End of Year Reflection on Climbing the Mountain

As our school year is winding down, educators are busy as ever reflecting on the growth of their students and themselves.  Through the Climbing the Mountain framework, teachers are able to choose their focus on something they would like to research and implement in their class that is going to improve the learning of the students.

We have four learner outcomes for students graduating from Nevada CSD, which include whole individual, collaborators, world changers, and individual learners. We are trying to model what these look like for our staff, as well, which is another reason this process works. This is why we want our teachers to explore topics that will impact the learning of their students in their classroom to allow for each part of the four learner outcomes.

We have seen many different topics arise such as project based learning, personalized learning, social emotional learning, blended learning, and more.  We have truly embraced individualized learning for our staff, but we did not want to leave them floundering on their journey; therefore, we have coaching embedded into many different areas of the process.

I have heard from our coaches and instructional guides that the conversations they have been having with their peers have been so beneficial because we are really empowering our teachers.

 "I have to tell you again how awesome Climbing the Mountain framework has been for teachers at Central. In the past 2 days I have had three coaching conversations with colleagues as they reflect on their ICDP goal and the enthusiasm for their research and implementation is electric. They are so motivated about their ICDP for next year based on their effort and results from this year. This framework is exactly what was needed to provide necessary structure to support them and move us forward." - Debbie Haywood

Hearing such positive responses from teachers, coaches and instructional guides excites me for the future of this district.  We value the needs of our teachers and realize one size PD does not work; therefore, giving teachers autonomy and time to delve into topics and strategies that are going to impact our students in positive ways can only improve the learning of our students.