Talent Management: Reinventing K-12 Learning Experiences

Educators across the country are greatly underprepared in how to teach remotely effectively. As a result, many students have demonstrated a lack of motivation and engagement during their online classes. In return, teachers have reported a major burn out from excessive hours of creating and making new daily lessons, and teaching online all hours of the day and into the evenings. Many are frantically looking for new creative solutions to improve their instructional approaches, yet infused with social emotional learning (SEL) activities to support their students and parents mental well being.

The not-so-positive educational experiences for all stakeholders have forced schools to ask this essential question; “How do we redesign and implement meaningful and effective online and blended teaching and learning experiences to increase student achievement amongst every child of every ability?”

Where Do We Start?

We, as administrators, need to start now and invest in our TALENT: our educators, our students, and even our parents! We must provide all of these dynamic groups of learners with the necessary access and equity to high-quality professional learning experiences. Whether the choice is implemented through an instructional design model of an online, hybrid blend, or face-to-face learning experience, it is imperative that our TALENT is involved from the very beginning and as a collaborative team. It is all about the Learning Experience Design (LXD) that validates the success or the failure of any well thought out educational plan.

Universal Design for Learning and SEL

Infusing a systemic approach of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can provide a universal framework to improve and optimize the teaching and learning experiences based on cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience for all stakeholders. The UDL instructional framework also helps us prioritize our focus on the learner and learning first. It optimizes individual choice, autonomy,  relevance, value, and authenticity to the teaching and learning experience, yet incorporates the critical insights and first hand knowledge of the experiences and creative ideas from our ingenious TALENT. It is also inclusive of providing the necessary social emotional learning (SEL) approaches that are human and learner-centered to support the essential elements of building a collaborative community of compassionate-based learners within K12 classrooms.

Five E’s of an Online Learning Experience

After looking at these tips for designing the 5 E’s of an online learning experience, I encourage you to introduce the approach during your next online staff development meeting. It will allow you to experience and model first hand what a true blended learning lesson or activity can look and feel like for your staff. It is a proven and engaging practice that does work, as I personally use the research-based NGSS 5 E’s of instruction model when I design all my lessons and activities with educators worldwide. It is my go-to essential “teaching recipe” to get more educators up to speed with designing learner-centered innovation lessons and activities to meet the differentiated learning needs of today’s students.

Reinventing the K12 Education System as We Know It! 

What this means for us as administrators and educators is reimagining the endless possibilities of what K12 education can become! Now is our time to invest in our TALENT and be the change! The pandemic has actually opened up the door to reimagining what this new educational teaching and learning system can look like for “School X.”  The visionary leadership and choices that we invest in today includes our TALENT as a collaborative design team, which will transform our future school experiences for ALL students, teachers, and parents as well as us administrators.