comprehensive collection of resources on assessment, alignment and building the B-3rd system. Two representatives from the NGA will be with us at subsequent

Birth-3rd Learning Hub is a comprehensive website that tracks, profiles, and analyzes Birth-Third initiatives, contains a wide assortment of resources, case studies and research. The Hub is Authored by David Jacobson, our featured speaker for this afternoon’s session.

Undergirding most of the research and policies is the concept of coherence. There are significant challenges inherent in building a new model.

The old model is made up of multiple systems funded and administered by many different sources including government agencies, local school districts and community based organizations with differing areas of focus such as birth to three, preschool and K-12.

The model on the right represents a new path of change and coherence. It is accessible, easy to navigate.

The needed changes to move from the old to the new are complex and transformative.

Yet necessary for creating an aligned education experience for children that sets the foundation for lifelong learning.

Some of the questions we will be asking you to think about throughout the Institute include….

Leadership matters.

Based on findings from a meta-analysis of research that examines educator, program and school and leadership practices over the last 30 years, leadership has come up repeatedly as one of the top variables that directly impacts student achievement.

The research suggests that leadership practices have a far greater influence on achievement than was ever thought before.

The research by Nolan and others clusters leadership characteristics that are directly linked to achievement and deep change and impact.

Designated as essential leadership traits, collectively these characteristics align with the concept of the leader as change agent, facilitator and capacity builder both within and outside the school walls.

Leadership Matters. It takes visionary, inspiring, tenacious and strategic leadership to move an agenda of this magnitude forward.

It requires a new conceptualization of leadership-one of collective action that transcends conventional boundaries.

It requires an openness to different perspectives, identifying common ground and taking the long view, keeping the big picture in mind and it is results driven.

It is from this frame that we hope you will experience this institute-not as passive recipients of information but as leaders charged with ultimately changing outcomes for children.

In the words of Barack Obama, change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are here now. We are the ones the Birth to Grade Three movement is dependent upon.

We hold the keys to the change we want to see and we have a unique opportunity in this Institute to make significant strides in building an aligned system

A system where every child in the Commonwealth has the opportunity to experience a secure, healthful and learning filled childhood that sets the foundation for a productive and successful life.

Early Educators Leadership Institute 2015: Workshop 1, Part 1 of 3

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