Building a Shared Understanding of our Vision – Leading #YourSalisbury !

Professional learning is critical to our success in public education. As teachers and leaders, we are all learners! During the 2017-18 school year, Lynn Fuini-Hetten, assistant superintendent, along with Superintendent Randy Ziegenfuss, Ed.D. and Ross Cooper, supervisor of instructional practice, developed a district-wide Leading #YourSalisbury cohort which was comprised of four building leadership teams. The building leadership teams learned about our new vision located at salisburysd.us/a_new_vision.

The team will meet as a full cohort three times (October, January and May) in order to meet these three goals:

• To build a shared understanding of the STSD Profile of a Graduate (the knowledge, skills, and dispositions we want our learners to have when they graduate)
• To build a shared understanding of the STSD Learning Beliefs
• To build a shared understanding of the 4Cs.

As the team members developed a stronger understanding of the vision, they also created action plans for building capacity in their respective buildings. In addition to whole group meetings, we will meet with individual building teams for 3 half-days in their respective buildings. The purpose of these building-level sessions is to support teams as they make connections to their context and prioritize learning for their colleagues. Individual building principals developed agendas and the three of us supported their work. It is not enough to create and implement a vision. We have to ensure we build capacity to ensure the ideas permeate our school culture.