Teach to Lead

What an experience

Catherine Ring, Jeff Beaudry, Theresa Cerceo, Kate Smith and I just returned from Washington, D.C. where we attended the Teach to Lead Summit sponsored by the US Department of Education and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The team represented the Maine Arts Assessment Initiative (MAAI) and I was so proud of all the teams accomplishments.

We participated in high quality professional development using the Logic Model which helped us to focus on our project from beginning to end. The Logic Model is a framework to help create a plan. The reason for using the Logic Model is it really helps to increase the effectiveness of implementing a project. Our purpose in going was to determine the future for MAAI so the summit was a great opportunity. We started with clearly stating the Problem (as it is called in the Logic Model):

The Maine Arts Assessment Initiative (MAAI) was created to address the inconsistency and gaps in access to quality professional development for arts educators. After five years in operation, MAAI is looking to sustain the successful work it has begun, and to address the emerging needs of arts educators in our state.

Jeff and Kate

The next step included creating the goals which we decided would have a strong focus on Teacher Leadership. For 4 years now MAAI has focused on leadership by inviting visual and performing arts teachers to be Teacher Leaders (75 to date). This segment of the D.C. work helped us to dig deep on the topic of teacher leadership. It was very useful to take a close look and realize how much the focus on teacher leadership has impacted the successes of MAAI. To hear the clarity around teachers as leaders repeated over and over during the summit was validating and gave me a sense of pride in Maine arts educators.

Catherine and Theresa

From there we moved on to identifying the inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes. From this step it was fairly simple to fill in the last two segments: the rationale and the student impact. Below you see a blank template that we used to get started.

Logic Model template

MAAI was selected to attend as one of 27 teams from 125 proposals. MAAI was the only team with a statewide project represented. Also participating were 85 critical friends. Jacob Bruno who is employed by Corwin and lives in Portland, Oregon was assigned to the MAAI team and he was a great match for us. And, we were glad that Rob Westerberg could join us electronically a couple of times during the Summit.

The Logic Model template MEGA size

Once we got the bulk of the work on paper we shared with a few other groups to get and give feedback from a fresh set of eyes. We also had some professional learning around developing our message. Its one thing to come up with a good project but also important to be able to communicate about it. After more tweaking every team displayed their plan and we had time to provide feedback to each team.

The highlight of the summit was definitely having the opportunity to have the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, visit our table (one of 4 selected) to learn about the work of MAAI.

We were so grateful to be participants in the Teach to Lead Summit. I was honored to be part of a fantastic team representing Maine and MAAI. If you are interested in attending with a project that you are considering the next one will be held in Tacoma, Washington on September 26-27 with a deadline for applications August 7. For more information including the application please go to http://teachtolead.org/summits/.

Flying over the nation’s capital

Flying into Portland, home again.