|
Click here to view this message as a web page.
Volume 1, Issue 1 | June 15, 2022
MBLC SUMMER INSTITUTE 2022 REGISTRATION OPEN
FOR MBLC MEMBER SCHOOLS & FRIENDS OF MBLC: bit.ly/MBLCSummer22
Greetings, MBLC Community:
We hope you are well as we finish this school year. Summer is in the air, and our work together has started. We celebrate students who are moving up and those who are graduating and stepping into their futures.
Here’s our first Mastery-based Learning Collaborative (MBLC) newsletter! As MBLC member schools and Friends of MBLC, you’ll get this newsletter bimonthly during the school year.
This spring, the MBLC community of visionary schools has begun learning together and planning for a powerful two years ahead—with an aim of making school more clear, fair, and meaningful for the young people we serve. As our work carries forward, MBLC schools will explore, use, innovate, and share research-based practices, ideas, and resources. We will learn and unlearn, seeing our students and our work with new eyes. These founding MBLC schools are catalysts of transformative change.
To all members and friends who have worked hard to do right by students during this long and challenging school year: We hope your summer plans include rest, solitude, time with loved ones, delicious food, whatever brings you delight and peace. We could not be more honored to be in community with you in this work. Take good care, and read on to hear what we’ve been up to, and what’s in store.
—Your fans from the MBLC Support Team:
Professional Learning Providers: Katie, Joy, Chris H., Don, Kate, Chris S.
WA SBE: Alissa, Seema, and Stephanie
PS: Join us for our first-ever MBLC Summer Institute, Wed/Thurs August 17 & 18, two action-packed online days of professional learning by, for, and with practitioners of culturally responsive-sustaining MBL. (See Upcoming section below for more details on Summer Institute.) Priority goes to MBLC members, but we expect to have plenty of space for interested Friends of MBLC!
Find resources from past events at the MBLC Community Site.
April 27: MBLC Community Kickoff
Our first-ever gathering of the MBLC community happened online on the last Wednesday in April! We explored the MBLC vision, goals and supports, and engaged in cross-school conversations to envision our plan for spring & beyond.
May 4: Principles & Practices of Mastery-Based Learning
May 18: Mastery-Based Learning & Culturally-Responsive-Sustaining Education
May 26: Spring Community Gathering
Founding MBLC schools, the MBLC Professional Learning team, WA State Board of Education (SBE) members, and other friends gathered at Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma for learning, community building, and delicious food. The day included a powerful land acknowledgement; “Speed Round” conversations; an Artifact Walk: “What does it look like in real life?”; “Partnering with Community-Based Organizations” from School’s Out Washington; school planning huddles, school-to-school feedback, and more. It was a rich day of meeting, thinking, exploring, and planning. Thanks to everyone who gathered!
 Arrivals at Spring Community Gathering, Land acknowledgement and opener from Sui-lan Ho’okano, Cultural Program Director at MBLC member Enumclaw HS
 Welcoming founding member schools to our first-ever in-person gathering, Speed round conversations: “I know I’m making a real difference in a student’s life when _________.”
 Artifact Walk: What does this work
look like in real life?
May: School Visits
We loved our first visits to member schools! The MBLC Professional Learning team from Great Schools Partnership and New Learning Collaborative, along with SBE, visited 13 MBLC founding member schools. Here are just a few of many images we will hold in our minds for a long time to come. Warm thanks to students and staff at schools who hosted visits.
 Vanguard Academy, Moses Lake; Innovation Lab HS, Bothell
 West Valley Innovation Center, Yakima; Gates HS, Tacoma
 Elma Elementary, Elma MS, and East Grays Harbor HS, Elma
 Avanti HS, Olympia; Highline Big Picture HS, Burien
 Tumwater Middle School, Tumwater; Mullenix Ridge Elementary, Port Orchard
 Raymond Elementary, Raymond Jr/Sr HS, Raymond
June 8: Mastery-Based Learning & the Student Experience
June 14: School’s Out Washington (SOWA) Partnerships 101 Training
MBLC members met in an after-school webinar with Kelly and Anne from SOWA to explore how to create thriving, sustainable, and equitable partnerships with community-based organizations (CBOs) that can enrich students’ educational journeys and offer valuable knowledge and skills. These partnerships could be in the form of expanded learning opportunities that happen outside of the school day (afterschool programs, summer enrichment, etc.) SOWA emphasized that CBO partnerships can help schools to reach their diverse, underserved student populations as a way of practicing authentic community engagement in their culturally responsive-sustaining MBL work.
We’ve put together a MBLC Year at a Glance for School Year 2022-23. Please have a look for events for MBLC members—and many events where Friends of MBLC are welcome: https://bit.ly/MBLCevents_SchoolYear22-23. Register for upcoming events on the MBLC Community Site.
June 23: MBLC Work Plans due
Member schools: Please develop your self-assessments, goals, and budget templates in collaboration with your MBLC coach before the June 23 due date. Chris, Don, Joy, and Kate are here to support your planning. Still thinking about how to use your funding to best advantage? Get some ideas here: bit.ly/MBLC_PLProviderSuggestions
Flexible dates: After-School PL Coach Office Hours
Members, would personalized support be helpful? Office hours with the MBLC PL coaches started this month, and will continue next school year. Book time 1:1 or with colleagues from your school to discuss CRSE, MBL, Youth-Centered Practices, Transformative Processes, Educational Equity, MBLC Work Plan, Budgets, Resources, Connections, & related matters. Set up 20-30-60 min appts here: calendly.com/joynolan
August 17 & 18: MBLC Summer Institute (online)
Our first Summer Institute is coming up! This two-day, online professional learning experience will feature shop talks and workshops with practitioners, and plenty of supported work time for participants. All sessions will focus on hands-on learning and capacity-building with important aspects of youth-centered, culturally responsive-sustaining, mastery-based education, from the perspective of school leaders and teachers who do this work.
Each day will include optional time for revising your MBLC work plan and budgets, with the support of the MBLC Professional Learning Team.
MBLC members, see you there! Friends of MBLC also welcome, space allowing. Clock hour credit is available for qualified educators. Save the dates! And register here before you head out for summer break!
Here’s where we’ll share resources and videos for your use. Enjoy, and let us know your wish list for next time!
 Student Perspectives: Belonging, Culture, and Mastery (Competency Collaborative, NYC Public Schools)
Here’s the video shared at the Spring Community Gathering. “(MBL) makes me feel like more of a human than, like, a number,” Kaitlyn tells us. “Oh, someone outside my family cares about me?” asks Tyriq. Hear what matters about this work to the students we serve.
Here are videos we shared in Webinar 3: The Student Experience. Enjoy!
Dear Embee Elsie:
What’s the difference between these terms? Standards-based, competency-based, mastery-based, proficiency-based? All this new language is baffling. Please help! —TERMinally Confused
Dear TERMinally Confused:
Thank you for this great question. The national field of competency-based/mastery-based education uses the terms competency-based, mastery-based, and proficiency-based basically interchangeably. Competency, mastery, and proficiency all refer to the ability to transfer learning in and/or across content areas, and to apply knowledge and skills to new challenges, texts, or problems with accuracy and precision. That’s what we want for our young people!
What we call MBL is a way to focus learning on big, important, transferable skills that students can use across classes, and even outside of school. We’re talking about skills like: Collaboration, Analysis, Communication. Students get practice, feedback, assessments, and grades organized around getting to proficiency (aka mastery, competency) with learning outcomes that name those important skills. Each learning outcome involves deep work with many standards, over time.
Standards-based” refers to a system for grading (standards-based grading, or SBG) in which students are tracked standard by standard. There are many standards for each course, and SBG involves assessing students on each of these many components of learning—it can be a lot to keep track of, and some students tell us it can feel like focusing on a laundry list, rather than deeper learning.
Like SBG, MBL assesses students skill by skill . . . but instead of working on standards one by one, students focus on multi-standard, multi-dimensional learning outcomes that name big skills we want students to take with them into their futures. MBL (aka competency-based learning, proficiency-based learning) aims for deeper learning, lifelong learning, and agency. MBL has a purpose of making learning more clear, meaningful, and fair. Students in MBL schools say they are learning how to learn, as they are learning science, math, PE, history, art, or English.
We hope that helps with all the terms! Wishing you a wonderful summer!
— Embie Elsie
Reader, do you have a question for our advice columnist Embee Else? Please reach her here!
About us
The Mastery-based Learning Collaborative is a community of Washington State schools that are using youth-centered, mastery/competency-based, culturally responsive-sustaining practices and approaches. Our program is an initiative of Washington State Board of Education, in collaboration with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Professional Educator Standards Board.
Contact
Mastery Based Learning Collaborative
State Board of Education
Olympia, Washington
|
