OVS 360
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
CAN CHANGE THE WORLD;
Indeed, It's the only thing that ever has."
-Margaret Mead
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K-8 Newsletter
High School Newsletter
Wowza! We finished another school year! Thank you all for your hardwork. We have all learned so much, together. About ourselves, our learners, and our program. Thank you to all of the learning coaches who have shared feedback on how we can improve. We want to hear it and hopefully you see that we are responding by improving our practices. We made some adjustments at semester to better serve our students and we will be working hard this summer to plan for a successful 3rd year. Through our strategic design work of articulating our core values, mission, and vision, we were able to clearly define the direction and focus of our program. While we already felt like we had direction and focus through unspoken agreements and, the way we do things around here. This process re-affirmed that we are all focused on personalizing our students' experiences, because the term personalization came up so much in our conversations. We are all committed to creating the best possible learning environment for EACH of our students. That is refreshing! I read in an article once that no school could completely 100% personalize a learner's experience. Well, our program can come pretty close to 100%, because of the partnership that we have with our learning coaches. OVS Mission:  Next steps An action step towards our mission is to put our students in the middle, in the driver's seat, almost! So they are empowered to set goals and have a clear understanding of where they are in their learning and where they want to be. One simple way to help with this is to change what we call our students. As we discussed in our coffee chats, the word "student" takes on a passive connotation. When we think of student we think of a receiver of information. One who is lectured to. As you are aware, that is not how we do things at OVS. Inspired by the work of Lindsay Unified School District in California, we will call our students, learners. The term "learner" tends to have a more active connotation. One who is actively seeking out information and doing. A similar shift will be made for what we call our teachers. The word teacher implies the owner of knowledge. In this day and age, no one owns all of the knowledge, Google does! Our teachers' role at OVS is one of facilitating learning, supporting students when needed, providing interventions or supports when a need is identified, assisting students with setting and making goals, and guiding students towards proficiency of skills. With that said, teachers at OVS will now be called learning facilitators. This aligns nicely with our parents' role of learning coaches. Our school will be called the learning center (or The Den-for all of our Ocelots to gather in). I still have to determine how my name of director/principal can shift along with everyone else, so I'm open to suggestions! It is important to note that our shift for year three is more than just changing our names. It is about going deeper in the personalization of our student experience. When our learners come to the learning center, they will be engaged in activities and strategies that will support the skills that they need to focus on, based on MAP scores and what they need to support their learning on K12. Learners will need to bring their school books to the learning center, because we will support them in their coursework that they currently are on, during portions of our learning time. Our goal is to meet our learners where they are at, not where they should be. Student -----> Learner What does this mean for the learning coach? Well, currently we have a variety of different learning coach engagement levels that are occurring in our program, and we need ALL learning coach engagement levels to be high. The learning coach will need to actively communicate with our learning facilitators. Learning coaches need to share more about their learners so we can get to the point where we are at 100% personalization for our learners. You know your learners best. We see them once/week, so your engagement is critical to your child's success. We will build systems of support for learning coaches with training and touch-points so that learning coaches are equipped to meet the needs of their learners.
What does this mean for our teachers, now learning facilitators? Learning facilitators will need to be aware of where their learners are at in their progress in their coursework. They will be more active in communication with learning coaches as well. Their lesson plans will be more individualized and will look completely different. They will be regularly analyzing data to ensure that they are truly meeting our learners where they are at, and collaborating with the learning coach to develop plans to support learners. Our core values are: growth mindset, positivity, collaboration, integrity, self-advocacy, and accountability. These values apply to ALL of our learners at OVS, K-10th grade learners, learning coaches, learning facilitators, student learning advocates, and leadership. Together, as learners, we will have the best school year, yet in 2018-19! But first, let's just enjoy our summer! This semester's focus was on developing our program's core values, mission, and vision. This process was driven by learning coaches and staff. We worked together on establishing our school communities' core values on curriculum, instruction, and assessment. We brainstormed words to define the core values of our school environment. These core values define how the members in our school community interact with one another. We also discussed what traits that we wanted our OVS graduates to exhibit (see below). The strategic design process and conversations around what we value has been refreshing to witness and facilitate, because what I already knew in my heart came through on the many chart papers, post-its, and dry erase boards. We were already working towards the same goal, we already were aligned in our values as a school community. This was just an opportunity for us to articulate, and now celebrate, that we are truly all in THIS together. Now we have now defined what THIS, is. As I stated in our coffee chats this week, that our year three experience for the OVS community will be one of clearly defined roles and goals. We are working hard to eliminate assumptions and provide clarity regarding who we are, what we do, and why we do it. Our vision is our rallying cry for what we know we can achieve, and that is to be a community of learners who are Future ready, today. Our mission defines how we will get there: Omaha Virtual School is committed to empowering life-long learners by developing collaborative relationships. Within our community, we provide an innovative, personalized learning experience. Success in this mission will cultivate critical thinkers who have the tools to contribute to a changing global society. Our core values are our shared agreements of the beliefs that (see below core values chart):
OVS Graduates are: Critical thinkers Aware of how they learn Life-long learners Goal-setters Able to learn from and persist through failure Collaborative Able to work on problems and persevere Independent Passionate Forward thinkers Analyzers Self-motivated Resilient Respectful Responsible Self-advocates Leaders Hopeful Culturally aware Globally responsible Contributors to democracy We are still wordsmithing these items, but we wanted to celebrate and share our progress with you. Thank you all who have contributed to our conversations throughout this process. It was rewarding and necessary for us to continue to learn and grow together in order to support our learners. If you have any questions or concerns about our process, mission, vision, or core values, please contact Wendy. 
Thank you for those of you who attended Parent/Student/Teacher conferences last week. We had a 78% rate of attendance for conferences for our K-9 students and families. We hope that your conference with your teacher(s) provided you with some valuable insight on your student's growth, strengths, and areas of concern. Additionally, we hope you were able to share additional information about your student's interests, learning styles, and preferences so we can better engage your student at home and while they are at our learning center. If you were unable to attend conferences with your teacher and would still like to do so, please contact your student's teacher to set up a time to meet.
Last week, we held some coffee chats in the LC lounge, in order to gather some insight and thoughts on the learning coach experience. We are always seeking your input on how we can support you and your students. Thank you for those who have already completed our LC training survey, as this information has been useful for us to know how we can better meet your needs. One of the takeaways from the coffee chats and the LC survey is that learning coaches would like to have trainings held in a variety of different formats. Online, face to face, live broadcasts, and online tutorials were recommended as options to help LCs engage in learning. In response to that feedback, we have investigated using Skype Broadcast during our Math Club on February 12th. You can watch the recording in the below youtube video (Please note, I'm not a trained videographer!). Our hopes with Skype Broadcast is that LCs can click on the link when they are at home and join us LIVE during a session. LCs at home can ask questions and engage with presenters and participants. We will then post the recording to our NEW Youtube channel, for LCs to watch at their convenience. We cannot emphasize enough that your engagement and connection with our teachers, training, and community will support your student learning. We hope that Skype Broadcast will breakdown some barriers to LCs attending trainings, and adds another level of support and community to your experience. Please join us in person or online (on Skype Broadcast using the links in the "mark your calendar" section above) at our next LC trainings during math clubs on Monday, Feb 26, and for the First Friday event with the middle school team on Friday, March 2nd. Please let us know what you think! Next week we have a great opportunity for learning coaches and students to connect with teachers. It's parent teacher conference time! In our first year, our learning coaches made a valid point regarding parent teacher conferences. They asked, "Why would we need to have parent teacher conferences, when we spend more time with our students than the teachers do?" Parent teacher conferences are a wonderful time to share successes, concerns, and strategies regarding your student's learning. We are all in this together in order to support student growth. Parent teacher conferences are a great opportunity to brainstorm how we can continue to strive for student success. During conferences a few topics that you should be prepared to discuss with your teacher:
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