March 23rd faculty meeting on Learning Outcomes

As I wrote about in a blog post on Tuesday, this week's faculty meeting began with a presentation of data gathered from an activity faculty did at a meeting in February, in which we asked them to respond to five questions - the trends and forces affecting the world, the challenges children will face, the qualities they will need to face those challenges, and the elements in place and still needed at TBS to support the our educational mission. Following a discussion of that data (in both word cloud and traditional text forms), we presented a first draft of the broad ideas that we have identified as potential learning outcomes for TBS students, and invited faculty to comment on which of these "buckets" they thought were important, if there were any that should be removed or added or combined or reworded, and what other feedback they had about these concepts.

In keeping with our belief that the use of Thinking Routines is an important way in creating a community of thinking, we asked for written feedback in the form of the Compass Points Routine, which is designed specifically for examining propositions. The routine has four questions:

1. E = Excited; What excites you about this idea or proposition? What's the upside?

2. W = Worried; What do you find worrisome about this idea or proposition? What's the downside?

3. N = Need to Know; What else do you need to know about this idea or proposition? What additional information would help you evaluate it?

4. S = Stance or Suggestions for Moving Forward; What is your current stance on the idea or proposition? How might you move forward in your evaluation of this idea or proposition?

We'll be using the faculty responses as important data in our process of refining the buckets for a second draft, which we'll be taking back to faculty in April. We'll then finalize the outcomes, and share them with the community in May, just in time to kick off the establishment of a thorough curriculum review process, so stay tuned!

Actually, one more point, touching on that last idea: yesterday I was asked about the relationship of learning outcomes to the school's curriculum, since the word outcomes seems to suggest a focus on assessment and final product. This is absolutely true, AND it is the reason that outcomes also form a critical component of the foundation upon which next year's curriculum review process will be based. By identifying the specific desired outcomes of a TBS education, we can then review our curriculum with those outcomes as a clarifying lens, asking ourselves questions such as "How does this aspect of the curriculum contribute to the development of our learning outcomes?" or "How are these learning outcomes being specifically taught and developed in our curriculum?" In this sense, we will be using these outcomes very similarly to the way that learning goals and assessment are used in both the Teaching for Understanding framework that we employ at TBS, and the wide-spread Understanding By Design framework, a "form of curriculum planning that begins with a decision about what students need to learn as the end result. The teacher then engages in backward design, choosing activities that will bring students to the preselected goal."