“The school’s goals should apply to all students, while the means to these goals will vary as those students themselves vary. School practice should be tailor-made to meet the needs of every group or class of students."
~Coalition of Essential Schools Guiding Principles
Today's Workshop
As we pursue the goals of a new strategic plan, we have the chance to consider the progress we’ve made over the past five years and look forward to the five years ahead of us.
From 2018 - 2023, we focused on supporting the whole student and promoting student agency. We’ve explored practices that encourage student voice, social-emotional learning, new metrics of success, and making authentic connections between the classroom and the world beyond our campus. Our goals have pushed us to understand, support, and engage our students. We’ve embraced a mission to help all learners to thrive.
From 2018 - 2023, we focused on supporting the whole student and promoting student agency. We’ve explored practices that encourage student voice, social-emotional learning, new metrics of success, and making authentic connections between the classroom and the world beyond our campus. Our goals have pushed us to understand, support, and engage our students. We’ve embraced a mission to help all learners to thrive.
As we look at the work ahead of us, we continue to value all of the efforts listed above. We want to build off the foundation of the past five years by formalizing the process by which we support all students. We’ll help students develop powerful personal narratives that are based on reflection, strengths, learning, and interests. Additionally, we look to establish formal opportunities for students to build post-high-school plans. Opportunities like Innovation Career Pathways and an internship program will create opportunities to apply learning in an applied setting. Beyond this, we will create a formal way for students to tell their stories of learning to an audience beyond our school.
Each stop on the journey above has moved us forward. Consider the progress we’ve made through showcases of learning, authentic learning experiences, the Kaleidoscope Collective, training on UDL and inclusive practices, revising the DCAP, finding proof of concept with the Mastery Learning Record, hosting Inspired Learning Days, creating PoL Scholar Profiles, exploring SEL data from Panorama, and more. We’ve been busy! Today, we reach the next stop on our journey - establishing a formal plan by which students will build their personal narrative, engage in career development training, and make a four-year plan for their lives beyond Nipmuc. |
Warm Up: Jobs of the Future
One of the most exciting (and challenging!) aspects of education is preparing students for jobs that might not exist yet. We all know that world is changing quickly. We know, too, that the careers of the future may look different than those of today.
As we get started thinking about personal interests and career development education, let’s warm up with an activity that gets us thinking about preparing for the opportunities of the future. In advance of this workshop, we asked ChatGPT the following: “What are the top 50 jobs of the future that don’t exist yet?” The results were pretty exciting… and also a bit confusing! So, we then asked for a simple definition of each job. The answers can be found on the cards on the front table. Let’s explore them together! |
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Pick a card from the table. (They are face-down so the job will be a surprise to you.) Then find a partner. Working together, share the following:
Remember… these jobs don’t exist yet. So, don’t stress about your answers and let your imagination run wild!
MyCAP & the 4-Year Plan
In Massachusetts, the work of building a personal narrative, engaging in career development training, and creating a plan for life beyond high school is organized through a process called MyCAP: "My Career and Academic Plan." The MyCAP includes the following:
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Building Nipmuc's MyCAP
In today's session, we'll review, provide feedback on, and suggest ideas to build Nipmuc's MyCAP. In just a moment, we will break you into grade-level teams. Working together, each team will do the following:
1. Learn. Use the MyCAP brainstorming document to become familiar with what students should know, understand, and be able to do at your assigned grade level. Review the learning goals for each of the three areas: 1. Personal/Social (Personal Narrative), 2. Career Development, and 3. Academic, College, and Career Planning.
2. Brainstorm! Move to your assigned grade-level groups. Working together, go through an initial brainstorming session to come up with the types of learning experiences students should have during that year in order to achieve their learning goals. Assign one person to be the recorder for the group to keep track of the ideas.
1. Learn. Use the MyCAP brainstorming document to become familiar with what students should know, understand, and be able to do at your assigned grade level. Review the learning goals for each of the three areas: 1. Personal/Social (Personal Narrative), 2. Career Development, and 3. Academic, College, and Career Planning.
2. Brainstorm! Move to your assigned grade-level groups. Working together, go through an initial brainstorming session to come up with the types of learning experiences students should have during that year in order to achieve their learning goals. Assign one person to be the recorder for the group to keep track of the ideas.
Click on the images above to enlarge them.
3. Review & Brainstorm Round 2! OK, it's time to check out some of the brainstorming that has already been done! Move to your group's poster. Look at the learning experiences listed in the column to the right. Reflect on the list. What works? What's missing? What other action steps should be included? Use sticky notes to add as many ideas as possible to the list.
4. Share. Be ready to share with the group.
4. Share. Be ready to share with the group.
Building a Data Dashboard
As you can see from the activity, each student's MyCAP experience includes a variety of personal, career development, and future-planning activities. After participating in each learning experience, students will build a set of data that will help us to get to know them and support them on their journey to the future. Our district is currently working to build a "data dashboard" to hold important information about students that will help us support, guide, and collaborate with students. We now need to decide what type of information would be most insightful and helpful to share on the dashboard.
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Data Dashboard (noun)
A representation of information in that makes data easy to access and to understand |
Some of the information on the data dashboard could come from data we already have; other information will come through experiences found on the MyCAP. Our question to you is: What information and/or data should educators know in order to best support students? Answer by completing the poll below.
Next Steps
Thank you for your help in building Nipmuc's MyCAP. Our next steps will involve reviewing our work with teachers, counselors, and leaders. We'll use the foundation we built today to establish our formal MyCAP plan. Additionally, Nipmuc's Systematic Student Support (S3) Team will review your comments about data in order to help us construct our student support data dashboard. We're excited to keep you up to date on our progress with this important work!