The GSP Monthly Dispatch – May 2021
Welcome to the archive of The GSP Monthly Dispatch, our monthly roundup of upcoming events as well as fresh and insightful writing from our school coaches. Did you know you can get the Dispatch delivered to your inbox every month for free? All you need to do is sign up.
MAY 2021
Welcome to the latest issue of the GSP Monthly Dispatch. This month, we bring you:
- An invitation to join us for our virtual summer institutes
- Insightful blogs about making your voice heard beyond signing a petition, teaching and living after the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin, and local district policy as a valuable tool for change
- Our latest toolkit on local district policy, which seeks to make policy-making more accessible
- The next installment of our monthly Data Dialogue
Visit our event calendar for a full list of upcoming events.
Our First Summer Institute: Designing Instruction to Foster Student Engagement
In this 2-day virtual institute, educators will reflect on their learning from the past year, consider their strengths and needs in relation to the framework of the Elements of Effective Instruction (EEI), and explore resources and strategies that lead to increased student engagement in schools and classrooms.
Date: June 29-30, 2021
Time: 9:00 AM-1:00 PM EDT
Where: Virtual, via Zoom
Cost: $325/person
JULY 13-15
Introduction to Creating and Facilitating Professional Learning Groups
JULY 20-22
Designing a Better Advisory System: Building Relationships Toward a More Equitable Education System
AUGUST 3-5
Introduction to Creating and Facilitating Professional Learning Groups
Making Your Voice Heard Beyond Signing a Petition
By Mark Kostin
“While I believe petitions can play a role in policy-making, I think there are other more effective ways for residents to influence or make change in their communities.”
Teaching (and Living) After the Guilty Verdict of Derek Chauvin
By Dr. Carrie McWilliams
“What happens once Black students and educators return to their schools and resume the procedural act of teaching and learning?”
Local District Policy – A Valuable Tool for Change and Educational Equity
By J. Duke Albanese, Sarah Linet, & Glennys Sánchez
“Local district policy is an understated, unheralded, and under-utilized tool for supporting continuous improvement in our schools.”
Local District Policy Toolkit
Local district policy can be a maze of procedures, unfamiliar language, and sometimes exclusionary “ways of doing business.” This continues to serve as a roadblock for more people to get involved in the local district policy-making process.
We have created a series of resources to help educators and other school community members work through some of these barriers—places to start new kinds of policy conversations, and, hopefully, demystify some of what has made policy intimidating and exclusionary for so long.
Over the last decade, New England has seen some noteworthy gains in high school and post-secondary outcomes. High school graduation rates, for example, across the region have been continuously trending up, and an increasing number of students have enrolled in college. When we disaggregate the data, however, we see that outcomes vary considerably by race/ethnicity subgroups. These data raise challenging questions about the educational systems and supports that we are creating and providing to students throughout New England, especially students of color.
These data are part of the Common Data Project 2020 Annual Report.
Thanks for reading! See you next month.
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