Skip to main content

Educon 2.1: Saturday Opening Keynote: Dr. Maria Pitre-Chief Academic Officer, School District of Philadelphia

Huge crowd here at SLA for the opening session. Lots of energy in the room.
Nice to see that Jeff Han, Joel Arquillos and Kendall Crolius stuck around from last night's panel to attend today. Haven't seen the others.

Dr. Pitre
"Bringing opportunities that are exciting and challenging to students."
Philadelphi Public Schools core beliefs:(Her challenge-Is there alignment here at SLA?)
  1. Children come first-All decisions based on what's best for students. Students played a key roll in the planning for this conference.
  2. Parents are our partners-"parent round table"
  3. Victory is in the classroom facilitated by a strong instructional leader-teacher leaders as well. Leaders need a strong vision that they execute with
  4. Leadership and Accountability-Performance targets for each building...Coming to school, core curriculum, standardized tests
  5. It takes the engagement of the entire community-partnership w/Franklin Institute at SLA as an example

In order for these values to be executed, there needs to be a plan. Strategic objectives-Best Practice research-Which schools are working well, what are they doing differently, and how can we replicate it?

Using Data

Differentiated Instruction

How to have rigor in teaching and learning

Alan November here last week. Using one computer in the classroom and make it engaging for students... Hmmm...

SLA-Learn, Create, Lead

Student leaders meeting in the conference room having a meeting on school improvement. She encouraged us to "poke around" and talk with kids. Do you feel you are receiving the exciting, challenging opportunities that you need?-Every kid I talked to Friday would say "YES!"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nos Chemins vers la paix: Award Winning Video!

Valley View Middle School French Imersion teacher, Heather Palmer created this award winning video, Nos Chemins vers la paix , for the Tel.A.Vision " Vision For America " Contest. Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com Powered by One True Media , Tel.A.Vision.tv allows students to create videos that share their vision for the future. Heather wanted to use this video to promote the Wiki she and her students created for "6 Billion Paths to Peace." On the wiki, Palmer states: Our project was inspired by the program " Six Billion Paths to Peace ", an initiative of the Shinnyo-en foundation. We like the challenge the program offers us: commit to making a difference in this moment, in this day, in this lifetime! Palmer received her award last week at the National Service Learning Conference, in Nashville, TN. Way to go, Heather! NOTE: A few weeks ago while looking at the copyright free music available on the site, I notice a cover of the "Spinal

Redefining Awesome...Connected Learning

Last September, Will Richardson challenged our faculty to " Redefine Awesome " in what learning looked like in our district. The last few weeks, have seen some great connected learning opportunities happening at Valley View Middle School that get at what Will was talking about.  Project Lead the Way Tim Berendt, a teacher in our Project Lead the Way program, began using Twitter this year as a way for his students to share the work they are doing with the outside world, and also as a tool for formative assessment.  Students tweet out what they hope to accomplish at the beginning of the class period, and then tweet what they completed at the end. In many cases, students have received feedback and encouragement from people outside the district, such as this exchange from Autodesk, the company that makes the software the students use!  Berndt did a great job at the start reminding students to follow our Web 2.0 Code of Ethics , and how they could use hashtags to label thei