education innovation fellowship
A Summer of Innovation: Part 2 (Orr Elementary)
Benjamin Orr Elementary is a District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) in Southeast Washington, D.C. During the school year, CityBridge Education Innovation Fellows Diane Johnson and Kelley Jones teach mathematics, science, and special education. However, during the summer, these two Fellows are piloting a station rotation-based blended learning model. Since their summer pilot focuses on English…
A Summer of Innovation: Part 1
Are you interested in learning how to leverage educational technology? Do you want to learn how to implement a personalized learning model in your classroom? Are you always searching for opportunities to expand your professional learning network? If you’ve answered “yes” to any or all of these questions, then allow me to borrow a moment of your time. I want to introduce to you a group of…
Beginning My Summer Pilot: Student Success Sheet
As part of the Education Innovation Fellowship, each Fellow designs a summer pilot program that uses personalized and blended learning to solve a specific problem in our classrooms. For my pilot, I wanted to give students and their families better access to the various data points we use to measure student success. Our charter network (KIPP DC) does a great job tracking a lot of different student…
Empowering the Nonconsumers
My experience with Education Innovation Fellowship began with readings directly from or steeped in the language of the private sector, most notably The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. I am naturally suspicious of conflating of business and education; I fundamentally believe that a school cannot be run like a business. But as I read about hybrids and—be still, my Silicon Valley-watching…
Test Pilot
As Education Innovation Fellows, we will soon be implementing pilots in our classrooms to try to solve specific problems we’ve encountered. But I feel like I need to test pilot my test pilot, so that when I test my pilot, I’m sure my pilot will not crash. YES, you read that correctly.
Let’s face it, innovation is a messy process. Basically, as you attempt to solve a problem in a new,…
The Uphill Battle of Innovation
Landing at Dulles International Airport from California two weeks ago was a jarring return to winter; a runway full of snow after a week of 75 degrees and sunny is quite the adjustment. But my return has presented an even larger challenge for me: being innovative in a model that doesn’t preach innovation. Much like my colleague Desiree Smith wrote, I am also searching for my way to spread…
How to Avoid Post-REVIVAL Stress Disorder (PRSD)
I’m a PK (Pastor’s Kid), so I know a spiritual revival when I see one. On this California trip, we have not entered any makeshift churches out of white tents, but in equally inspiring, open, and creative spaces, we have been challenged to respond to a call of action to join a growing movement in our educational system.
I started to realize that the 22 of us Fellows were beginning to convert…
Final Reflections on a Transformative Year: 5 Characteristics of an Innovative Educator
These past twelve months in the Education Innovation Fellowship have been a transformative journey, stirring in me a desire to rethink not only our centuries-old understanding of school and classroom design, but also what it means to be a truly innovative educator.
My journey culminated on Saturday at the second annual Education Innovation Summit here in D.C.—a daylong conference…
The Plight of the First-Generation Scholar: Can personalized learning better prepare students who are unfamiliar with the college experience?
“First-generation” is a term that generates great pride within many college graduates who hold the title. This pride stems from recognizing the tenacity you had to develop in order to navigate a path unfamiliar to many, if not all, of your family and friends. It stems from understanding how you have to create and protect the vision of success you hold onto, despite the misconceptions society…
The Wild Wild West: My California Gold Rush Experience
Earlier this year, as a member of CityBridge Foundation’s 2014 Education Innovation Fellowship, I was afforded the opportunity to visit a number of schools in California and Detroit that are implementing different models of personalized and blended learning. All of the schools had important takeaways, but two of them—Rocketship and Summit Denali—stood out because of their instructional…