August 10, 2020

Welcome to the August 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 + Best of Luck, Nafia!

A huge congratulations and sad farewell is in order for our Nafia Hamilton! This month she begins her new role as an Assistant Principal at John Neely Bryan Elementary School. We are so proud of Nafia and look forward to continuing cheering her on in her new role.

We encourage you to send her a note of congratulations or encouragement for the year ahead. Nafia's email is [email protected]. 

This morning you received an email with your individual campus attendance and feedback from participants from the PL Ski Trip! We had close to 300 teachers join us and had snow much with all participants! 

Join the PL Ski Trip Schoology course to access all session recordings and materials from the workshop. Directions were included in the email with attendance and feedback. 

We've heard from many of you about wanting to learn from the planning process for the PL Ski Trip. Join us for a webinar where we'll share lessons learned from the PL Ski Trip and inspiration + strategies for hosting virtual Professional Development.

Packaging the Experience | PL Ski Trip Webinar
August 19th, 10:00-11:15 AM
Curious to get a behind the scenes look at the PL Ski Trip? Join us for a deep dive into planning and execution strategies for virtual workshops. We'll also share lessons learned from hosting a three-day virtual workshop for 300 teachers. Register here!

NEW PL Campus Retractable Banners 
This fall the PL Team will design and purchase new retractable banners for existing, pilot, and year 1 PL campus that is personalized. Note: Banners will be similar to the original PL banners from 2015 and pictured here with IDEA's fearless leader, Nakima Hicks-Foster. :) 

​To ensure we use the most up-to-date campus name, logo, and colors, please complete this form here by Friday, August 28th. We will share the draft design in September for you to approve before we purchase. 

Schoology Update
At the end of July, the TEA announced that they would fund Schoology for any district in Texas for two years! Learn more here. While this is ultimately exciting news, it has caused a slight delay in implementation for the 8 PL schools who opted in back in May. In order to take advantage of this opportunity we had to restart the requisition, which means it will be another week or two before you and your staff have access to the enterprise version of Schoology. Please do not let this slow down any planning for the fall, as everything you do in the free version can be transferred directly to your enterprise account. 

If you did not originally sign up for Schoology access and now want to take advantage, you have one last chance to sign up for access. Sign your up campus by adding your information to the spreadsheet here by Friday, August 21st. Note: PL campuses (and select OTI schools) are the only teams that will be able to take advantage of this opportunity for the 2020-2021 school year.  We'll be serving as the District's pilot for potential future Schoology use.

*NEW COACHING TOOLS ALERT*

Station Rotation Implementation Progression
The Station Rotation Progression is a tool that identifies the necessary steps to take when implementing a blended station rotation. A progression is a pathway a learner might take to reach the end goal or learning target. This tool is carefully sequenced across three phases of implementation:

• Foundation- Identifies the sequence of teacher and student actions that must be mastered in order to establish the foundation and readiness for an effective station rotation. 
• Differentiated- Identifies the sequence of teacher and student actions that enables differentiation in an effective station rotation. 
• Personalized- Builds on the Foundation and Differentiated phases to identify the sequence of teacher and student actions that meet the need and interest of every learner. 

Learn more about the tool

Distance Learning

This summer we created the Distance Learning Coaching Tool that prioritizes the top 5 teacher and student actions from the PL Coaching and Development Rubric for a distance learning setting. 

To access this tool, click on the image to the right. --> 

Coming Soon... Distance Learning Implementation Progression 
We are excited to announce that later this week we'll be releasing the draft of our newest tool, the Distance Learning Implementation Progression. This tool aims to support school leaders and teachers through four phases:

• Establishing your Learning Management System (LMS)
• Increasing Student Engagement in Synchronous Learning
• Increasing Student Engagement in Asynchronous Learning 
• ​Providing Feedback for Learning 

Join us for a PL Cohort Sneak Peak this Wednesday, August 12th from 2:00-3:00PM for a chance to see the draft and provide the team with feedback and input on the current draft. Register here!

We will release the final draft and host the first webinar to share strategies and inspiration for using the tool. Learn more and register below.

Distance Learning for PL Leaders | August 21th, 10:00- 11:15 AM
This webinar will define distance learning and provide leaders with resources and a plan to scaffold implementation for teachers. During this webinar we’ll also release a new coaching tool, Distance Learning Implementation Progression and share inspiration on how to use to for campus planning. Register here!

SAVE THE DATE
Google Cloud Conference | September 12th, 9:00-11:15 AM
Join us for a half-day of live webinars on a diverse range of digital tools ranging from interactive notebooks to digital escape rooms. These webinars will be presented by FriEDTechnology and supported by the PDL and PL departments. Sessions will happen during 2 blocks of time during the day, and participants will be able to choose between two sessions at a given time. The cap for each live webinar will be 400 participants. 
Registration will go live in September

PL Department Calendar Update
In an effort to not have to schedule and reschedule events for the 2020-2021 school year, we will hold off releasing the calendar until September. As soon as a decision for re-entry and final recommendations for professional development have been made, we'll release the calendar. We anticipate it will be ready for September's PL Lighthouse. 

If you have any questions, reach out to Kristen at [email protected].