Cohorts are League learning communities focused on discussing challenges and sharing best practices and resources.
Cohorts are formed and led by members of the League around areas of interests, including but not limited to: topical areas of interest (maker learning, competency-based education, etc.); urbanicity (suburban, urban, rural); and affinity groups (women, leaders of color, etc.).
This cohort explores challenges that affect rural districts, share their best practices, and showcase how they have found creative ways to bring innovations to their schools and communities that fit their geographical context and models. Some topics the cohort discussed are connectivity, transportation, and community engagement.
Learner variability is the new norm in classrooms nationwide. Students are more diverse than ever linguistically, economically, and culturally. This explored how to re-think aspects of the education system to address this diversity of learners, including applying the burgeoning field of learning sciences research to best support each student.
Engaging students is important to motivate and inspire their learning and is vital and necessary for deeper learning. This cohort investigated how districts might engage learners as they introduce new technologies, and share new ideas and best practices for engaging all learners.
If data is important to student learning, how are we getting the right data into the hands of teachers? The purpose of this group is to explore and understand the processes of how data interoperability and the use of data standards can facilitate access to data in a timely manner.
Judging a student’s development based on a single test on a single day can present an inaccurate and shallow picture of student learning. The cohort shared best practices around supplementing summative assessments by developing alternative methods that get to a deeper, better understanding of students work grounded in evidence of learning.