USI Network Schools

Network Goals

Goals for the 2009-2010 School Year

Each year, the USI Network Team identifies specific goals for the Network, based on both our reflections and learnings from the previous year. This year, the USI Network has three broad goals for all schools in the Network. Each goal is stated below, along with the core strategies developed to achieve each goal.

1) To facilitate targeted cross-school learning opportunities

There is great power and potential in schools sharing their work, their challenges, their successes, and their lessons learned. These exchanges and collaborations are all the more powerful when they are designed to target specific areas of practice and need.

CORE STRATEGIES

  • Network-Wide Learning Walks
  • Promising Practices
  • Learning Groups
  • Informal School-to-School Connections

2) To identify and share practices that increase student learning

USI Network schools are positioned to develop and implement innovative approaches to and new designs for schooling. It is critical that we identify those practices that demonstrate an impact on student learning and achievement and share them both within and outside of the Network.

CORE STRATEGIES

  • School-Based Coaching in Instructional Leadership Schools
  • Documentation of Effective Practices in Instructional Leadership Schools
  • Archival of Effective Practices in Web Hub Library

3) To raise the USI Network’s discourse on and assessment of “rigor”

New schools have a dual challenge: accelerating the learning of students who often enter with below-grade-level skills and knowledge, and engaging those same students in academic content at a depth and richness that will truly prepare them for the demands of college. This year, the USI Network seeks to define “rigor” in ways that catalyze our efforts to help students master essential skills and knowledge through the engagement in learning that will develop active, agile, and complex thinkers.

CORE STRATEGIES

  • Share a USI Network framework for “rigor”
  • Use the USI Network Rigor Framework to assess instruction
  • Engage the Network in ongoing reflection on “rigor”

© USI Network, 2009