Toni Fonseca, ELA Teacher at Central Academy in the West Ada School District, took on a project to create a student-facing version of the ELA competencies and continua for her students: "In an attempt to better understand the competencies myself, I undertook the endeavor of tearing them apart and then putting them back together. [...]
It is not news that this past spring stay-at-home orders around the country created a spectacular collision between the demands of remote work for parents and at-home learning for our kids. Our Building 21 team was not spared. While our Network directly supports educators with resources for student learning and growth, COVID-19 positioned us [...]
David Sparrow, Director of Behavioral Health, Building 21 Philadelphia Earlier this month, David Sparrow and Building 21's TriChange Model were featured on the Philadelphia Learning Collaborative blog. This final piece captures part III of our TriChange series. This excerpt highlights preliminary outcomes to date and provides recommendations for schools thinking about this approach. While [...]
"If a student knows they’re cared about, then it makes all the difference. Reach the person first, and then you can teach him or her anything." Earlier this month, David Sparrow and Building 21's TriChange Model were featured on the Philadelphia Learning Collaborative blog. The excerpt below captures part II of [...]
We are proud to share our work and learning through our Open Resources. This practice embodies our core value of transparency and supports a community of educators in their search for transformative resources and design inspiration. A few years ago, we created a space on our website to share our Learning What Matters competency [...]
Here at Building 21, we aspire to be innovative in our approach to behavioral health. Over this past year, we have consolidated our efforts in Restorative Practices, Trauma-Informed Care, and Cultural Competency into a model which we call the “TriChange Model”. Our new tripartite model builds on our core design principle - relationships are [...]
What does mastery of an academic skill look like? In education, we are constantly endeavoring to find the best ruler by which to measure student growth towards proficiency in fundamental skills. We believe that the best opportunities for authentically assessing the progress of our students occur when we push them to apply their skills [...]
Earlier this month, Building 21 was featured on the Competency Works blog. Tom Gaffey, Building 21's Chief Instructional Technologist, authored a piece that highlights our Learning What Matters Framework and details a few of our introductory professional development activities. We are honored and excited to share our work on a [...]
As we countdown the days to summer break, school leaders are thinking about summer opportunities for staff professional learning and development. Many of our innovative school peers offer or seek out opportunities to improve their practice and to help teachers further personalize learning for students. Summer feels like a “reset” - a time to [...]
This post originally appeared at GETTINGSMART on July 8, 2018. By Chip Linehan Our current system’s narrow definitions of student success value content knowledge over the skills and mindsets needed for students to thrive in today’s rapidly changing world. On the other hand, next-generation graduation requirements that measure and credit a broader and deeper array [...]
