"Sticky" Learning: Building Learning Capacity

As I mentioned in my blog post last week, the District 107 Future Planning Committee spent a significant amount of time and effort shaping our district's new mission statement and portrait of a graduate.  These serve as the driving forces behind the action plan guiding our district over the course of the next five years.  With the mission and portrait of a graduate in mind, the Future Planning Committee was able to craft goals in three distinct areas: Building Learning Capacity, Building Learning Environments, and Building Human Capital.  This week, I want to delve more deeply into the first goal area of Building Learning Capacity.

I remember seeing a powerful quote on a Lululemon Athletica bag a few years ago which said, "The world is changing at such a rapid rate that waiting to implement changes will leave you two steps behind.  Do it now, do it now, do it now!"  This quote has really stuck with me, and I think it perfectly encompasses the way the Future Planning Committee looked at the goal area of Building Learning Capacity.  

Fifth graders Skype with
scientists in Antarctica.

Learning capacity refers to the way a person is able to process, consume, and internalize new information.  To the Future Planning Committee, this meant we had to look at how meaningful, "sticky" learning occurs in this day and age.  In the book my colleague Jamie Diamond and I (2014) wrote Literacy Lessons for a Digital World, we acknowledge that "teachers are entrusted to prepare students for jobs that do not exist yet, so we must constantly consider the future of our students as we plan our lessons and learning activities" (p. 8).  This means the way teachers look at shaping their students' learning experiences must transform since the future for which we are preparing our children is unknown.  However, given our new district mission "to create a community of inspired learners," we are not just talking about reshaping learning for students but also for staff and community members.  Will Richardson (2015) insists in his book From Master Teacher to Master Learner that "teachers must be learners first in the classroom, able to model clearly what it means to work perpetually on a learning curve" (p. 10).  Therefore, we had to consider how both the adults and children in the District 107 community can maximize their learning potential.

Students in the 3M club used
MakeyMakey to create a
vegetable piano!

The committee ultimately came up with the goal that "Pleasantdale leaders and learners will cultivate advancement of global competency and cultural awareness through innovative learning experiences."  The committee's rationale in creating this goal was that it will allow our students to be open to new opportunities and will promote adaptive, innovative, empathetic, articulate, and respectful citizenship.
 This means we will be looking to explore pilot opportunities related to new learning experiences, which may include STEAM, Maker Spaces, interdisciplinary units, and implementing Genius Hour.  We want to continue to foster, promote, and instill a growth mindset within our staff, students, and community members, and we will investigate a variety of strategies and resources related to differentiating learning, assessing student learning, and the effective integration of educational technology.

The creation of this plan is just the beginning as we think about building the learning capacity of our Pleasantdale community, and we are excited about what lies ahead for us!