Submitted by J. Scott Palmer
Principal, Joppa View Elementary

During the 2012 State of the Schools address, Dr. Dance introduced a new and exciting system-wide priority that would change the way students learn and how teachers present daily instruction.  This would be accomplished through a multi-year instructional digital conversion and would focus on the integration of technology.  With my interest piqued, I realized this new initiative would utilize my professional knowledge, as I have a background in technology and have always stressed the importance of technology during instruction as a way of meeting the various needs and learning styles of the Joppa View Elementary School (JVES) students.  It would certainly be the perfect way to move Joppa View from a “good” school to a “great” school.  

Early in 2013, I communicated my interest to participate in the Lighthouse Schools program to my faculty and staff to get a pulse on their interest level.  Overwhelmingly, the teachers were interested and on-board.  I could see the excitement in their eyes and a new-found spark in their step as this potential opportunity was the buzz in the hallways and the focus of discussion in the faculty room.  I knew that there may be several staff members who would meet the opportunity with anxiety, fear, and the attitude of the program being “just one more thing to do,” (and I will be sure they have the resources and support they need to meet with success as we move forward); but overwhelmingly, my staff showed a great interest in becoming a Lighthouse School and gave me hope that we actually had a shot at this!

Soon after, my faculty completed the required interest inventory and showed that nearly 100% of my staff was on-board to proceed with the application process.  Assistant principal, Kerry Flanigan, and I, moved quickly to highlight the many reasons JVES should be selected as a Lighthouse School and why our community is perfect for this experience.

I will never forget the day I was sitting in my office, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a gray SUV pull up to the front of the school. Out of the car bubbled a bouquet of balloons and the energy of Ryan Imbriale and several other BCPS representatives. I quickly jumped out of my chair and yelled “We’re a Lighthouse School!” The journey was just beginning.

Fast forward several months…Selecting a Students and Teachers Accessing Tomorrow (S.T.A.T.) teacher and Teacher Leader Corps (TLC), working with Discovery Education coaches, creating and sharing a new JVES vision, experiencing the Lighthouse Summer Institute, and taking two trips to Mooresville, N.C…it has all been exciting and invigorating; the professional experience of a lifetime.  It has also been very exciting to observe the delivery of all Lighthouse hardware and the installation of new short throw interactive LCD projectors, presentation boards, laptop carts, HP student devices, docking stations, and new monitors.  

As of July 28, 2014, I have had some time to reflect on the implementation and professional development process and willingly share these thoughts:  What an amazing time to be an educator. What an amazing time to be a part of Team BCPS. The students at JVES have the opportunity to be on the cutting edge of educational pedagogy. As we embark on this instructional digital conversion they will have the amazing chance to shape their own learning. What does this really mean for JVES students?  Our students will have the opportunity to learn in a blended instructional environment and take ownership of how they learn best and how they meet grade level standards.  In a nutshell, it will be a true learner-centered environment that will meet their instructional needs and empower them as learners.

We are laser-focused on student and teacher learning.  The learning communities that we are developing for students, parents, and faculty of JVES will change the culture of our school and our community.  Teachers will not be the sole disseminator of knowledge; the lines of who is the learner and who is the teacher will be blurred…for the better.  We all have ideas to share and knowledge to demonstrate. 

I am grateful for the opportunity, not only for myself, but more importantly for the students of JVES.  Change can be scary, but it is very important and inevitable.  The quote, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything” by George Bernard Shaw, sums it up well.  We will work extremely hard at JVES to change the minds or our students, staff, and parents; and in doing so, demonstrate the important work of Team BCPS and the Lighthouse Schools Initiative on a daily basis.

Submitted by Doug Elmendorf
Principal, Chase Elementary
This post originally appeared in EdTechReview

“If you never did, you should.  Things are fun and fun is good.” – Dr. Seuss

At Chase Elementary School, we are about to embark on a transformational journey that will inevitably challenge some of our thoughts about the way we are used to doing business.  Earlier this school year, our school was one of ten selected to “pilot interactive and blended instruction as a model demonstration site” (www.bcps.org) in the 2014-2015 school year. Part of the school selection process for these “Lighthouse Schools” included an anonymous survey of teachers to determine their level of buy-in for making the shifts associated with this initiative.  An overwhelmingly positive response to this survey indicated that our collective mindset was poised to meet this challenge head on.

Although some preliminary PD has been done since the announcement of selected schools in January, the most significant changes will start in the fall, including a 1:1 device environment for students in grades 1-3 and visits from other schools and organizations.  Rather than sit on our hands and wait for this change to happen to us in September, we have used this time of transition to challenge our staff to consider what our school culture should look like in order to navigate the impending changes in the most effective and, as the quote above implies, FUN ways possible.  I know some of us have trouble thinking of the words “change” and “fun” in the same sentence, but we are committed to making these two ideas co-exist throughout our Lighthouse experience so that change isn’t something that happens to us, but is a wave that we ENJOY riding toward a brighter future.

We know that the concepts of change and fun go together like oil and water for many people, so we asked our staff to consider looking at change from a different perspective – a child’s!  For children, change can be pleasing (nothing better than a changed diaper!) and even downright exhilarating.  Few things are more exciting for a teenager than when he changes his status from passenger to that of a driver. We are challenging our teachers to deliberately develop a culture of FUN and excitement as we journey, with our students, through a significant transformation in the coming school year.

In order to “lead purposeful change in order to maximize learning goals” (ISTE, 2014) and cultivate an environment that will allow us to truly enjoy the newness of this experience, we knew it was critical to determine what our current culture looked like to us and what it communicated to others. Sure, this could have been done through a series of surveys, but we didn’t want to be boring in an effort to develop a culture that is exciting.  Instead, we asked teachers to walk around their classrooms and the school with digital cameras and take pictures of the signage, student work, and other things on the walls.  Realizing that school culture is, in some ways, shaped by the things we don’t normally notice, we “walked” through school-related Tweets, our Facebook page, newsletters, and our website.  We asked ourselves, “what non- verbal messages are we sending to our stakeholders (parents, students, OURSELVES, etc.)?”

This coming fall, we hope to extend this activity by printing the pictures we took (or using apps like PicCollage or PhotoGrid to make a collage). Then, we’ll write down our impressions of these photos on sticky notes (or annotate the collages digitally). We want to know - Do our messages convey unity or division?  Equity or partiality?  Do they communicate a desire to meet the needs of all of our learners or just the majority?  Is there any FUN embedded in our messaging?  Does what we hang on our walls indicate that we are teacher-centered or learner-centered?

The changes ahead will be exciting, for sure, but they will also be frustrating or anxiety provoking, at times.  We’ll need to commit, together, to find joy in all of the ups and downs, because things are fun and fun is good.

Submitted by Missy Fanshaw
Principal, Rodgers Forge Elementary

June is always a very busy of time of year, as we close out the current school year and prepare for the new year that awaits us.  During the month of June grade levels met to discuss grouping decisions for the upcoming year, conversations were clearly focused on organizing students in an environment where they would be grouped with other students that would promote their own learning and thinking.  Teachers discussed what break-out groups would look like in classrooms and who their independent and dependent workers were.  These considerations and discussions are most important as we are transitioning more to a “student-centered” environment.  We are shifting to create an environment that facilitates students using the technology available to them to inquire and research their own interests. Moving into the 2014-2015 school year we will continue with our commitment to heterogeneous homerooms allowing for flexible student groups.  Last year was our first year with this model, where teachers taught all subjects during the day (the exception is math in the intermediate grades).  Teachers are excited about moving into year 2, learning and expanding on multiple small group opportunities for their students.

I have worked hard this year to create an environment for my teachers where they are free to fail and take risks.  (A big reason they were willing to take on the Lighthouse challenge.) As I met with each teacher for their “End of the Year” evaluation conference, teachers shared how they are excited, scared, yet ready for the challenge that awaits them in 2014-2015 because of this “risk-free” environment.  Morale continues to be one of my top priorities for my staff.  They reflected on the time and freedom they had for collaboration during the school year to tackle the challenges (especially with English/LA curriculum).  I will continue to give teachers this time for collaboration in the upcoming school year; however more attention will be given to differentiated professional development for my staff, as they are all ending the school year in very different places, in regards to technology and creating a more “student-centered” learning environment.

During the Lighthouse meetings our staff engaged in professional development and conversations surrounding the continued need for blended learning opportunities, with more attention to “what” the learning environment for our students will look like.  Over the summer months we will look at furniture choices that may promote more of an environment for student collaboration.

I had a lot of “take-aways” from both the ISTE convention and the Lighthouse meetings and look forward to meeting with my TLC over the month of July to plan out PD for our teachers and our parents.  We have an obligation to share with our parents the role the device will play in their child’s education and how it will allow students an educational program in which they are learning in part through on-line delivery of content and instruction, but where they control time, pace, and their learning path. Technology will be used to enhance and support what students need to know and will be able to accomplish in a “student-centered” learning environment. 

Submitted by Doug Elmendorf
Principal, Chase Elementary School

After spending a few weeks getting comfortable with their new devices, teachers began thinking about the best ways to facilitate student use of these devices when students receive them in the fall.  The following message was designed to encourage teachers to consider how they might use this new technology in truly transformative ways.

Teachers,

What does a creative culture look like?  Chloe and Cole, my 9-year old twins, are not only best friends; they are each other’s built-in playmate.  They have literally been together their entire lives, including sharing a crib in the NICU for the first 10 days of their lives.  As a result, they have worked together on some pretty outlandish projects without a whole lot of discussion.  They understand each other to the point that each of them knows what the other is thinking most of the time.  Because they know each other so well, they are able to avoid the typical stumbling blocks that we experience in moving forward with a creative project.  To me, it has been really cool to see some of the wonderfully innovative things they have done together.  I say, “to me” because while my wife certainly enjoys their camaraderie, she is very much a left-brained person who revels in things that are organized and orderly.  When the twins embark on one of these projects and invite us to see the result, I have to remind my wife as we are walking down the steps to the “performance area,” that the basement will likely look like someone picked it up and shook it.  Much to my wife’s chagrin, creativity can be messy! 

Our basement is oftentimes a big stinkin’ mess because Chloe and Cole are being creative.  The end product, though, sometimes borders on amazing (I know I am biased).  The last event was a baseball-themed musical that included various selections from the movie Frozen.  Let’s face it, you gotta be creative to put those two concepts together in a way that makes any sense.  The process of accomplishing this house-wide famous musical did not have a clear end in mind, nor did it have a reliable digitally accessible script, state-of-the art materials, or a robust evaluative measure.  It DID, however, produce tears in the eyes of the audience members and confirm that the end result is sometimes worth the messy process that we must navigate to get there.

The creative process is not only messy in the Elmendorf basement, but the studios of Pixar as well.  Ed Catmull’s 6th secret to a creative business is Why Things Will Always Go Wrong – Even at Pixar.  We all know that Toy Story 2 was incredibly successful.  What you may not know is that it almost never became a release in theatres.  The producer from the original film was working intently with his team on A Bug’s Life while a much smaller group was working on getting Toy Story 2 together for a straight-to-DVD release.  When Disney execs looked at some reels from Toy Story 2, they liked what they saw and said they wanted it released in theatres instead.  The problem was that Pixar didn’t feel that the film was of high enough quality for theatrical release and told Disney that it had to be re-done.  Disney said the release date could not be pushed back, so Pixar remade the entire movie in 9 months, instead of two years!  You may have seen recent commercials for a new movie called Good Dinosaur.  This movie met the same fate as Toy Story 2 – a total restart due to lack of desirable quality.  Catmull acknowledges the pain that is associated with this kind of mistake but claims that it is worth it in the end in order to maintain congruence with their core beliefs of “doing the right thing for the movies” (Catmull, 2014, p.73).  

In order to maintain a creative culture and stick to our core belief of Excellence in Learning for ALL, we are also likely to restart some things and endure some painful moments.  However, like was the case with Toy Story 2 and Good Dinosaur, in the end it will all be worth it when we do the right thing for the kids.