The title of this new blog is ALL MEANS ALL. This started as a hashtag during Best Practices Week, a week devoted to professional learning at LCS dedicated to the business of exploring what great design looks like in the classroom. Design is defined as purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object.
In the end, I boil great design for students down to one that accounts for ALL students, and all means all.
Moreover, great design for school districts must include ALL stakeholders: all teachers, all staff, all parents, all students, all community members. Otherwise, we are playing school with little to no real-world transfer. It was inspiring to see K-12 involvement in Best Practices Week with educators from every facet of contents, grade levels, titles, and tenures. Here's a shout-out to a great group of collaborators, to include NAF educators, an ITF, my AVID partner in crime, fellow pirates and TOYs, and some BT warriors willing to "take the lead" for LCS.
That week has been followed by our fourth annual "UbD: Understanding by Design" workshops. So far, the feedback from these two endeavors has been phenomenal. This is in no small part to the decades of efforts deposited (dare I say designed?) by our district leaders. I am so excited and humbled by the opportunity to learn from them in my new role.
Not to mention, I was fortunate to begin my summer with fantastic LCS educators in Tampa for AVID Summer Institute. We are so excited to go district wide with AVID this year. The design of AVID is the very fabric of the "all means all" mindset.
With all of this in mind, I am grappling with...no...I'm really knee deep and muddy in... the design business. How do we meld all of these amazing mindsets, programs, approaches, and curricula into seamless experiences that shape bright futures for our children?
With Understanding by Design, we have been teaching for transfer above all. And all means all. Nothing can come before or between you as an educator and this ultimate goal of teaching for transfer. This is the WHY of education. Transfer is ultimately WHY students care about what you are teaching them, because teaching for transfer = teaching for relevance.
As summer comes to a close, I encourage anyone who reads this post to reflect on the relevance of what you do. How can you make your contribution as real as possible for yourself and for the people you serve?