I work in P-12 education.
And it’s coincidental that I read about systemic change as a form of change in
education because ecological systemic change is what our district has been experiencing
since about six years ago. Our district is changing its culture from the inside out,
and it is affecting everyone who is employed and/or associated with the
district, including the community. (I say “is,” present tense, because the
change is ongoing, by no means is the process finished and the district has
arrived at the intended, final destination, or product.) But I can attest that systemic change has
brought among many things not only higher education into our classrooms but hope
to all our students and their families for a brighter and better future, including
those students who have dropped out with no intentions to return. Since the
inception of our systemic change, the district has not wavered in its efforts among other things to raise the level of instruction in the classrooms, to offer incentives to our teachers to obtain higher degrees, to offer dual enrollment/concurrent opportunities to our students, to bring back the drop-out students, offering them a chance to finish high school
and begin a college education concurrently. In fact, a special campus was built for this
group of students. The campus was partnered with a local college, and it is growing
stronger every year, adding more academic and career courses as times goes by.
This year our district’s systemic change was framed into a model for
other districts to follow. The links below are of an interview with our district's superintendent discussing this change and its progress and a report created by the agency that provided the assistance for the design change.
I can definitely relate
to the instructional design team member/leader role in a corporate
setting. As part of our district’s
systemic change, we’ve worked as members in teams to formulate change, from brainstorming
to create our campus or department’s vision and/or plan of action, to working
as part of small learning communities to help each other to better prepare our
students, to knocking on doors of the community together to encourage students
to return to school. Everything done for the purpose of systemic change is in
teams.
As instructional
designers of the military look into the future and address advanced distributed
learning, jointness, and lifelong learning, similarly so does P-12 education. Our district has partnered with local colleges (South Texas College and Texas State Technical College) and is making advances to partner and
collaborate with colleges in south central Texas (Alamo Colleges in San
Antonio, Coastal Bend College in Beeville) and beyond (Tulsa Welding School in Tulsa, OK), whether by e-learning
or offering dual credit college or certification courses. As any educational
institution, a goal is for students to continue with lifelong learning. Our
district is opening windows of opportunities to our students, more so than
before the systemic change, providing them with all the
resources to do well now and to continue in their educational journey.
Our district’s STEM
courses (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), instructed in our district’s
early college campuses where all students graduate with an associate’s degree, implement
problem-based learning, such as is discussed in instructional designers of
health care. In this setting our students
are mastering team building and collaboration, learning to problem-solve together.
It’s my understanding students in teams
each have a responsibility that is integral to PBL. Teachers admit there is higher learning occurring in PBL courses.
I can relate in minor
part to instructional designers in higher education in that in my position I
offer orientation to new teachers in our department and provide ongoing support
to everyone from teachers, to administrators, to the community. I am also member
of a team that provides staff development to our departmental teachers at least
four times per year based on district and departmental needs.
The world is vast and
diverse, and as I have learned, what works for one does not necessarily work
for another. But by comparison, I feel our
teachers resemble the teachers from Japan in that our teachers are provided
with or resort to their own tools to design their own instruction, they
collaborate with other teachers to align instruction, and the newer teachers learn
from the veteran teachers among other things on the how-to’s of classroom
instruction. Also, as in Japan if our
teachers don’t embrace technology on their own and of their own initiative,
they never will. A sad occurrence but so very true.
After these readings on
instructional designers and what they do in the different settings, in my
position I feel I am touching on the described field to a minor extent. As part
of the ecological systemic change, I was included among a team of district employees
that received training as an instructional coach, which I feel is similar to
being an instructional designer. The training I received was in-depth, yet I feel
I have much to learn in order to be of good service to my district in that
capacity. The readings so far in this course have helped to shed further light on and
make me more knowledgeable on instructional design and technology.
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