It is hard to believe this school year is almost half over. It feels as though it is literally flying by.
After next week, we have Thanksgiving week. And then two more weeks after that, we pull out for the holidays and say goodbye to 2022 (we hardly knew ye).
The next stop is part two of our school year in January 2023.
Huh? What? 2023?
Yep, you read it right. The Roaring 20s are roaring on by. And thanks to this newly-past, but now securely post-pandemic time, we are incorporating wholesale changes into This Thing That We Call School.
After the newly-past but now securely post-pandemic (NPBNSPP), everyone was looking forward to going back to normal. But as it turns out, there is no normal to get back to. The NPBNSPP saw to that.
I would feel confident stating that there is no such a thing as normal, and perhaps there never was. But to our credit as an education community, we were able to very adeptly incorporate years and even decades worth of needed changes into education, all in the name of the NPBNSPP. And more specifically, we were able to break the mindset of That’s the Way We Have Always Done It (TTWWHADI), as if that were a justification for anything. And, thankfully, we have even managed to stop Placing Ourselves First While Pretending to Put the Student First (POFWPPSF). And that was a big one for us to overcome.
So, how do these very positive changes affect This Thing That We Call School (TTTWCS)? What are we seeing out there?
Primarily, the NBPNSPP has forever changed the way that we view time and space in the classroom. If you’d like to learn more, the Learning Counsel is doing some very impressive work with their Hybrid Logistics Project and their Learning Centers.
Equity and relevancy through school or district transformation to flexible personalized paths
Work encompassed in the scope of the Hybrid Logistics Project is based on findings published in the Learning Counsel’s Becoming Expo Learning Special Report, Digital Learning Reference Guide, input from educators nationwide, and additional relevant national research data.
Because of the critically transformative nature of this research, the Learning Counsel is inviting powerful educational systems that exemplify learner-centered, future-focused, effective practices to join a national cohort of innovative districts to implement a hybrid logistics model for experiential and personalized learning, to become Hybrid Logistics Learning Centers (HLLCs).
These Learning Centers work in cohorts of school districts, are engaged in a multi-year transformation, and are committed to building personalized learning structures and systems that leverage a hybrid logistics interchange to amplify the human effect on teaching and learning.
Your Participating school system will work along a continuum of development toward experiential and personalized learning, which will be made more effective through a hybrid logistics interchange and accelerated with support of The Learning Counsel and its partners.
Strategy over tactics.
Instead of piecemeal tactics addressing parts of learning operations or administration on top of the traditional by-grade student groups and individual classrooms, a HLLC transitions to new structures and implements a hybrid logistics model. This requires an approach that encompasses every part of the organization in cohesive strategy with aligned sub-parts for programmatic tactics.
Becoming a HLLC
Just as all learners are individual, every Hybrid Logistics Learning Center is unique, based on the unique needs of culture and community. While each HLLC will design its own path forward to a personalized learning environment, there are several consistencies that each will experience to ensure that conditions are optimized for innovation and sustainable growth. Parallel systems between HL cohort districts and HL sites within districts help maximize learning and build cohesion across and within participating cohort systems.
So, what’s in the HLLC box?
The Hybrid Logistics Project is built around each Learning Center's readiness and where they are along the continuum of their own transformation and includes technical and adaptive supports for implementation. This means that each cohort member’s plan forward will be personalized to their needs, while maintaining cohesion with the overall direction of the cohort. Parallel structures for learning across the cohort and within cohort school districts ensure that implementation is cohesive throughout the project.
Participating school systems can expect to be supported in six critical areas:
- Learner-Centric Vision for the Future
- Research-driven Foundations for Transformational Leadership
- Process and Technology Model Architecture
- Structures for Learning, Professional Development
- Practical Implementation Scaling
- Community Alignment
Cohort members, identified as Hybrid Logistics Learning Centers, engage in a three-year developmental progression that meets them where they are and moves them forward to a sustainable structure designed for experiential and personalized learning.
How to get involved
There is a lot to love about the Hybrid Logistics project. In particular, the project provides some very strong answers to both the staffing shortages and student attrition we are seeing not only as a result of NBPNSPP, but as challenges that were building and would have presented even if there were no pandemic. It is something that every district should be aware of, and is a great addition to TTTWCS. To get the all the details about the HLLC, email Chris McMurray at: ChrisM@learningcounsel.com.
About the author (ATA)
Charles Sosnik is an education journalist and editor and serves as Editor in Chief at the Learning Counsel. An EP3 Education Fellow, he uses his deep roots in the education community to add context to the education narrative. Charles is a frequent writer and columnist for some of the most influential media in education, including the Learning Counsel, EdNews Daily, EdTech Digest, and ET Magazine. Unabashedly Southern, Charles likes to say he is an editor by trade and Southern by the Grace of God.
