Most successful workplaces have a mission or set of guiding principles that create a company culture where everyone is focused on the end-results.
For the professional learning community of New Richmond Exempted Village School District, the guiding principles are the four critical questions popularized by author/educator Rick DuFour. Introduced to NREVSD by Superintendent Tracey Miller in 2019, the four critical questions are bringing a simple but important clarity to the district’s instructional mission by providing students with a “comprehensive and consistent New Richmond educational experience.”
The four critical questions of a professional learning community are:
What do we want children to know and be able to do?
How will we know when they have mastered it?
What will we do when they haven’t learned the learning objectives?
What will we do when they already know the learning objectives?
To keep them fresh in everyone’s mind, they are now prominently posted in key locations throughout our schools.
The questions are also the inspiration behind the district’s curriculum committee’s work in curriculum writing. Last school year, the committee developed courses of study in each core subject area for grades Pre-K through 12. The Board of Education approved the Courses of Study during its July 2019 meeting. The Board approved graded courses of study can be found at this link:
https://www.nrschools.org/CoursesofStudy.aspx
This school year, the group is once again hard at work and will now be writing curriculum for elective courses in the core disciplines, and Health at the middle school and high school.
Their work is the lynchpin in helping to identify the first of four critical questions - “What do we want children to know and be able to do,” Mr. Miller said. “By employing the four critical questions, we help to ensure that each district educator is engaged in the right work with a collective focus on improved student learning and high achievement.”