Reworking and Updating

Today completed the second day of the team of six teachers and a consultant deconstructing and then building back up the school's Careers curriculum, updating and aligning the work with the Colorado Community College System's standards. The CCCS (I do live and work in acronym heaven)has an incredibly useful tool where we could select the standards and appropriate outcomes for each and convert them to a spreadsheet. Yesterday afternoon, we left with a draft of two semester courses.

However, this morning started slowly with some technical issues that required the focus of the team's two Excel experts. A lesson for me on why teams work well- as they polished the spreadsheets to a functional format, I connected our assignments, grouped the standards into an outline, and applied logic to the outline. By the end of the afternoon, we were polishing up a document that will provide a great foundation for the course that all teachers will teach and serves as the foundation for the Alternative Cooperative Education program at the school.

Pleased to see that tomorrow, I can enlist the team to help prepare a PowerPoint for Monday a.m. With the fresh energy of a new school year, I'm sure that a well prepared presentation will help recruit support from the staff for the changes. What was most gratifying was that after deconstructing and brainstorming a new structure, we wound up recreating the sequence that is remarkably similar to what we have been using, adding rigor and depth- rich and thick according to one team member- to what was a tired, uninspiring course. We also added the software, Naviance, that the district adopted to meet the requirements of the ICAP law. Remember- acronym heaven. Speaking of acronyms, we have a Plan Of Study, that I'm sure will elicit a few chuckles from the students. The Cluster Finder- well, let's just not go there.

Left the day feeling full of energy and inspired to charge ahead into the Data Driven Decision work I'll do with the AP. We have some interesting data that will show how our school has changed over time and what that means to our processes. I'm ready to complete that too so I can spend the weekend tending to construting the brick deck and cleaning my raft.

I'm also pleased with this blog record, so when the energy flags- IF it flags- I'll be able to recollect the promise of the start.