ExploreLearning Project Mangers work to ensure that the teachers and administrators in a school district receive the support they need for success with Gizmos and Reflex. ExploreLearning Project Managers collaborate with districts to plan professional development delivery, and give ongoing support to integrate Gizmos and Reflex into the classrooms. ExploreLearning has full-time project managers in districts across the country and in Canada.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools
Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the fourth largest school district in the country. The ExploreLearning Gizmos implementation covers a total of 331 schools with over 4,765 teacher users and over 200,000 student users. This district has two ExploreLearning project managers, Mario Junco and Illka Slater, and will add a third in 2015-2016 dedicated to supporting ExploreLearning Reflex.
Miami-Dade started using Gizmos in 2005, and as usage increased they added a Project Manager to help with that expansion. “We’ve been using Gizmos for about ten years now,” says Sylvia Diaz, Assistant Superintendent. “We thought that the simulations were so cool. We actually started with a smaller group of schools and then expanded the project to all of our schools. That relationship just grew over the years.” Later Miami-Dade added a second Project Manager to focus on mathematics.
Illka Slater has math secondary credentials and supports math grades 6-12, while Mario Junco, who has secondary science credentials, supports science grades 6-12 (the two collaboratively support both subjects in grades 3-5). They also divide the schools up geographically, since Illka lives in the north end of the district and Mario on the south end. Illka and Mario are both knowledgeable and work together to make sure customers have the support they need.
The Project Managers are busy all year long. The job begins in the summer when they plan for the year ahead. They reflect on the goals and objectives outlined in the prior year’s Implementation Plan, developed collaboratively by the project managers and the district’s Math and Science Supervisors. The plan, along with usage data, helps them determine what was successful and what they need to focus on in the coming year. They use data collected at various grade levels on the lowest performing standards in the district, and then help identify Gizmos that could be used to address those standards.
If teachers in a district aren’t using Gizmos, then they’re missing out on the benefits the math and science simulations provide students. Mario and Illka identify high usage and low usage schools, and develop a plan to target the low usage schools to offer on-site support. They call and email school leaders about their services. Next, they use a database of district contacts to offer support to all the schools in the district with an email campaign. This generates a lot of interest and they begin scheduling sessions in schools.
During the school year, their schedules go into high gear. Their goal is be in schools at least 4 times a week. They want to support as many schools as they can while school is in session. They also conduct many district wide PD events. They offer sessions like Introduction to Gizmos, Standards for Mathematical Practice, and Teaching with the 5E Model in Science. They also work to develop sessions specifically for their district.
Illka explains, “This year in our district one of the Superintendent’s initiatives is the Digital Convergence Initiative. Therefore, we developed a professional development opportunity entitled ‘Gizmos: Digital Convergence in Math and Science.’ Likewise, teachers are in need of additional resources to prepare students for their new state assessment. We developed a professional development for teachers entitled, ‘Gizmos: Preparing Students for FSA using Math Task.’ We’re always striving to go the extra mile to stay relevant and highly supportive of our implementations needs.”
Michelle White, the Executive Director for Mathematics in Miami-Dade, says that Illka pulled “the specifications for our assessments and various samples and the formats of the questions” for Miami-Dade. “She created a PowerPoint for us to use that matches the actual Gizmos and that model of the question to show the use of Gizmos. When you look at the question from the FSA Portal, the sample and specification questions, and you look at the Gizmos, it’s almost picture perfect in terms of how it’s going to be assessed. It shows how Gizmos is bridging the gap on those technology enhanced items and to show that it is relevant and to give that student the practice of how it will be assessed within the classroom.”
Illka also works to collaborate with the district math team to embed Gizmos in as many initiatives as possible, and align Gizmos to the pacing guide. Michelle White adds, “We had to go through and to change basically our entire curriculum. We put topics in our pacing guides for each grade band, pacing guide, and anything that relates to that topic and that standard is included in the individual topic pacing guide. We looked at the concepts that are being taught within that standard and included Gizmos there so it’s readily accessible to teachers to increase the usage of those resources and they do not have to go and search the entire site for the full list of Gizmos.”
In the third phase, school is back in session. Every day includes emails, phone calls, workshops, coaching, meetings, curriculum alignments, lesson prep, travel, social media, conferences, scheduling, and cups of coffee. But a typical day in the life of a project manager can be one of three types of days for her: a Modeling day, a PD day or an Office day.
A Typical Modeling Day
“Our Project Manager offers the services of the modeling and a lot of the teachers have taken her up on that one, to go through and to see how Gizmos can be a part of the critical thinking and inquiry-based learning within the classroom,” says Michelle White.
Illka says that when a modeling session is requested, “I send a form for the school-based leader to fill out indicating the teacher, room number, content they are working on, and the interval of time available for support. Once I receive this information, I am ready to plan my day of support at the various schools.”
With coffee in hand, Illka allows plenty of time for traffic to travel to the school where she’ll be modeling a lesson. She schedules 45 minutes to 1 hour with each teacher. After checking in, she heads to her first classroom to greet the teacher and students. “On-site support is our opportunity to model for teachers, in their own classrooms, with their students utilizing a relevant Gizmo based on what they are currently teaching, whenever possible.” Right when she arrives, she helps the teacher log into explorelearning.com on her iPad. She also helps the teacher add math and/or science Gizmos to her class, and discusses what resources are available. If the students have tablets, she helps the teacher enroll her students in the class as well.
When everything is set up, Illka models a Gizmo lesson for a relevant topic for the teacher using the whole group approach with the class. If students have tablets, she engages them in inquiry using the Gizmo. Afterwards, she shares the resources and Lesson Materials with the teacher. And then it’s on to the next classroom.
During lunch, she makes sure she has enough time to go out and get something to eat. While she’s out, she also checks her email to see if any schools have requested PD or if she’s received other requests from teachers, like password help. After lunch, she returns to the school to finish working with teachers. When she finishes for the day, she tries to schedule time to touch base with the math coach, assistant principal or principal who arranged for her to come to share what she covered with the teachers. She then returns home to finish answering her emails and to fill out a report for her team at ExploreLearning about the sessions that day.
A Typical Professional Development (PD) Day
The preparation for professional development workshops starts several days before for Illka. She preps for the workshop by reviewing the PowerPoints and scripts, and gathering the necessary materials (flip chart, manipulatives and/or giveaways). The night before she reviews the roster supplied by the district. In the morning, she heads to the PD site and welcomes the morning group. After the workshop, she goes to lunch (and catches up on emails and phone calls) and then returns in the afternoon to greet the participants in the afternoon session.
When she returns home, she reports back to ExploreLearning on the number of participants and what was covered in the workshop. This information is also shared with the district.
A Typical Office Day
Friday is her designated office day. Illka has a regular meeting with the other members of the ExploreLearning PD team where they share insights and resources from their districts. She also uses the day to develop new presentations, prep for conferences, work on embedding Gizmos in pacing guides, schedule schools and update her calendar. She also completes any reports that are left over from the week.
Once a month either Illka or Mario pull reports on Gizmos usage for individual schools. They then share the results with administrators so they’re aware of teacher and student usage.
Behind the Scenes
The strengths Illka brings to the classroom are her knowledge of both the subject matter and the Gizmos library. She also knows the district well, and has great relationships with the administrators. She makes sure to stay on top of District initiatives and the data.
Before becoming a Project Manager at ExploreLearning, Illka received a B.A. in Marketing, a Masters in Math Education, a Masters in Information Technology, and a Math Specialist Degree. She also worked as a Teacher, Curriculum Support Specialist and Math Director.
Miami-Dade Assistant Superintendent Sylvia Diaz adds, “We’re a really large school district, so it’s very tough to roll out new products here, to get the word out, and to make sure that teachers know how to use them. We feel that it’s important to have personnel that are local, that are in place, and that are available to support schools and teachers in all sorts of different ways. That’s a key piece for us. We don’t like to license new products without having that type of project management on board here locally. The services we’ve received from ExploreLearning have just been outstanding.”