For four years at Woodcreek High School in Roseville, California, I coached the mighty, mighty Academic Decathlon team. Among our many discoveries was Paul Gauguin’s stunning painting titled Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? In 2010, I was able to sit with this piece at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and it remains one of my favorite works. How he captures individuals and community in one powerful, vibrant glimpse is utterly spectacular and also serenely soothing.
Reflecting on what lies before Advanced Learning Partnerships in the coming academic year, my mind quickly gravitated to Gauguin’s third query: Where Are We Going? I’m honored and humbled to share these snippets of what communities across the United States and Canada will explore with us in 2019 – 20.
- Storycatching as Process: Over the last year, Tony Borash and Gaynell Lyman have helped our leadership team adopt a range of strategies and archetypes to capture and share the stories that exist around us. This powerful form of reflection and dialog celebrates the risks, passions, and concentrated commitments that learners are taking to be the leaders their communities need them to be. Over the next hour this morning at our spring retreat in Pinehurst, North Carolina, I am writing this blog and sharing tweets via @ALPlearn. Instead of a boring slide deck, I’m going to share this post with our team in less than 40 minutes. Gotta keep writing!
- Expansion of Video Learning Capacity: Over the last two years, Craig Bennett has led our discovery of authentic approaches to incorporating video learning into our coaching process. I am thrilled to announce that our team’s collective efforts will allow ALP to bring high-quality technology tools and protocols to any learning organization that recognizes its power. The potential for purposeful reflection, personalized goal setting, and blended collaboration within and between cohorts is near unanimously recognized that those teachers, school administrators, and coaches who have engaged in this form of professional learning.
- Real-Time Insights through Formative Data: In 2016, Katy Fodchuk developed an adaptive survey for the thousands and thousands of educators that embark of professional learning journeys with Advanced Learning Partnership. The result of her carefully crafted and validated work is an engine that will allow any member of our team to generate real-time and longitudinal insights around the impact our work has on instructional and leadership decision-making. The benefits are transformational: our team can understand how specific protocols and decisions translate into practice with greater clarity and specificity. Additionally, any member of the ALP team can learn from the strengths of our diverse and exceptional team.
- The Enrichment and Expansion of the ALP Partnership with Dell Technologies: This April, the partnership between Dell Technologies and Advanced Learning Partnerships crossed the threshold of our 9th consecutive year. Over that period, our service to communities went from one 6-day engagement in rural North Carolina to hundreds of K-12 districts in over 40 states. In 2019 – 20, we will continue on this trajectory while also collaborating to serve school boards across Canada. Additionally, our team is growing to include talented higher education leaders to support our growing portfolio of university partnerships.
- Virginia is for Learners Innovation Network: After six months of careful internal planning and organizational alignment, Advanced Learning Partnerships launched its partnership with the Virginia Department of Education, the Virginia School Consortium for Learning, and James Madison University. The Virginia is for Learners Innovation Network consists of 30 district teams engaged in innovative planning and implementation of structures that operationalize the Commonwealth’s Profile of a Virginia Graduate. A team of six ALP coaches is facilitating over 800 hours of personalized coaching to this cohort and is three months into this 3-year engagement designed to support public education systems in literally every county of the State.
- Application of Artificial Intelligence in Limited Coaching Rounds: This fall, a small team of ALP coaches will explore how sentiment analysis can improve our capacity to personalize our coaching. Interested and willing educators will collaborate with us to determine how their subconscious levels of courage, confidence, concern, and crisis materialize in their goal setting and reflections. The AI will analyze their qualitative responses against the anonymous reflections of hundreds of other educators to provide their ALP coach with a more accurate understanding of their readiness for innovation, collaboration and autonomy. Is the future here? We look forward to exploring this query.
- Authentic Student Leadership:For the first time in the history of ALP, we will purposefully welcome student leaders to our work in three exciting ways. Using our Partner Survey data framework, we will track the number of onsite and virtual engagements across our communities that include student leadership roles. We plan to offer subcontracting assignments to high school and college students engaged in eSports to support our service to K-12 districts and universities engaged in building programs and leagues. This summer, we are excited to work with Mr. Anand Wong, a University of Chicago student as our first official intern!
- ALP Development Teams: Under the direction of Katy Fodchuk and our full leadership team, we have built out the charge and structures for seven development teams. These teams were designed to build collective capacity across our team to lead thoughtful, strategic innovation and refinement across the critical pillars of our organization. Be on the lookout for more details from our team as we pick up momentum.
- Scale-Up of New Services: The ALP story is grounded in deep commitment to community and ongoing innovation. It is no surprise that so many new and exciting services are launching in 2019 – 20. From community-based strategic planning to eSports program and curriculum consulting, competency-based education and personalized learning curriculum framework scale-ups to digital badging, video learning to coaching toolkits that adapt to changing coaching competencies, these tangible and proven innovations will plant this next year.
- Expanded Partnership Portfolio: We are so pleased to announce that our collaboration with Dell has brought us to strategic collaborations with BrightBytes, Meteor, and Google. Our service to the Commonwealth of Virginia is introducing us to over 30 new districts across that state, with many others to come. The work that is now beginning across Canada and institutions of higher education (IHEs) will continue to expand and deepen our service to an increasingly diverse range of communities.
- Team Growth: Given all these emerging pathways, it is no surprise that the ALP team is evolving and growing. We are so grateful to welcome Amber Gagliola, Lisa Herman and Ronique Hicks to our leadership and are excited to welcome twelve more members to our U.S. team and an additional 8 Canada-based leaders in 2019 – 20.
These snippets of what lies on our horizon offer a small, exciting glimpse into the upcoming work. Words can’t express the gratitude and awe I have for our team and communities that trust and welcome ALP.
