The Center for the Study of Education Policy, with its partners from Leading Ed Partnerships, has begun creating a four-phase series of planning tools and resources—using the Cycle of Inquiry process—designed to support schools navigating their work during coronavirus (COVID-19).
- Phase 1 – Re-Orienting to the Crisis Period: This phase is focused on what can be done in the here and now to address the school community’s most pressing needs and to position the school for effective longer-range planning.
- Phase 2 – New Learning Phase: This phase is focused on exploring new information and data to better understand learning gain or loss that may have occurred during the remote learning period.
- Phase 3 – Fall Re-Entry Plan: This phase is focused on developing an action plan with appropriate measures, including the identification of the most responsive strategies with the greatest likelihood of addressing the impact of learning gain or loss during the disruption caused by the mandatory school closure period.
- Phase 4 – Enacting Strategies: This phase is focused on plan implementation and diagnosing progress toward process and outcome goals to determine the scope and direction of plan modifications.
In Phase 1, Re-Orienting to the Crisis Period, the training introduces a four-step strategic planning process for use with school-level Instructional Leadership Teams that is particularly appropriate in planning initial organizational responses to crisis events. This process was introduced by Bellwether Education Partners and adapted with permission by Leading Ed Partnerships to align with the principles of Cycles of Inquiry for finding and solving instructional problems.
In this phase, you will find:
- A 40-minute recorded webinar detailing the strategic planning process, featuring a segment explaining the impact of acute stress upon the brain’s ability to process information.
- A toolkit with four planning templates.
- A remote learning data capture tool for teachers.
In the weeks to come, we are committed to developing a connected suite of just-in-time resources with turn-key facilitation guidance that may be used by schools and districts. While there is no single way to respond, the available resources will help schools consider how to engage teacher leaders and all other members of the school community in new and creative ways during this event.
Although developed for schools funded through the Leading Ed Partnerships, these materials are open-source materials and available for any schools or districts to use and customize.
