There is general acknowledgement across our industry that we have to continue to hire more people in our schools.  We can look back almost twenty years to 2000-2001, when schools had 5.5 students for every one full time equivalent employee. Today, it’s 4.5 to one. Back in 2000-2001, there were 9 students to every one FTE teacher.  Today, it’s 8 to one. The assumption has been that our schools have added more employees in administrative positions, not teaching positions in the last twenty years. That was true in the 1990s, but it hasn’t been the casein recent years.  We’ve added teachers, and often we’ve added teachers to teach smaller numbers of students.

As our partnerships with schools deepened, we learned that online education provided an innovative opportunity for schools to add programs: per student rather than per faculty.  This allowed schools to increase opportunities in more cost-effective ways and without making huge up-front investments in either spaces or people. also provided an opportunity to shift low-enrollment courses online to reduce costs without sacrificing the breadth and depth of their offerings.

​Consider this program expansion scenario from one of our schools.  This girls’ school in a tight market was looking to increase STEM opportunities for students, and considered two paths:  traditional staffing (Option #1) or an online partnerships (Option #2). They chose Option #2 to allow for greater depth to their program at a lower annual cost and no capital expenditures.

Ten years ago, there was a lot of thought in the independent school world that online learning could be used to create new revenue. Those predictions have not come true.  More importantly, however, independent schools can use online education to manage expenses, by adding value and increasing opportunities without having to add staff.

For a deeper dive, explore some past blog posts or check out the professional development courses offered in partnership with the National Business Officers Association: 
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Blogs:​

• Blog posts: Should Your School Pay For an Online Course?; Does Everyone Know How the Budget Meets the Mission?; Independent School Finances

Courses with our partners at NBOA on the finances and operations of independent schools:

• Culture Meets Compliance, September 30 - October 18, 2019​​
• Essentials of the Business Office, September 30 - October 25, 2019
• Long-Range Financial Modeling, September 30 - October 18, 2019
• ​Budget Meets Mission, October 21 - November 8, 2019
• Measuring Financial Health with CFI,​ October 21 - November 8, 2019
• Stewarding Donor Dollars, October 21 - November 8, 2019

As teachers, we all have our own flavor of innovation, and we leave for summer with ideas (or, if you’re like me, a stack of haphazard notes in a drawer) to revamp our courses for next year.  Sometimes there are new tools we’ve heard about that we want to test out, and sometimes we have a new course to design. Whatever the motivator, teachers are lifelong learners and we seek to grow professionally.  I’ve noticed two essential ingredients that are necessary for this growth. First, teachers need time and space for expansive reflection. Second, they need a structure to guide the process of designing for a reimagined learning experience. Here’s how we’ve taken these challenges on.
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Expansive Reflection
Meredith Mikell, One Schoolhouse Astronomy and Marine Science teacher, has to refuel each summer because, in her words, she teaches “intellectual recklessness.” Concerned that so many good science students have a fixed mindset, Meredith spends her summers pursuing her own passions - including attending the annual Star Trek convention! - so that she can shift the learning paradigm for her students.  By designing activities that allow for creative application, Meredith’s projects allow students to “discover” basic science principles. For example, the null hypothesis is a notoriously tedious topic to teach because it is so abstract. But Meredith’s Astronomy students uncover its true meaning when they are asked to determine whether their teacher is actually an alien.  Far from the rote experimental design question, this crazy origin story inquiry pushes students to the brink of what science can answer, and therein lies the lesson.  (Her home planet is earth, in case you are wondering). If Meredith didn’t take her own growth and rejuvenation seriously, she could never conceive of the wild ideas that promote brave discovery in her classes.  Even if you have to leave this galaxy to clear your mind, make this part of your professional growth; protect it like your students’ learning depends on it--because it does.
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Structure to Guide Design
Given the frenetic pace of the school year, summer is the only time when teachers have time to think.  This is why we believe that the best formula for teacher growth is summer planning. Here’s an outline of what transformative summer professional development might look like:  

1. Identify the challenge:  You can make a pedagogical change (mastery-based portfolios, personalized pathways, project-based learning) or build something new (a new course, an interdisciplinary program with a colleague).
2. Gather resources:  Find an online class; do your own research; meet with an expert.  But don’t overdo it. Nothing is more paralyzing that too much information.  Find a few good articles, watch a video, and then get on with it.
3. Measure what you value: Identify what you value most and determine what artifacts your students will produce that will demonstrate mastery.  Even if traditional testing is part of your normal routine, deciding on evidence of mastery will help you design more expansive lessons because the outcomes will be authentic evidence of learning.  
4. Template it out:  Mock up a sample lesson and spend time making decisions about the learning flow.  Consider order of and time spent on different activities. Identify the joints - places where students will need to be persistent, where they will get feedback, where they can change direction.  
5. Seek accountability:  Meet with a colleague or ask your own kids what they think.  Talking through your plans will help you process the choices that you’re making and work through points of friction.  Make a note on your calendar to return to your accountability partner in the middle of the school year.
6. Draft it up:  Keeping the value outcome in your mind’s eye, sketch out the change.  Find places to get feedback from students when you try it out, and make sure that you have at least three chances to implement and iterate throughout the year.  The more you can design now while leaving space for adjustment in the moment, the more likely you are to be able to leverage this summer’s work into transformative change next year.  

A good summer refreshes you for the upcoming year by refueling your own body and mind, and by laying the foundation to try new things in your courses. I think about the energy teachers need and use like a reservoir, and this process fills it back up. When teachers return to school in the fall, they’re full, eager and ready to lead their students. Throughout the year, they use that water as they tend their classes. With great summer PD, they have the resources they need at hand, and don’t have to drain their reservoir dry as the year progresses.  The work teachers can do over the summer energizes and helps them dive deep, and you can help make it happen.

​Improve your practice this summer and register for upcoming professional development at One Schoolhouse - courses start July 15, 2019.
Beyond
Building Leadership in Schools for Boys
Introduction to Boys' Schools
Introduction to Girls' Schools
Introduction to Independent Schools
Mastery Practice in Teaching Boys
Relational Teaching

Tim Fish, Chief Innovation Officer at the National Association of Independent Schools, talks about the importance of continual learning for faculty and how that happens best online. 

​Learn more and register for upcoming professional development at One Schoolhouse here - courses start July 15, 2019. 

​Once upon a time I had a summer job at a Girl Scout camp on Martha’s Vineyard, and my first season there was happiest of my life to that point. I found a community, good and lifelong friends, and an ethos of caring for an ideal, an enterprise of the heart and soul, that introduced me to the ways that “mission-driven” and “values-aligned” can shape lives.

I was staggered to discover, on the last day of the season, that the final night campfire of the final session was one of the most emotional events I had ever experienced. Later, when my late spouse and I worked together at Girl Scout camps she directed, this closing ritual, with weeping campers and weeping counselors, remained a powerful, often wrenching reminder of the strength of a community of purpose. As the last embers of the fire died out, the words of one song would hit me especially hard, and they have stayed with me: “This is so long, but not goodbye.”

For the Independent Curriculum Group, this newsletter is our final campfire. It’s a time to remember the great times we’ve had, to express our gratitude and deep affection for those who have supported us, and to make a wish. It’s also a time to look forward, to reassure ourselves that the mission and values of “independent curriculum” abide—not just in our hearts and minds, as touchstones of what the future of education ought to look like, but in the ongoing work and purposes of our new partners at One Schoolhouse.

So thank you, thank you all: to the educators and friends of education who have found resonance in our ideas; to the schools whose leaders have seen fit to join in our work; to those who have worked with us at our events and made common purpose with us; to all those whom I have gotten to know at Academic Leaders Retreats, at our conference presentations, and through our correspondence and conversations on policy, practice, big questions, and big ideas.

I also thank those who have given of their time and energy over the years first as the steering committee behind the body that became the Independent Curriculum Group and then as members of our board. Without your dedication, I would not be writing this almost twenty years after the idea of independent curriculum was born.

Above all I thank my predecessor, Bruce Hammond, whose idea the ICG was and who as executive director molded a loose bunch of starry-eyed idealists into a strong and purposeful nonprofit that has contributed much to the educational conversation. Along with Mark Salkind, our founding board chair, Bruce made the ICG a reality.

And in the spirit of looking forward, I must thank Brad Rathgeber, head of school at One Schoolhouse, and the One Schoolhouse board for recognizing our common bonds and for your willingness to help sustain our ideals into the future.

In accordance with final night campfire tradition, I offer a wish: I wish that our highest ideals as educators and their essence as expressed in the ICG’s Principles of Independent Curriculum might one day come to define the educational experience of every child, in every kind of school, everywhere.
The Vineyard Sailing Camp is closed now, but when old campers or staff get together we remember and honor what made the place and our times there so special. We can still sing the songs and feel the power of their words to take us not backward but deeply into ourselves and the sources of lifelong hopes and dreams that still energize and give purpose to our lives today and will continue to do so as long as we live.

This is so long from the me at the Independent Curriculum Group, but this is in no way a goodbye to the community of purpose we idealists have been and will ever be.

You will hear from us (and from me) and our ideals again, through One Schoolhouse surely, and perhaps even in the songs from your own past that still bring you hope and joy.

When we began our work online, we saw it as an opportunity to expand opportunities for students.   Instead, we learned early on that it was possible to use this new medium for faculty, too.

We quickly found five major benefits to doing so:
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1. Offering flexible timing.  Everyone who works in schools is incredibly busy! We can’t just drop everything and go to conferences when our 9th grade English class needs us, or attend webinars at the same time we need to have an urgent parent meeting. That gets frustrating, because educators are also immensely curious and want to continue developing their craft. Working in an online space provided educators with flexible opportunities to engage when they are able. It’s no surprise that our data shows that most work done in PD courses is done in the evenings and on Sundays!
2. Training on the job. Typical PD involves going to a conference and then trying to bring back an idea or two to implement.  Online PD is different--it happens over a longer time frame while the educator  is doing their regular job.  This allows online PD to be job-embedded, giving educators a chance to simultaneously employ skills they’re learning online, often while they’re getting real-time feedback from their online instructors.  That’s powerful.
3. Connecting schools. In independent schools, culture is king.  That can translate to a reliance on the way we’ve always done it at our school.  By connecting schools across the country and around the world, we’ve found that we can break down this barrier and help educators see the multiple ways of “doing school.”
4. Breaking down misperceptions of online learning.  When we teach faculty online, they learn that online learning can work… something many faculty are skeptical of, creating a willingness to experiment more in the platform.
5. Lowering costs.  PD can be expensive, especially when travel is involved.  Online professional development allowed us to bring deeper and richer experiences to educators at a lower cost.

As we started to get involved in PD, we learned how many great partners support the independent school community. They wanted to build the skills necessary to bring great content and learning experiences online. So we partnered with them. Over the years, we’ve built courses with NBOA, NCGS, the Independent Curriculum Group, Folio, the IBSC, NAIS, and many state and regional associations.  We’ve even helped bring schools’ PD programs online.

The connections we make with independent school educators every year have grown into a rich and rewarding web of relationships. We’ll continue to expand our professional development offerings over the next number of years because we’re committed to supporting the worldwide community of  independent schools.

​Boost your experience, connect with colleagues and learn from nationally recognized mentors this summer! With courses designed for new faculty, classroom teachers, administrators and department chairs, and topics on leadership, "big picture" school finances, goal setting, and relational teaching - this is your chance to learn something new: