A School Focused On Creating Tomorrow’s Leaders
In 2017, the leadership team at Colegio Hebreo launched a continuous improvement process for its educators to ensure they could prepare students to become entrepreneurial leaders. Leaders armed with the skills to face current and future challenges.
This evolved into a new professional development plan designed to help meet this strategic goal and achieve international certifications.
The Colegio Hebreo Union team selected LINC as its professional development partner because its services are aligned with their exact goals.
In our early conversations, we discovered clear alignment on the skills and characteristics we believe teachers should possess and a focus on student-centered learning.
Here Is What The Colegio Hebreo Union Team Says About Their Experience:
In 2017, we received LINC’s proposal. We were impressed by LINC’s PAACC Framework and their innovative methodology of professional development under which each teacher could learn at their own pace and focus on skills they needed to develop.
We decided to work with LINC beginning with the second semester of 2017. We were clear that to achieve transformation, and we needed to motivate our teachers and gradually lead them into a new way of learning.
We wanted them to see the value in engaging in personalized professional development, where they could manage their access to knowledge through LINCspring cycles. We had several face-to-face meetings and decided to prioritize these topics for our first year:
- Project-Based Learning
- Formative Assessment
- Blended Learning
- Data Analysis for Decision Making
As our work with LINCspring evolves, we have fewer face-to-face meetings and more autonomous learning through the LINCspring platform.
How Colegio Hebreo Got Their Entire Team To Buy In
To build buy-in among our entire team, we decided to break our team into five groups and assigned each group a mentor from our leadership team. This allowed our leadership team to lead by example by demonstrating our engagement and completing cycles with our teachers.
This helped us ensure all of our teachers were shifting their practices and improving their instruction. Our leadership team plays a fundamental part in this role.
Making The Most Of LINCspring Cycles
Today, we base our entire professional development plan on LINCspring training cycles. Our leadership team selects a set of standard cycles for our whole team to complete together to target specific strategic objectives in our annual professional development plan. We allow teachers to choose the other cycles they will work on according to their interests and needs, giving them voice and choice over their professional development.
The LINCspring cycles have been instrumental in implementing blended learning as a methodology that LINC’s support is precious because it has helped us make the transformation we want in our school by implementing generative change.
Transforming Practice, Student Engagement, And Agency With LINCspring
When we launched this new initiative, we encountered a bit of resistance from teachers to the methodology, and they expressed a desire to continue with face-to-face seminars. As our teachers have progressed, they understand how this work with LINC enables a greater degree of reflection and awareness to transform, improve, and work collaboratively to implement successful educational practices.
Teachers increasingly value the opportunity that the LINC-Colegio Hebreo Union teamwork offers and find it relevant to their growth, rather than an obligation.
The LINCspring cycles have been instrumental in implementing blended learning as a methodology that truly enables personalization in student-centered education. In addition, the elements of the PAACC have guided us in planning classes to develop 21st-century skills.
We do internal monitoring through a plan that each leader structures for their group. This structure allows our teams to have agency and creativity to develop a strategy that supports their progress. These strategies include weekly, individual, or group learning communities.
We also cultivate positive motivation through our social networks. We share achievements and celebrate mistakes as learning opportunities so that our teachers do not fear failure and dare to take risks and innovate.
Through its formative evaluations, the Colegio Hebreo Unión has seen that teachers use data to personalize learning through the station rotation model. A high percentage of the school’s leadership team and teachers have learned to work autonomously, at our own pace, and appreciate that we have the support of everyone to continue to improve collaboratively. There are no hierarchies in place; a teacher can be at a more advanced level than a member of the leadership team, and they collaborate.
Conquering Resistance To Give Students A Fulfilling Learning Experience
At the beginning of our new professional development program with LINC, our students were not very comfortable in the new role we envisioned.
They went from passive to active players in the classroom. We wanted them to leave their comfort zones, as we had done as teachers, and learn to generate learning products differently. This created some resistance.
However, as teachers progressed in their professional development, they guided and accompanied the students in the process. Little by little, the students were motivated by implementing new technological tools and platforms that made learning more fun.
In the same way, evaluation and co-evaluation processes generated a safe and trusting environment where mistakes are allowed and considered opportunities for growth in autonomy and self-management.
Students have benefited from implementing Project-Based Learning and collaborative work and value it as an opportunity to respect each other’s interests and learning rhythms. Additionally, as teachers have better data management, students have benefited from a more personalized education through blended learning models.
Conclusion
Today our teachers are highly motivated and committed to their professional development. They feel that LINCspring is an excellent opportunity for their growth; 85% of those registered on the platform have obtained the Innovator in Action Badge.
We see an increasing interest among teachers who want to engage on the LINCspring platform to participate in this generative change and paradigm shift.
We are involved in a healthy competition in completing cycles so that we all move forward in shifting and improving our instruction to benefit our students. Our greatest joy is seeing how, after 3 1/2 years, our students benefit the most from the excellent learning opportunities that our teachers design for meaningful and learner-centered learning.
Noguera added, “
El Colegio Marymount, una comunidad de aprendizaje católica y privada para mujeres jóvenes ubicada en la ciudad de Medellín – Colombia, se dio cuenta de la necesidad de transformarse para preparar a sus estudiantes para este mundo complejo. La institución educativa fue fundada en la década de 1950 y durante muchos años empleó un modelo tradicional de enseñanza, uno en el que el maestro era el transmisor del conocimiento y las estudiantes eran receptoras pasivas. En 2018, el colegio se sometió a una valoración de acreditación con estándares internacionales y recibió comentarios convincentes de que necesitaba cambiar la forma de enseñanza para estar más centrada en el siglo XXI y con visión de futuro. Esto embarcó al equipo directivo en un viaje para investigar e implementar un rediseño institucional que implicaba, entre otras cosas, proporcionar un desarrollo profesional crítico a sus educadores; para lo cual decidió como acción estratégica, incluir expertos externos para apoyarlos en este proceso de transformación.
Juntos, el equipo directivo del colegio y LINC comenzaron a planear la implementación del desarrollo profesional de los docentes que direccionará al colegio hacia un enfoque más centrado en las estudiantes, donde ellas tendrían independencia, elección y voz en su aprendizaje. El equipo de liderazgo escolar estableció un plan utilizando la Hoja de Ruta de Generatividad de LINC y rúbricas de apoyo que proporcionaron un camino claro desde la enseñanza tradicional hacia las aulas innovadoras y centradas en el alumno. Utilizando la Hoja de Ruta de la Generatividad, el equipo co-diseñó una estrategia de transformación sostenible para Marymount Medellín para conducir con éxito al colegio hacia la generatividad en cuatro cuadrantes: cultura, capacidad docente, ambiente de aprendizaje y tecnología. Para ello LINC realizó consultorías, talleres, coaching presenciales, el uso de LINCspring – la plataforma de aprendizaje profesional – y coaching en línea.
El equipo de liderazgo educativo del colegio estableció como objetivo potenciar una cultura de crecimiento continuo entre los maestros, que surja de las experiencias de aprendizaje profesional auto dirigidas, para transformar al colegio en un punto de referencia para la innovación educativa. Catalina Caicedo, directora de High School de Marymount, describe el proceso: “Desde el principio, trabajamos junto con el equipo de LINC, decidiendo las mejores formas de involucrar y centrar a nuestra gente. Fue como construir algo juntos paso a paso, observando el diagnóstico de necesidades en cada momento. Fue un proceso muy motivador. Utilizamos el enfoque de investigación, seguido de probar nuevas ideas en nuestras aulas para ver si funcionan, cada vez trabajando para mejorar y aprender todo el tiempo.”
Después de los talleres de verano, los responsables del liderazgo escolar inscribieron a todo el equipo docente en la plataforma LINCspring para completar los ciclos de aprendizaje basados en proyectos. Cada ciclo dentro de LINCspring sigue el modelo Reflect, Tinker, Grow, que alienta a los maestros a probar nuevas estrategias, reflexionar sobre cómo les fue y a explorar estrategias para mejorar. Toda la comunidad escolar participó en esta oportunidad crítica de crecimiento y trabajó en colaboración para planificar proyectos atractivos y centrados en el estudiante. Los ciclos de LINCspring fueron fundamentales para ayudar a los maestros a emplear estos nuevos modelos de aprendizaje basados en proyectos. Los maestros pudieron recibir entrenamiento en línea a través de la plataforma virtual y sintieron que sus preguntas siempre fueron respondidas de manera rápida y clara, en particular por su Agente de Transformación de LINC, Maribel Vázquez. “Maribel siempre está ahí para nosotros. El entrenamiento ha sido maravilloso. Maribel ayuda con todo lo que necesitamos para apoyar a los estudiantes.” (Julia Vélez)
Y Catalina Caicedo complementó: “Una vez que los maestros se transformaron en solucionadores de retos pedagógicos, podrían usar estrategias para lo que realmente estaban enfrentando en su clase. Una vez que hicieron ese cambio de mentalidad, pudieron comenzar a determinar lo que necesitaban aprender y participar en ciclos sobre esos temas. ¡Nuestros maestros realmente usan LINCspring y se divierten con él!”
Por otra parte, esta experiencia condujo a que los maestros tuvieran que pensar en sus roles de manera diferente. Como lo explica Alejandra Jaramillo: “No somos el personaje principal en el aula. Necesitamos ayudar a nuestras estudiantes a entrar en su propio proceso de aprendizaje, guiadas por nosotros”. Así mismo, Yeisson Acevedo, el maestro de física de High School, mencionó cómo al usar nuevas estrategias, como boletos de salida y Padlets, hizo que las estudiantes hicieran preguntas más profundas y pudo rastrear más fácilmente el dominio de las estudiantes frente a los diferentes tópicos y competencias. Estas estrategias condujeron a las estudiantes a un mayor interés en las ciencias y las matemáticas y cambiaron su mentalidad sobre sus habilidades en estas áreas importantes.