Essay on The Case of Wilson County Schools

SYSTEM PROFILE

The Wilson County School System is located in Lebanon, Tennessee and serves approximately 15,000 students at 21 sites.

Wilson County strives to obtain the best teachers and administrators possible, knowing that this will directly affect the success of their students. Of the 991 people employed in positions that require state certification, approximately 48 percent, have attained an educational degree at the masters level or higher. It has about 8 percent who have achieved career ladder status of two or three. The system has also lowered pupil-teacher ratios, increased the number of teaching assistants, increased the number of counselors, and has added school nurses as a way of providing better service to the students. And Wilson County has been district accredited via the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and AdvancED.

SYSTEM NEEDS

Wilson County Schools is thoroughly committed to its education professional development (PD) mission to “enhance teaching and learning and increase student success through ongoing support and development of the faculty.”

However, student achievement has stagnated during the past five years.  A new school board was elected; they fired the superintendent and brought in a charismatic visionary to become the district’s new leader

SOLUTION

Superintendent Bing also believed that meaningful learning could only occur when teachers were adequately trained and supported by world class PD.  The superintendent determined that a new PD model was needed.  He conducted a GOOGLE search and purchased PD360.

ABOUT PD 360

PD 360 is an on-demand library of professional teacher development resources that leverages technology to make professional learning more effective, convenient, and sustainable. With over 200 hours of research-based video content, plus tools for follow-up, tracking, reflection, and group training, PD 360 is the most comprehensive solution to your professional teacher development needs.

More than 700,000 educators across North America already use PD 360 to access individualized support on the most relevant topics, like differentiation, minority student achievement, English language learners, classroom instruction that works, leadership, assessment, and many more. PD 360’s content is divided into hundreds of indexed and searchable segments that make it easy for teachers, administrators, aspiring leaders, coaches, mentors, paraprofessionals, and professional learning communities to find the answers they need. New content is continually added to keep educators up to date. See a demonstration at www.pd360.com.

DRIVING USAGE AND IMPLEMENTATION

Wilson County decided to introduce PD 360 in midyear by first training the administrators and a few selected teachers. These teachers then went back to their groups and trained the others. Here are some of the ways it implements PD 360:

• Classroom Walk-Throughs
  When principals do classroom walk-throughs, they email specific PD 360 segment links to individual teachers that are relevant to particular instructional needs.
• Group Training
  Teacher education is often personalized for groups such as when Wilson County high schools chose to customize their PD 360 instruction to the objectives of differentiation and assessment.
• Faculty Meetings
  Wilson County uses PD 360 in its faculty meetings by watching a segment either before or during the gathering, then breaking into groups and using the Facilitator Guide materials to lead discussions and activities.

  • Teachers Who Are Struggling
  Teachers experiencing difficulties can be helped when principals or PD coordinators email specific segment links showing what best practices look like in needed areas. The teachers’ viewing and reflecting can be chronicled in their Professional Growth Plans.

• Teacher Growth Plans
  Teacher PD 360 usage will be tracked in Professional Growth Plans as a way to follow specialized goals and teacher development.
• Meets Individual Needs
  PD 360 gives individualized teacher training that enables each teacher to immediately search for answers to concerns while still providing a unified focus for the whole system.
• Accessibility
  Because PD 360 is an online and on-demand solution, Wilson County teachers can access it anytime and anywhere they have the Internet. Teacher professional development is now flexible to individual schedules rather than being limited to the school calendar.
• Relevant Topics
  Innovative content is continually being added to the over 1,400 indexed and searchable video segments giving Wilson County the most current and comprehensive PD library available.
• Cost Effective
  PD 360 provides everything Wilson County needs at considerably less money than traditional PD.  Funding sources are available to districts and schools, including Title I, II, III, IV, V, VII, state funds, foundation funds, federal and state grant monies, math funds, reading funds, technology funds, etc.
• Customizable
  Wilson County keeps educators focused on what matters most by aligning PD 360 video learning segments, forums, and resources with individual state, system, and school teacher training objectives.
• Real Classroom Examples
  A variety of real classrooms from across the country is shown in every PD 360 program so that teachers can actually see how to implement best-practices in their own classroom teaching.
• Research-Based Best Practices
  The best-practices shown in PD 360 are always research-based and classroom-proven, dealing with nearly every education initiative of the past two decades.
• Tracking Features
  Wilson County teachers follow their own growth curve by using the tracking tools and reflection questions at the end of each segment while administrators use PD 360’s integrated tracking, reporting, and follow-up to ensure that teacher professional development happens consistently.
• Recognized Education Experts
  Wilson County teachers have easy access to over 100 top education experts at their fingertips without waiting for conferences or paying the high costs associated with them.

Superintendent Bing realizes that the success of PD360 will be dependent on the quality of professional development.  He calls in his instructional technology director (you) and asks that you provide him a two –three page summary of a professional development proposal that will effectively implement PD360.

The professional development proposalshould include the following:

• Goals
• Strategies
• Timeline
• Evaluation
• A conclusion as to what Superintendent Bing should expect in 6 months and 1 year.

You may select the format for the proposal that is most comfortable to you (narrative, table, PPT etc.)

The Michigan Professional Development rubrics are included as a guide for technology enhanced professional development.  Also included are North Carolina’s Technology Facilitator standards, which are aligned to the National Educational Technology Plan.  They are not specific to the assignment itself; they provide guidance for high quality technology proposals.

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