Embedded Files
Roles:
Roles:
Lab Coordinator and Inter-School Lab Facilitator: A district-level coordinator who is responsible for ensuring the success of the Learning Lab model across schools. She would also facilitate learning labs across buildings for teachers who do not have "job-alike" roles within a single building or who would like to participate in a cross-school lab.
Lab Facilitator: A peer leader within each building who is extremely well-versed in conducting learning labs and who is responsible for facilitating them within their PLC's, Data Teams, and grade level cohorts. Additional Lab facilitators would be identified to conduct the Virtual Labs.
Lab Participant: Educators at all levels who are taking part in Learning Labs. Participants are responsible for leading activities within the lab and engaging in each phase of the process for a successful lab.
Lab Observer: Any school/district leader or learner who is not taking part in ALL phases of the lab. They should always maintain a learning stance and only contribute to discussion or lab experiences when asked.
Systems:
Systems:
To ensure the success of Learning Labs across such a large district, the following systems must be in place:
To ensure the success of Learning Labs across such a large district, the following systems must be in place:
- Lab Planning Systems: Lab groups will use a collaborative document to establish the purpose of the lab and to prepare for leading the learning activities. This document will allow for a shared ownership of the full process.
- Lab Portfolio Systems: There are so many things that can be captured during the lab, including images, video, and student work examples. The portfolio system will help to gather these and contextualize them next to the plan.
- Lab Self-reflection Systems: "We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.” (John Dewey). So, we need a system for doing this level of reflection. This system will support reflective practice blogging, vlogging, or otherwise journaling the experience in an effort to further document the progress that an individual educator is making.
Models:
Models:
Not all Learning Labs are created equal, and there are many times that a single model will not work for a given purpose. Here are the three models we can leverage:
- Intra-School Labs: These labs are within a single school and are generally conducted within a single grade level, content area, or PLC grouping.
- Inter-School Labs: These labs are across a number of schools in the district, and focus upon a grouping that is difficult to create within a single setting.
- Virtual Labs: These labs are done entirely with digital tools. This type of lab requires the participants to record video of their activities and meet with fellow lab participants via video conferencing tools.
Process:
Process:
The Learning Lab process is cyclical and is outlined as follows:
The Learning Lab process is cyclical and is outlined as follows:
However, in order to be able to conduct this cycle with fidelity and create the right conditions for this type of professional learning activity, these things must have taken place first.
- Work with JCEA and other teacher groups to get feedback on Learning Labs.
- Work with HR and district/school-based budgets to develop Learning Lab facilitator roles as part of existing roles or new roles with additional/different responsibilities.
- Identify Learning Lab Facilitator at each school through application/selection process.
- Conduct online and face-to-face training for selected Learning Lab Facilitators with the opportunity to demonstrate a full cycle with fellow facilitators.
- Learning Lab Facilitators lead workshops at their schools to build understanding and buy-in for Learning Labs within each site. These would include videos of successful learning labs and opportunities to engage in a single activity that would be a part of a learning lab as learners.
- Learning Lab teams self-organize within each school, including opportunities for all three models of Labs.
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