Our PATH to our North Star

I always love the start of new school year.  Buildings are shiny, we're all well-rested.  We've been thinking about ways to tweak our practice and collected some new resources we can't wait to try out.  I especially love energy that results from the reunions of educators gathering together to renew collaboration and get things started.

For me, the first "real" day of the school year is the Thursday afternoon of the first week of school.  As a District Principal, I'm still busy with the behind-the-scenes stuff the first couple of days while things get underway at the various sites.  But Thursday afternoon of that first week, at the first Learning Services meeting of the year, I get an opportunity to re-connect with the amazing group of educators that I work with, to share some of my summer learning, and update everyone on district directions for the year.

This year, it was also time to renew our vision statement for Learning Services.  With a new BC Re-Designed Curriculum to consider,  and our ongoing commitment to create the most inclusive classroom opportunities we can for the students we support, I really wanted to make sure we were starting the year in the same place.

Having been at a summer meeting that used a graphic artist to collect our thoughts, I had seen the benefit of a visual representation of our thinking, and wanted to try it with my team.  I have a number of colleagues who were trained in the PATH process a couple of years ago, and I knew this format to be a really exciting, positive way to visualize some goals and determine the initial action steps toward them.

If you're not familiar  PATHs, the North Star Paths, two masterful educators from Saanich School district near Victoria, BC, have put together some great resources to support things.  They're website is at:  www.northstarpaths.com.  This short video is a great overview of the PATH process.

 

We began our session by watching this clip to set the stage for everyone, then read Peter Reynold's story The North Star, to help everyone think about what their "North Star" is for working with the learners on their individual caseloads.   It's a great story for working with all ages, in considering thoughtful and personal goals.  

After that, we turned to our large page for setting goals and brainstormed what "Success for Our Students" would look like.  I'm super proud to be working with a group of people who kept such a clear focus on the whole-child.  We talked about everything, from academic success, to friendships, to self-regulation and self-advocacy.  

The list kept going, until we decided we'd better start turning this "technicolor dream" into some action steps, if we were going to help make it a reality for our learners.  I love this group.  We could have gone on celebrating successes all day long!

The next step was to define where we wanted our learners to be at by the end of the school year.  It's an ambitious list:

• to have strategies
• to be engaged, self-regulated learners
• to be connected
• to have good self-esteem
• to see possibilities

To decide where we were going, we next thought about "Now."  How are things for our students, what do we notice about them at this time of year?   This quickly brought us to a focus on relationships, and on collecting baseline information regarding our learners' strengths and lagging skills.  We also needed to decide who was along this journey with us.  This is the "enroll" stage. 

 

 The following step was to figure out what we needed to do by November, then by April, to help us reach our goal by the end of the year.  We agreed that knowing our learners super well, and fostering solid relationships with them and between them, was our greatest shot at helping them make significant progress this year.

 

We're going to word-smith our list of goals into a vision statement, and bring out our larger sheet again in November and April, to see how we're doing.  In the meantime, it feels to me like we've done a great job recognizing that regardless of where we work, or who we are supporting, They Are All Our Kids.