MIT Uses Sanborn To Help Future Teachers Understand How To Innovate in the School

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Recently, program directors at the Teaching Systems Laboratory at MIT reached out to Sanborn Regional High School Principal Brian M. Stack to find out if they could include Sanborn in an upcoming free online course called Launching Innovations in Schools. The Teaching Systems Laboratory at MIT's primary goal is to help future teachers thrive in the student-centered, personalized learning classrooms of the future. They see Sanborn as a great case study for their course, and at Sanborn, we are happy to collaborate on this important project with them.

Anyone can register to take this free course by clicking here. This is the course description for the course:

Every great teacher and every great school constantly work towards creating better learning conditions for students. Just as we hope our students become lifelong learners, we as educators should be constantly learning and improving. This education course is for school leaders of all kinds (from teacher-leaders to principals to superintendents) who are launching innovation in schools—starting new efforts to work together to improve teaching and learning.

Over six weeks, you and your classmates will complete a cycle of study, experimentation, and reflection to gain confidence and skills to lead instructional improvement efforts. Through experiential activities and assignments, you will begin working with colleagues to envision the next level of work for your team or organization, to launch a new initiative, and to measure your progress along the way. Based on the work of Justin Reich (Teaching Systems Lab, MIT) and Peter Senge (MIT Sloan), this course will focus on visioning and capacity-building, with an emphasis on collaboration and building partnerships with stakeholders at multiple levels.

At the end of the course, you will have started the process of launching an instructional improvement initiative in your school or learning environment, and you will better understand yourself as a leader and change agent. You will have made connections with peers who are also undertaking this important work.

This course has been funded by Microsoft and is part of the Microsoft K-12 Education Leadership initiative developed to provide resources to K-12 school leaders around the world as they address the unique needs of their schools in a changing educational and technology landscape.

Sanborn Regional High School is a case study in Unit 3 of this course. You can watch the video that MIT produced recently on Sanborn's work for the course:

 

At Sanborn, we believe all students deserve a student-centered and personalized approach to learning, and this is something we strive for with every teacher, for every student, in every course, each and every day. We are honored to be recognized by MIT as a leader in this vision, and we will continue to work hard to make this vision a reality for each and every one of our students now and in the future. 

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