Blog Archives

February Lighthouse 2022

1/30/2022

Welcome to the February edition of the PL Lighthouse!
This monthly email blast and webpage has been designed to serve much like a lighthouse, to serve as a way forward and help in navigating through the busy school year. Nothing else speaks of safety in the face of adversity and challenge quite like the lighthouse.

Welcoming our New Design Thinking Coordinator

Mary Nunley
As the Design Thinking Coordinator, Mary leads the iDesign Central Fellowship- an experience for central staff leaders to learn how to use the design thinking process to activate a hack mindset to transform team and work culture. Mary began her career in education in 2012 as a secondary mathematics teacher and has experience in both traditional-public and public-charter high schools. Most recently, Mary was the lead teacher at CityLab High School where she designed innovative learning experiences for students using project-based curriculum through personalized learning models. Mary is a continuous learner who takes every opportunity to gain new knowledge and skills. She is passionate about supporting others and loves brainstorming to help determine potential solutions for challenges. When she is not working, Mary loves spending time with her dogs, trying to keep her houseplants alive, and socializing with family and friends.

Updates to the PL Cohort Calendar
Updates to Calendar
The PL QB Instructional Huddles for February have been cancelled. We hope to schedule for later in the spring, pending safety protocols and cohort interest.

To access the most up-to-date PL Cohort calendar, click on the calendar here. -->

[QB ACTION] 1:1 Quarterback Check In

During the month of February, please schedule a 1:1 check in with your PL coach.
Action Items
1. Sign up for a 30 minute time-slot (starting February 1st) with your PL coach by clicking their name:

2. Before your check-in, please reflect on your leadership goal in your learner profile in the Winter column (pictured above).

PL Defense Sign UP

The PL defense scheduling form is live! If you haven't yet, please select the date and time between May 9th-May 27th your campus will present on the form here. Dates and times are on a first come basis.

If your campus was not in attendance at the January 25th Design Studio, please do not sign up until your team has learned about the updates and the PL Lantern School Process at your makeup session February 1st.

The PL Lightbulb is Turning 8!

PL Lightbulb's 8th Birthday Celebration

On February 20, 2014, the first message went out district-wide asking for school leaders to embrace personalized learning and to join the inaugural personalized learning cohort! Join us in celebrating the PL Lightbulb’s 8th birthday all month through community service!

Below are a few ideas to get you started. When you complete your service project, be sure to tag @PersonalizeDISD and use the hashtag #PLdayofservice.

Support the Dallas ISD Homeless Education Program by collecting items for Comfort Bags (see ideas here). If your campus selects this project, please email Lily at [email protected] for details on how to drop off your collected items.
Celebrate Random Acts of Kindness Day on February 17th (There's actually a week of celebration starting on February 13th).
Write thank you cards to first responders.
Support local healthcare workers through virtual greetings.
Host a book, canned food, or winter clothing drive on your campus and determine where you'd like to donate the items.
Determine your own community service project with your students and share with us!

Google Virtual Summit | Saturday, April 23rd, 9:00 AM-3:00 PM
If you or someone on your team is interested in presenting a session, please encourage them to sign up by completing this form.

Upcoming Schoology Webinars

Interested in learning more about Schoology and all of its features? Join us for a webinar or two over the next two months. Webinars are open to anyone, but we have limited capacity. Each webinar will be hosted on Zoom and is capped at 25 participants. If a webinar is full, join the waitlist so that you can receive updates if a spot opens up. Following registration, you'll receive a calendar invite with Zoom information and final details).
Learn more and register at bit.ly/springschoology.

Note: If you are not able to attend, please cancel your registration so that someone else to take advantage of the opportunity.

Canva is Live!

We are so excited to announce that Canva is now live for every 3rd-12th grade student and staff member in Dallas ISD!
Over the next two months we' will roll out leader-facing and teacher-facing webinars with the Canva team to help you learn how to best leverage this tool! Be on the lookout for these opportunities that will be posted on @PersonalizeDISD's social media and included in the March PL Lighthouse.

See below for directions to follow and to share with your teams as you see fit.
Click on the image below to access a linkable version.

LanSchool is now live for every PL teacher!
This is a easy-to-use classroom management tool allows teachers to monitor screens, take over devices through a 'blank screen' feature, limiting web usage during quizzes or test, any much more!

Every teacher at a PL campus received an email with directions on how to access their account on January 18th.

Training Resources:

The LanSchool team hosts bimonthly webinars each month. You can register and/or share this link here with your teachers.
You can access an archived webinar here.

Resources to share with teachers

LanSchool Overview Document
File Size:	1870 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

LanSchool Quickstart Guide
File Size:	167 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

GRANT SPECIFIC UPDATES

RBL Grant Campuses
The due date for your Student Agency Progress Monitoring and SMART Goal data submission is Monday February 7th.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hR5W_W5am8

The video is a step-by-step guide for entering your pilot teacher MAP data. Slides are accessible at https://bit.ly/RBLQBMAP.

RBL Master Calendar
The RBL Master calendar has been updated to reflect rescheduled and canceled. events. Click here to access the calendar which is also available in your RBL Schoology course.

Office Hours | February 2
Join with any questions + support for your benchmarking goals + BL model implementations.

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January 05th, 2022

1/5/2022

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Welcome to the January edition of the PL Lighthouse!
This monthly email blast and webpage has been designed to serve much like a lighthouse, to serve as a way forward and help in navigating through the busy school year. Nothing else speaks of safety in the face of adversity and challenge quite like the lighthouse.

Congratulations to Vanessa on Her New Role
Vanessa will be building on her entrepreneurial spirit as the NEW Manager of Big Idea Programming to bring opportunities to students and staff to share their 'Big Ideas' with the community. Joining the district in 2006, she coached and taught at the middle school level for 8 years before building her skills as an instructional coach and moving into her role as a Personalized Learning Coordinator. She will be transitioning into her new role over the spring and will continue to support her schools until a new PL Coordinator is hired. When she’s not working, you can find her cheering on her favorite sports team, traveling to visit family and friends near and far, or relaxing on a warm, sunny beach.

QB PL Huddle | January 12th, 1:00-3:00 PM
We're looking forward to seeing all QBs together, virtually, Wednesday, January 12th from 1:00-3:00! Please see the updated calendar invite for Zoom information. During our time, we'll be preparing for design studio, team design excursions, and previewing our work around the BL Progressions this upcoming semester.

Pre-Work:
The Modern Classrooms Project will be presenting during our huddle. Please watch one of the videos below get an overview of the work they do to support teachers.

Design Studio | January 25th, 8:30-11:30 AM
This month's Design Studio will be two part! The morning workshop [8:30-11:30 AM] will be for principals, QBs, and other leadership team members and focused specifically on PL implementation on your campus. After lunch, our second design excursion workshop [1:00-4:00 PM] will launch with your selected teams (QBs will submit and prepare for this during the January 12th QB Huddle). You can find the Zoom links to both parts on the update calendar invites.

RBL + MIZ QB Huddle | January 13th, 1:00-2:30 pm
We are looking forward to virtually seeing all RBL QBs Thursday January 13th for an operational huddle. This month, RBL and MIZ QBs will be required to attend both PL and RBL January Huddles.

While we understand the challenges that come from meeting consecutive days, we feel that this month’s huddle will be helpful in making sure that your campus is moving in the right direction for the new semester. During our time together we will review lessons learned from the Fall semester, grant requirements, we will discuss metric goals and progress as well as building culture around the BL Progressions.

SAVE THE DATE
We are so excited to announce we will be hosting a Google Virtual Summit on Saturday, April 23rd. This virtual summit will be from 9:00 AM-3:00 PM with sessions (45-60 minutes) throughout the day.

Interested or know someone who may be interested in leading a session? Fill out or share this form.

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