Additional Learning Pathways

The Adaptive Schools training helps to develop the collective identity and capacity of your team’s members as collaborators, inquirers and leaders. It not only explores what makes teams effective, but how to develop skills as facilitators and informed group members in informal and formal settings, in small and large groups. It takes participants beyond the idea of professional learning communities to the actual implementation, describing specific ways to weave the collaborative fabric of a faculty, develop group member skills, and acquire the principles and understandings to engage in a continuous cycle of team and individual improvement. Adaptive Schools is the “how” of professional learning communities: how to behave in groups, how to lead them, and how to facilitate them for improved leading, teaching, and learning.

Cognitive Coaching Seminars® are professional learning opportunities designed to help educators enhance their own thinking and decision-making while also supporting the growth of others. Participants learn frameworks for coaching conversations that promote planning, reflecting, and problem-resolving. The seminar focuses on building trust, active listening, and asking powerful questions to foster self-directed learning and growth. By equipping educators and administrators with these skills, Cognitive Coaching helps create a collaborative culture that enhances teaching and learning outcomes.

Thinking Collaborative

Learning Labs equip districts with a collaborative and job-embedded approach to professional development. Learning Lab Facilitator Training, as provided by the OAISD, supports teacher leaders to guide classroom-based labs focused on observing colleagues, reflecting on practices, and collaborating around instruction. Learning Labs ensure that educators apply new skills and insights directly to their teaching contexts for lasting impact. This approach promotes authentic learning experiences, empowering teams to grow together and improve outcomes for students.

Developed out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and based upon the Medical Rounds Model used in healthcare, Instructional Rounds is a process in which districts and/or schools examine a "problem of practice" (an area that the district/school is actively looking to get better in) by collecting, sharing, and analyzing classroom level observational data.  At the end of the process, districts/schools gain a better sense of what they are doing well, where there might be room for growth, and what potential next steps related to their "problem of practice" may be.