Purpose of the Consortium:
• To present the Customized Learning Vision for Maine Schools
• To increase the capacity of Maine educators to implement Standards-Based Education

Outcomes:
Teams will increase their understanding of the components of true Standards-Based Education, specifically
• What the STRUCTURE looks like…
• What the CURRICULUM looks like…
• What ASSESSMENT looks like…
• What GRADING looks like…

Location: T & B Celebrations Center, Waterville, Me.
Times: 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Costs: Teams of 6 members: $2,550 ($375 for additional team members) Individuals: $425/person

To Register, visit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MCCLConsortium2013

Download the MCCL Consortium Brochure

Mark your calendar and join Bea McGarvey and the MCCL…

Purpose of the Consortium:

• To present the Customized Learning Vision for Maine Schools
• To increase the capacity of Maine educators to implement Standards-Based Education

Outcomes:
Teams will increase their understanding of the components of true Standards-Based Education, specifically

• What the STRUCTURE looks like…
• What the CURRICULUM looks like…
• What ASSESSMENT looks like…
• What GRADING looks like…

December 3-4, 2012, and February 6-7, 2013

Download the PDF flyer here.

For more information, contact Linda Laughlin.

Bea McGarvey is a Maine native who dedicated a 30-year career to Maine schools. She has served in the past decade as a distinguished education consultant for more than 100 schools and districts, as well as state and federal education agencies, specifically in the areas of teaching and learning, leadership, and organizational development. Currently, she is a partner in Total Leaders Associates and a senior associate at Marzano Research Lab. McGarvey is co-author with Charles Schwahn of “Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning – Learning in the Age of Empowerment.”

“Classroom after classroom, school after school, district after district – an incredibly powerful commitment to student-centered proficiency-based instruction has taken root in Maine.  What you see on the videos is what you see in the classrooms. What’s more, it is incredibly consistent classroom after classroom.

• High level of transparency about learning targets and rubrics between students and teachers.
• Customized learning with students working at their own pace within a band of what it means to be “teacher-paced” with choices about how they will pursue their learning and build evidence of their learning.
• Teachers organizing themselves to enable students to get what they need, working at their own achievement levels so that they can experience success.
• Teacher collaboration and professional development driven by proficiency.

During a rapid-school-visit tour across four school districts led by Maine’s Superintendent of Instruction Don Siviski, my personal understanding of competency education shifted. Here are my big Ah-Ha’s from my visits.  I’ll write in more detail about the site visit later.”

Link to Competencyworks.org article

-Gary Smith

Student-based Learning

Last week the Maine Cohort for Customized Learning brought together arts teachers from their districts to begin some of the work that will help guide the teaching in arts classrooms in the cohort. At this point the cohort districts are:

• RSU 57: Massebesic
• RSU 15: Gray-New Gloucester
• RSU 18: Messalonskee and China
• RSU 2: Hall-Dale, Monmouth, Richmond, Drescen
• RSU 82: Jackman, Forest Hills
• Milford School Department
• RSU 3: Brooks, Freedom, Jackson, Knox, Libery, Monroe, Montville, Thorndike, Troy, Unity, Waldo
• Sanford Schools
• RSU 25: Bucksport
• RSU 4: Oak Hill

The participants started the work to create Strands, Measurement Topics and Learning Targets. This will be the basis for the work in determining what students will need to learn to show proficiency before they leave high school. The arts teachers doing this work are:

• Wendy Burton and Leone Donovan, visual arts, Pam Rhein, music, Messalonskee
• Michaela DiGianvittorio and Sarah Gould, visual arts, Gray New Gloucester High School
• Jeff Orth, visual art, Richmond Middle/High School
• Cynthis McGuire, music Hall-Dale Elementary School
• Carrie Abbott, visual art, Jackman/Forest Hills
• Cathy Geren, visual art, Massabesic High School
• Matt Doiron and Carol Baker-Roux, music, Sanford High School
• Theo VanDeventer, music/drama, Mt. View Middle School, Eric Phillips, visual art, Mt. View High School

The work will continue in February and I will keep you posted on its progress.

In the words of music teacher from Sanford High School, Carol Baker Roux:

Sanford is new to the cohort, so this was the first meeting for Matt Doiron and I.  I was glad to see people at this meeting who are also working on the Maine Arts Assessment Initiative, as I am hopeful that the cohort’s work will dovetail with the Initiative’s work, as well as the work being done currently on the national standards.  Some concerns raised at this meeting were, “Is this another passing fad?” and “Are we re-inventing the wheel?”  I think these are valid concerns and am hopeful that these will be addressed as we continue to work on developing shared, consistent strands and measurement topics.  The general sense of the people at this meeting was that the Visual and Performing Arts have good Maine Learning Results and we hope to maintain the integrity of that document going forward.

Every time I get together with arts educators in this state I am completely impressed with their intelligence and commitment to their craft.  As a discipline that has always understood meeting and demonstrating standards at a high level, we are the perfect group to model the cohort’s goals of student-centered, performance based learning.

And in the words of art teacher Leone Donovan from Messalonskee High School:

Various members of the 11 cohort schools gathered in Topsham to begin the shift towards a standards-based learning plan. It was a harder two days then I expected with less accomplished than expected. The representatives from the different schools really are at different levels in the process. Some of us needed to learn the language of this version of standards-based curriculum. Others were already working with a version of those concepts this year.

What I like about the conversations that I’ve been involved in, both in my school and at the cohort meeting, is the concept of the learner at the center of the process. I want to believe that there’s a method to create or encourage students to become active, enthusiastic managers of there own education. As a veteran teacher and a lifelong skeptic, I am still yearning for more evidence that this is truly possible. I want to see a school where it is in process with solid evidence that it is working.

We heard that transparency in the curriculum gives the student clear goals and, thus, a clear path to success or as we say in mass customized learning speak, proficiency. Students will know what we, as teachers, want them to learn. We will act as facilitators pointing out ways to master those concepts or techniques. Students can then seek, plan, and follow their own best path to achieving proficiency.

I love that theoretical view of students and learning. But, again, as the veteran and skeptic, I believe that most, if not all of us, are now very clear about our reasons and goals for the lessons we present. I keep wondering, aloud and to myself, how assessing with a 1-4 scale instead of 0-100 scale, how calling it proficiency instead of whatever our current language is, and by rewording existing curriculum yet again will inspire this change.

I hope that we learn more about places where this is in use and has concrete progress recorded. And, despite my skepticism, I’d be thrilled to see more inspired, successful, and enthusiastic students.