At The Learning Accelerator, we believe that people are the most important part of the blended learning equation. That’s why we’ve made human capital a key focus, helping to define the competencies great blended teachers need and investing in organizations to help support them as they build those competencies.
We also believe that equally important to building the capacity of educators is creating essential human capital supports to help people as they implement blended learning. As we redesign schools, changing the way teachers work with students and each other, we need to redesign the bigger context in which people work – that is, the central systems and policies school districts have to identify, select, train, develop, evaluate, retain, and promote talent.
There aren’t many resources for leaders as they think about doing this. So, as we announced a few weeks ago at SXSWedu, we’ll be working with TNTP to tackle exactly this challenge.
TNTP (founded in 1997 as “The New Teacher Project”) is a national leader in developing policies and systems for making sure that there are outstanding teachers in every classroom in America. Like us, they know doing this is more than just about how to identify great talent; it’s about creating terrific systems and policies around talent to help it grow, develop, and be sustained.
It’s because of TNTP’s focus on teaching excellence and the organization’s long tenure and deep experience working alongside hundreds of school systems that we felt like they were the perfect partner to dig in with us in our quest to help districts figure out how to do this within the context of blended and personalized learning.
Over the next six months, we’ll be working with the TNTP team as they talk to districts and schools to learn more about the challenge and develop some actionable guidance and ideas for districts making the switch to blended learning. They’ll be providing four categories of guidance:
TNTP will develop and release this thinking over the course of this spring and summer. We’ll be looking forward to sharing it with everyone as broadly as possible, getting the ideas directly into the hands of the people who need it most: leaders on the ground.
What human capital systems do you think are most important for support teachers and leaders as they design and implement blended learning models? Have any ideas for us? Let us know by tweeting us @bethrabbitt and @learningaccel!
