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177 Huntington Ave Ste 1703 PMB 74520
Boston, MA, 02115
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617-725-0000

ANet is a nonprofit dedicated to the premise that every child in America deserves an excellent education and the opportunities it provides. We pursue our vision of educational equality in America by helping schools boost student learning with great teaching that is grounded in standards, informed by data, and built on the successful practices of educators around the country.

BCS Professional Learning Collaborative

Blog

As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, our primary concern is helping ensure equitable opportunity for all students.

Working alongside schools, we’ve learned that great teaching is grounded in standards, data, and insights shared among educators. We believe a blog can help us make a difference by spreading the ideas and effective practices of educators we work with.

We’re proud of the expertise our team has built over our ten years, and we'll be featuring contributions from ANetters across the org on topics in which they’ve immersed themselves.

Help us spread opportunity for all students: please share posts that you find valuable with your colleagues. And please add your thoughts in the comments: we would love this blog to facilitate knowledge-sharing in all directions.

BCS Professional Learning Collaborative

Kate Shanahan

Last month, ANet coach Keneisha Alford and Dr. Tisha White, our executive director for TN/AL/FL, led a professional learning session for Birmingham City Schools partners. District administrators and leaders from Barrett Elementary, Booker T. Washington K-8, Epic Alternative Elementary, Hayes K-8, Huffman Academy, and West End Academy examined best practices for using student data to inform instruction. 

The session had three objectives:

  1. Leaders will understand all aspects of the Teaching and Learning Cycle and be able to communicate its  purpose.

  2. Leaders will identify structures and resources that can strengthen data analysis within the Teaching and Learning Cycle.

  3. Leaders will explore ways to apply best practices at their school to accelerate targeted aspects of the Teaching and Learning Cycle.

Leaders engaged in scenarios that focused on the Keys to Data Driven Instruction:
  1. Assessment: Define the roadmap for rigor.
  2. Analysis: Determine where students are struggling and why.
  3. Action: Implement new teaching plans to respond to this analysis.
  4. Systems: Create systems and structures to ensure continual data-driven improvement.

The session received strongly positive feedback (no surprise—Keneisha and Tisha are awesome!). Here are some of the comments attendees made on the session feedback survey: 

“A big takeaway for me was getting teachers to focus beyond the percentage on an assessment.”
“One takeaway from this session for me was understanding the various reports for analyzing data. Specifically, the rationale for why students may have selected the incorrect answer.”

Several leaders expressed that they look forward to future opportunities to learn and collaborate: 

“[I want] to continue to review and analyze the data from the standards to increase teaching and learning opportunities for both teachers and students.”
“I look forward to attending more meetings to truly understand what a partnership with ANet means!”
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