When I started the DLL program, I thought it would take forever to finish the program. A lot can happen in 18 months! Now, looking back, I feel like it all happened so fast. I’ve been working on my innovation project in every class I’ve taken, but it doesn’t feel like I’ve made much progress. That is until I look back on the “Projects & Learning” page of my ePortfolio that I’ve updated throughout the program. There, I see that I have created:
an innovation proposal to implement a flipped-style classroom to teach math,
a call to action video to rally others in my organization around my idea,
an evolving literature review to back up my ideas with research,
plans for leading organizational change to help others in my school implement change
an action research plan to test out my ideas, and
an article and a podcast to share some of my data from my action research plan.
I did all of that while learning more about COVA + CSLE and the Growth Mindset, and honing my skills in instructional design. It seems I’ve been very busy! But I still have a long way to go.
Rolling out an implementation plan in one of the largest school districts in the country is a huge undertaking, especially when the idea is not being implemented from the top-down, but from the bottom up. However, creating organizational change from the bottom up is what the DLL/ADL program is all about.
In my plan for leading organizational change, I discuss the steps I need to take to implement my innovation project in my school. While I still think that the plan is solid, I realize that I have to be very flexible with what can be accomplished in a certain amount of time, and manage my own expectations for the speed of implementation when colleagues have plans of their own and circumstances beyond my control dictate unforeseen changes (e.g. Covid19).
This implementation plan was not my first plan. In fact, I had hoped to start my innovation plan during the 2020-21 school year, but that year everything about how we ran our classrooms changed. My school district went to a hybrid model where I taught in-person students, students live on zoom, and students who completed work asynchronously. Students were able to come and go as they pleased, in class one day, on zoom another day, and asynchronous the next. This could have been a great environment to have an established flipped classroom, but since students didn’t have one place to meet for discussion the class atmosphere was quiet and disjointed. Lessons were short and most assignments were completed asynchronously. Meetings with colleagues were also put on hold. If a meeting needed to happen, it was held on Zoom. From a district perspective, nothing new that wasn’t absolutely necessary was going to roll out.
By January of 2021, it was clear that my implementation plan would need to be edited and pushed to the 21-22 school year. I also amended my plan with what I had learned about executing organizational change.
During the 21-22 school year, I have been able to tackle several parts of my innovation plan. I have gotten buy-in and approval from the admin to start my action research plan, which includes flipping my classroom, my district has purchased access to several digital tools that allow me to prepare online lessons, and I have written lesson plans that include flipping the lesson and assignments. I even have a few colleagues who have committed to flipping their lessons a couple of times a unit to try the plan out. I have also started my action research plan and have collected data from students surveys to analyze and make revisions to my plan. I wrote about my students’ initial reactions to the flipped classroom in this article and interviewed one of my colleagues about her experience with flipping her classroom in the podcast I made with my classmate, Jennifer Turnbow.
The knowledge I’ve gained in the DLL/ADL program has given me the confidence to implement significant learning environments in future projects. One of the biggest takeaways I have from this program is to research any plan to see where others have had pitfalls and success and to be flexible and adapt my plan when unforeseen changes evidently happen.
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