September 2022 Lighthouse

Welcome to the September 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. 

September 14th, 1:00-2:30 PM | QB [Operational] Huddle

We're looking forward to meeting with all QBs Wednesday, September 14th! This huddle will be hosted via Zoom and will prepare you for the upcoming Design Studio and Design Excursions. Please see the Outlook calendar invite for joining information.

Design Studio | September 27th 8:30 AM-12:00 PM

Our first Design Studio is quickly approaching! Please note, we have adjusted the time to be during the morning only [8:30-12:00 PM] at 9400 North Central Expressway. Principals and Quarterbacks please plan to attend and invite any other leadership team team members you'd like. Workshops will highlight the PL Readiness Continuum, strengthening systems for observation and feedback, PL campus priority benchmarking and a differentiated workshop based on your campus type. So we can plan for space, please submit your attendance for design studio here by Thursday, September 15th.

Design Excursion Update 

Design excursions will now kick off during the month of October based on your priority. At the September 14th QB huddle, we will provide more information on submitting your team and selecting your kick off date.  

LanSchool is Live for the 2022-2023 School Year

This is an 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 tests, and much more! 

Every teacher at a PL campus received an email today (August 29th) with directions on how to access their account. See below for what this email looks like that you can share with staff to help them find the email. Teachers must activate their account within 30 days of receiving the email or their account will not be set up.

Check out the Resource Center here on the LanSchool website for additional resources you can use to train or share with teachers

Modern Classrooms Project

We have partnered with the Modern Classrooms Project to offer scholarships to PL teachers who would like to enroll in the Virtual Mentorship Program. This opportunity is right for you if you’ve been interested in designing a student-centered, self-paced, mastery-based learning environment. 

The Virtual Mentorship Program is a virtual, asynchronous training that pairs teachers with expert mentors, guides you through the steps to creating content for  self-paced units, and connects teachers to a community of like-minded educators across the world. Click here for more details about the opportunity.

A scholarship includes:

• Access to teacher-created professional development with concrete strategies for making  learning environments more student-centered.
• Enrollment in a 12-week virtual, asynchronous training where teachers will receive one-on-one coaching and personalized feedback on classroom-ready submissions, from instructional videos to mastery checks.

Scholarships are limited; learn more and apply for the October session by September 20 by clicking here. 

Last Call | PL Readiness Continuum Feedback

We are in the process of updating the PL Readiness Continuum to reflect our lessons learned over the past four years and need your feedback as we work to finalize this month. See below for a few different working documents of our progress to date. As you review each document, use the comments feature to ask questions, clarify, or suggest changes.

Working Documents 

• Original draft shared in August PL Lighthouse- this is where our team has captured revisions in comments
• Working final draft- this is where the revisions and changes are reflected (most up to date document)
• Working published draft- this document reflects the changes in organization structure

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During Design Studio all schools will attend a workshop to understand the rationale for change, review the final draft, and provide any last suggestions before we publish on September 30th.

If you have any questions, concerns, feedback or want to talk about any of the changes feel free to register (will receive calendar invite) and join for one of the office hours below.

• Wednesday, September 7th | 9:30-10:00 AM
• Thursday, September 8th | 1:00-1:30 PM

Calendar Updates

There have been adjustments to several district calendars, and in response, we have had to change a few dates. Outlook calendar invites have been updated as well as the department calendar here.

PL Collaborative Schoology Groups

During Homecoming Week, we launched our PL Collaborative Schoology Groups. These groups are grade-band specific and were built to foster relationships for teachers across the cohort. They are a place to share and discuss PL practices specific to their grade-band. We will also be posting the Lite Brite, our teacher-facing newsletter, starting in October, directly to those groups.

Please share the following link (image below) with your staff.  This link will give them steps by step instructions for how to join their respective collaborative groups in schoology.  

School Retool Application Live

We are excited to partner with the Stanford Design School (d.school) and IDEO to bring the seventh cohort of School Retool to Dallas ISD. This fellowship trains educators to take a design thinking approach to creatively tackle campus challenges using small experiences called "hacks." Assistant principals who are interested should follow this link to learn more and apply. Or, nominate an assistant principal or yourself for an upcoming cohort at bit.ly/nominatesrdallas.
 
Applications are currently being accepted until Wednesday, September 21st at 5:00 PM.

If you, or your assistant principal, want to learn more or have questions, join us for a virtual information session on Thursday, September 8th, from 2:00-2:30 PM by registering at bit.ly/schoolretoolinfo98.

[FYI] District Wide Technology Purchases 

Click here for a list of all the technology applications and programs that the Professional Digital and Learning department has purchased for the 2022-2023 school year.  On the last page you'll find the alignment to the STAAR items.