Strategic Plan Design Team

I just spent two long days working on my District's Strategic Plan Design Team. It was enlightening, exhausting and more than I could have hoped for. How did we get to this point? In the last month our Deputy Superintendent, Suzie McWilliams, held public forums with all the different stakeholder groups. I personally found the student forum the most valuable. People from these forums volunteered to give up 2 days of their time to be on the Design Team. We had community members, parents, students, elementary teachers, secondary teachers and administrative people. 

My team consisted of a Bank President, a School Secretary, 2 parents, the Executive Director of Facilities, an Elementary Teacher and the most awesome student from North Forney High School. She is in all AP classes and works a job after school. She was a wealth of information about how school REALLY is. She talked about the pressure that AP students feel to pass the AP test, how teachers are so pressed to get everything covered that everyone feels rushed, and that there are a a lot of students who just don't care and make teaching and learning difficult. As a a member of the Curriculum and Instruction Department most of the discussion was not new to me, but it helped me clarify my thinking because I had to explain the education process to non-educators. 

Melody Paschall from Engage2Learn led us through all of the required stages; Belief Statements, Learner Outcomes, Learner Profile, and finally we arrived at setting district Goals.The six District Goals that were created are clear, concise and will definitely move the district forward. I'm looking forward to the next step: creating action plans to implement these goals. Even though I know change is education is a slow process I'm excited to get started.