In the late winter of 2017, the Lake Travis ISD leadership team invited me to preview The Wall: a range of organizational charts, learning initiative posters, and rubrics driving active priorities. Upon completing Visioning and SWOTT Analysis protocols, it became evident to everyone involved that a comprehensive learning model could more effectively harness the team’s vision, actively reducing the ‘initiative overload’ within the District through the adoption of a common framework for learning. Shortly after this epiphany, ALP and Lake Travis embarked on a strategic planning partnership that rapidly and cleanly consolidated implementation planning and resource allocation.
I appreciated the district’s trust in our team to facilitate a five-month process that allowed the Lake Travis team to envision critical non-negotiables that were general enough to align the various departments and schools within its community. With this emerging vision in hand, a team of our consultants co-authored a white paper aligning these critical outcomes with best and established practices. They co-developed an associated common language tool that clearly communicated outcomes for learning, teaching, and leadership, as well as case studies and videos that helped community stakeholders see their children within this enhanced learning model. Additionally, we worked together to develop a full-year personalized professional learning framework for all district administrators and site principals.
This comprehensive approach to vision clarification and organization-wide support for professional learning ‘walked the walk’ by actually modeling the outcomes in the learning model with its entire leadership. The result of this ‘behind the scenes’ heavy lifting has produced a tangible and transparent playbook by which ALP consultants and Lake Travis educators are organically aligning around the key pillars associated with this enhanced learning model. As the 2017-18 academic year unfolds, ALP consultants and Dell EMC Education Strategists will have more updates to share on lessons learned and artifacts associated with this work.
