Intentional Partnerships
Why do we choose to work with cohorts of teachers?
The CREATE Lab is nothing if not intentional when partnering with another group or organization. As we embarked on Fluency, we first evaluated our strengths. As a lab, we conduct research, do community outreach, develop technology, and more. At times, these realms of work overlap. Fluency is one of those cases. We have outreach team members, research associates, and programmers all collaborating together. We had a vision where one day students can become technologically fluent, using that technology to build cases and become advocates for themselves and others. Fluency began with a collaborative exploration of inquiry, voice, and technology concepts between the CREATE Lab and a cohort of twelve teachers, representing 9 school districts, from Greater Pittsburgh. This partnership allowed us to balance practitioner expertise with CREATE Lab vision. Teachers participated in a summer residency at CMU, in addition to site visits and regular meetings during the school year. CREATE Lab members of the Fluency team periodically visited the teachers in their schools to engage in reflection with teachers on the Fluency based learning observed in their classrooms. All work was guided by our eight values of Equity, Choice, Transparency, Numbers and Narratives, Inquiry Based, Relationships, Power, and Safety and the processes of Inquiry, Case Making, and Advocacy.
Learnings from this exploration year of Fluency were used to refine and build a pilot plan for Fluency in the 2017-2018 school year. For this pilot plan, CREATE Lab will be partnering with one elementary school, in addition to continuing to support the thinking and teaching of the original cohort of teachers.
The CREATE Lab is nothing if not intentional when partnering with another group or organization. As we embarked on Fluency, we first evaluated our strengths. As a lab, we conduct research, do community outreach, develop technology, and more. At times, these realms of work overlap. Fluency is one of those cases. We have outreach team members, research associates, and programmers all collaborating together. We had a vision where one day students can become technologically fluent, using that technology to build cases and become advocates for themselves and others. Fluency began with a collaborative exploration of inquiry, voice, and technology concepts between the CREATE Lab and a cohort of twelve teachers, representing 9 school districts, from Greater Pittsburgh. This partnership allowed us to balance practitioner expertise with CREATE Lab vision. Teachers participated in a summer residency at CMU, in addition to site visits and regular meetings during the school year. CREATE Lab members of the Fluency team periodically visited the teachers in their schools to engage in reflection with teachers on the Fluency based learning observed in their classrooms. All work was guided by our eight values of Equity, Choice, Transparency, Numbers and Narratives, Inquiry Based, Relationships, Power, and Safety and the processes of Inquiry, Case Making, and Advocacy.
Learnings from this exploration year of Fluency were used to refine and build a pilot plan for Fluency in the 2017-2018 school year. For this pilot plan, CREATE Lab will be partnering with one elementary school, in addition to continuing to support the thinking and teaching of the original cohort of teachers.
