FAQ Sheet

The four (4) professional development Institute meetings and additional webinars, virtual and site visit coaching are reasonably priced at $2500 for each participating team. School divisions also are responsible only for travel and/or lodging expenses if any are incurred.

We hope we will have room for every team that wishes to participate. Teams will be notified by July 14 of acceptance.  If more than 35 Lead Innovation Teams apply, we will use the following criteria to make decisions about acceptance of teams for the second cohort to ensure diversity and representation of all regions of Virginia:

• Geographic Location (rural, urban, suburban)
• Superintendents’ Region (1-8)
• Size of the Division (small, medium, large)
• Demographics of the Division
• Composition of the Lead Innovation Team (stakeholder representation)
• Priorities/strategies clearly focused on Profile of a Virginia Graduate implementation (e.g., work-based experiences, internships, interdisciplinary curriculum, innovative instructional practices, performance assessment, portfolios, etc.) that support deeper learning, engagement, and equity.

• Individual division teams must include at least four but no more than seven regular members.
• Partnered divisions will need to form one collaborative team of no more than four to seven regular members total.
• It is important to have a team leader from a central office who is at an assistant superintendent or director level. The team leader serves as a point person for communication with VaLIN and the superintendent about the ongoing network focus. The team leader also leads team strategy and champions local innovation work at the division level.
• Team leaders participate in five(5) virtual one-hour sessions to debrief and assist in planning next steps for network activities.

No. While a team may focus on transformational change efforts at a specific level such as high school, developing the competencies associated with the Profile of a Virginia Graduate must start long before a student reaches high school.

Teams will target local priorities that purposefully advance strategies, best practices, and structural changes essential to student attainment of outcomes associated with the Profile of a Virginia Graduate. This work may impact any and all levels of schools in a community, not just high schools.

Any Virginia division may apply individually or in collaboration with up to two more divisions.

Advanced Learning Partnerships (ALP) is led by former Virginia Beach teacher educator Amos Fodchuk, who understands that the role of coaches is to support the needs of the Lead Innovation Team. ALP staff have worked on projects within Virginia divisions over the past decade as well as with districts and state departments of education across the United States and in Canadian Provinces. Their job is to provide customized resource support and consultation to cohort members as well as team coaching.

Amos Fodchuk, the CEO of Advanced Learning Partnerships (ALP), was a high school educator who began teaching professional development workshops while an English teacher in Virginia Beach Public Schools. He has been a Fulbright Scholar to the People’s Republic of China and earned National Board Certification in 2006.  Amos understands that change happens locally and must be community driven and supported. The ALP educator team believes that adult learning experiences should actively engage and personalize learning for participants just as we expect for our K-12 learners.

Together the ALP coaching team in consultation is planning the curriculum outline for the network but will seek input as the process occurs to evolve the work based upon feedback from prior Lead Innovation Team participants. They believe customization and personalization will be key to the successful implementation of work by the Lead Innovation Teams.

The facilitators will build both formal and informal needs assessment time into sessions so that team members can share local priorities, focus areas, challenges, and opportunities as well as give feedback on what they need from the Network curriculum and facilitators to ensure meaningful time for team members and collaborative teams to work together. This information will be used to inform and differentiate teamwork activity during sessions as well as through the reflective coaching model used by the ALP Team.

Each team will set priorities based upon the Profile of a Virginia Graduate expectations.

Realizing there are no one-size-fits-all solutions, the network teams will be responsible for:

• Identifying and Expanding local access to equitable learning experiences and increased student agency.al priorities related to the Profile outcomes. Some examples include but are not limited to increasing internship and other work-based experiences, creating more interdisciplinary coursework, implementing specific best practices that will increase active engagement of all learners, making structural changes that increase equity and access, or improving local professional development opportunities and experiences.
• Specific actions will reflect the 5 themes of the What School Could Be Innovation Playlist:
  • Mobilizing community to work collaboratively toward a shared goal.
  • Expanding access to equitable learning experiences and increased student agency.
  • Unlocking real-world challenges that uplift the 5 C's.
  • Designing and scoring authentic assessment that purposefully capture higher-order thinking.
  • Nurturing a culture of caring and connectedness to bolster social-emotional competencies.
  • Local Option priority
• Implementing local priority actions over the next two years that lead to increased innovation in local school communities in support of the Profile outcomes. This will be documented through artifacts that will be available to other divisions to support peer-to-peer networking across the state.
• Documenting changes essential to local transformation of best practices, strategies, structures, and resources that will deepen learning, expand equity, and increase learner engagement.
• Determining and using assessments and evaluation metrics to assess local growth in accomplishing the expectations outlined in bullets above.