“Human Capital Development – never stops”

Our Human Capital Development (HCD) initiative is the centerpiece of our Race to the Top plan as well as integral to the School Improvement Grants at Anson High School and Morven Elementary.  The premise underpinning the commitment to developing human capital is found in the third requisite essential for connecting the dots in our efforts to transform our school system - capacity.

The first requisite (dissatisfaction) and the second (vision) without capacity cannot produce the desired or expected results.  Underpinning capacity are three critical steps.  The first step is the identification of the necessary skills, knowledge, and practices to bring about the desired or expected results.  The second step is identifying the current level of skill, knowledge, and application of practices of staff to bring about the desired or expected results.  The third and final step is a gap analysis to ascertain the distance between the current and desired skill and knowledge sets.

In our gap analysis we found that awareness, understanding and application of standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices varied significantly within grade levels, content areas, schools and the school system.  Rather than participating in the practice of condemnation, blame, or personal attacks, we made a very conscious decision to engage in capacity building.

We believed that our performance results including both student and staff were not a product of uncaring, unmotivated, or uncommitted individuals.  We concluded that until such time that each staff had access and opportunity to authentic, effective, and evidenced-based training and learning we could not accept the oft used conclusions, judgments, or education bashing common to many communities.

For our administration to support, mentor, model, and authentically assess effective instruction we needed to focus on their individual and collective skills and knowledge in instructional leadership.  We are now beginning our third year in working with Atlantic Research Partners in training not only administration but also now whole schools in Power of Teaching.

To ensure authentic integration of digital tools we needed to focus primarily on classroom teachers but have also included building administration for capacity to support teachers.  Our strategic partnership with Discovery Education, A+ Educators, and Apple to name just three is critical to instructional capacity building.

Creating coherence as well as a deep understanding of standards, curriculum, instruction, and assessment integration and alignment has been the work of Total Instructional Alignment.  North Carolina’s own, Lisa Carter has been instrumental in working with classroom teachers, administration, and teacher leaders to build capacity in the alignment process.

Capacity building in the application, utility, and import of summative and formative assessments is created through the work found in Thinkgate, EVAAS, and soon Milepost by our new partner, Silverback Learning.   There will also be more work ahead to build staff capacity to use the state’s new Instructional Improvement System.

Specifically to address student learning achievement deficits capacity building in technology based supplemental programming was needed – especially in the area of literacy. 

The “eradicate illiteracy” initiative is steeped in building capacity of staff’s awareness, understanding, and application of programs such as Teachtown, Headsprout, Reading 3D, Fast ForWord, Reading Assistant, and our newest program Kurzweil as well as non-technology based Learning Together. Capacity building in the area of mathematics required introducing ClassWorks as well as continuing in Math Together – Get Ready for Algebra. Each of these programs is predicated on knowing how these compliment, augment, and support classroom based instruction to build, reinforce, or enrich necessary learning skills, knowledge or experience in our learners.

But when is the best, most effective means to provide capacity building for our staff?  There are generally four formats (1) during the school day requiring “guest teachers” aka substitutes, (2) afterschool, (3) mandatory work days, or (4) summer recess.  For our secondary schools we have implemented Late Start Mondays where staff have the first fruits of time on Monday for their learning and growth before students arrive later in the day. We have created Learning Development Centers (LDC) in four of our schools to provide a different experience for teachers who participate as cohorts of four in one, two, three, or four-day seminars.  This past year we implemented a series of one-week institutes for whole faculty learning.

 Suffice it to say, capacity building was the right strategy at the right time.  As part of Human Capital Development, our students are the benefactors of the learning and growth of our staff now and for years to come.