Langley's Strategic Plan

FEATURE STORY:

Langley’s Strategic Plan: Where We Stand, Where We’re Going In fall 2015, Langley launched our most recent strategic plan which brought with it many exciting and important enhancements to our program. As we seek to maintain and advance our position as the regional leader in preschool through eighth grade education, we look to our strategic plan for continued guidance, inspiration, and milestones.

The Langley School’s Arc of Development recognizes that the steepest part of a child’s development comes early, and that while every child’s path is unique, there are predictable cognitive, emotional, and social milestones.

Through this ongoing process, we have committed to placing Langley’s Arc of Development – our school’s singular expertise in determining and meeting the appropriate developmental needs of specific age groups – at the center of everything we do. That’s why the components of the strategic plan reflect children’s specific developmental stages, from the playful, inquisitive early childhood years to the complex, yet invigorating, challenges of early adolescence. Below is an overview of the progress we’ve made in the past year as well as a preview of what’s ahead.

PILLAR ONE:

Ensuring Academic Excellence Ensuring that all Langley students achieve their highest potential for learning and growth means constantly working to perfect the art and science of teaching. To keep our dedicated, exceptionally skilled teachers at the forefront of their profession, we continually evaluate, improve, and introduce methods and practices to help teachers fully prepare students for high school, college, and beyond.

Langley’s inquiry-based curriculum harnesses students’ own interests and talents to foster critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and creativity. Rather than rote memorization and finding a single, “right” answer, inquiry-based learning provides students with a range of strategies to answer essential questions and present evidence-based opinions, ensuring deep understanding and mastery. The program emphasizes hands-on experiences that allow students to test out possibilities, overcome and grow from failures, and reflect on not only what they have learned, but how.

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WINTER 2017

Pillar One includes five key strategies: 1. Furthering our systematic faculty professional development. To align with our teaching philosophy, the most recent professional development at Langley has intentionally focused on furthering inquiry-based instruction in the classroom and applying this philosophy to unit design.

Along with attending national conferences, this past year our teachers benefited from 30 hours of professional development on our campus. For example, all Langley faculty spent a day with nationally renowned inquiry-based learning expert Diana Laufenberg, who addressed the big ideas of process, student voice and choice, and answering questions with questions. Following such trainings, teachers applied their learning to their grade during grade-level and department meetings, focusing on real-life examples.

Grade-level team meetings explored various topics about differentiation, unit design, and inquiry.

2. Adopting a forward-thinking teacher feedback and coaching model. After evaluating several different approaches, Langley has adopted the Marshall Observation Method which involves frequent, short visits into a teacher’s classroom to provide timely and meaningful feedback that teachers can immediately incorporate into their lessons.

Following a pilot period this past year, Langley’s academic leaders implemented this method in fall 2016, with the goal of visiting each classroom at least eight times during the school year. Observers will look for specific attributes that support our developmentally calibrated, inquiry-based learning philosophy.

Following each classroom visit, the teacher and academic leader reflect on the areas of strength and growth of the lesson, focusing on recommendations for improvement.

This discussion continues throughout the year. At the middle and end of the year, the academic leader and teacher have a more formal conversation about best instructional practices.

3. Reviewing curriculum and textbooks. To ensure that our students and teachers have access to the most relevant content and materials, every core academic discipline at Langley will undergo a review every three to four years.

Task forces have already evaluated our math, literacy, and world languages programs. Reviewers examined the programs against best practice and top content standards, and conducted reviews of textbooks along with scope and sequence. They also benchmarked our students against national averages.

These reviews revealed that Langley students and programs perform at high levels in all categories. But like our students, we constantly strive to do even better. We will continue to make enhancements and adjustments and communicate with parents about changes as they unfold.

Details on the first review round can be found in Dr. Elinor Scully’s May 2016 State of the School presentation, available on Langley’s YouTube channel.

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4. Assessing and adjusting daily schedules.

Although we don’t always think of time as a factor in academic success, it actually plays a vital role. This year, Langley worked with ISM, a leader in independent school management, to review our schedule, after-school activities, and homework load. Our consultants proposed ways to better allocate time for productive learning by creating a more consistent pace to the day. This new schedule design reflects student, parent, and faculty feedback, industry best practices, and a growing body of research on cognitive brain patterns and impacts.

Among other adjustments, we intend to reduce the number of transitions per day, resulting in longer periods for experiential, inquiry-based learning and better student engagement. Additionally, we plan to increase recess and break times for students, provide a more consistent rhythm to the day, and create consistent lunch times for each grade level. These and other changes will begin during the 2017-2018 school year. More details will be coming soon – and we think our whole community will be very pleased.

5. Refining our teacher hiring model to align with Langley’s Arc of Development. Guided by our deep respect for early childhood, Langley has refined our hiring process to attract and retain top teachers with particular expertise in the arc. To accomplish this, we’ve expanded our scope for teacher recruitment, revised our interview questions to evaluate candidates for a growth mindset, and incorporated more authentic performance-based activities for candidates. As we know, teachers are critical to ensuring academic excellence.

Our faculty members have embraced these changes, and we’ve already seen a direct impact on our students. Learn more about their perspectives on page 6.

PILLAR TWO:

Articulating Our Social-Emotional Expertise At Langley, our close attention to students’ social and emotional growth leads to stronger academic performance.

Our students and community have long been known for their kindness, empathy, and sincere interest in others. But today’s environment makes even more social and emotional demands on young people. Instantaneous access to information through technology and social media; increased requirements for collaboration and communication skills in education and in the workplace; and growing complexities around gender, diversity, and globalism – all require that we consciously prepare our students to navigate and embrace constant change. With that in mind, we are introducing a social-emotional program connected to Langley’s Arc of Development. The program covers three domains: 1. Emotional intelligence – the ability to identify, regulate, and understand the emotions we experience and how those emotions affect our relationships with others; to develop empathy and to understand how our actions affect others; and to take responsibility for these powerful interpersonal dynamics.

2. Cultural competence – the ability to appreciate how identity – in both visible and non-visible aspects, including gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality, socio-economic status, and ability – shapes how we feel about ourselves and others in the world, and to understand how bias affects those around us.

3. Health and wellness – the ability to understand and respect how our physical, emotional, and psychological being changes and evolves as we grow up, and to develop age-appropriate knowledge of anatomy, puberty, social dynamics, and responsible decision-making.

Tracking Our Progress Spring 2015

• Finished work on articulating our signature strengths • Set and communicated direction of our strategic plan

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WINTER 2017

Fall 2015

• Refreshed all materials to reflect our signature strengths • Established task forces to focus on parts of our strategic plan • Defined goals and timelines for each task force

Spring 2016

• Completed evaluation of math, literacy, and world languages curriculum • Piloted new teacher feedback model • Began professional development on inquiry-based learning • Communicated comprehensive social-emotional learning program

PILLAR THREE:

Investing in Sustainability We view this pillar as especially crucial in shaping and sustaining The Langley School, both today and in the future. Running a premier school like ours is expensive and complex, so Langley has commissioned external demographic research to fully analyze the market to guide our priorities and investments.

In the first year, we have started providing professional development to our faculty and staff in all three domains.

These trainings will help increase knowledge and provide a common language for social-emotional topics, allowing us to lead productive conversations with students at appropriate times.

On the student side, we will begin with targeted work in our seventh grade. We have introduced a seminar that meets regularly during the trimester on the overall topic of cultural competence, with specific topics chosen according to student interest. In life skills, students will tackle health and wellness subjects from drug and alcohol awareness to CPR training. On the subject of emotional intelligence, they will reflect upon their own learning styles and introversion/ extroversion, among other issues, and learn strategies to respond to them. Based on student, parent, and teacher feedback, we will expand this program to other grades.

Alongside this work, we are conducting extensive parent education. Dr. Scully kicked off our PALS speaker series on the topic in October. We will host speakers throughout the year on the topics of developing executive functioning skills, having comfortable and age-appropriate conversations about sexuality, and helping kids thrive and survive in a digital world.

Fall 2016

• Began new teacher feedback model school-wide • Consultant began schedule evaluation • Began formal professional development on social-emotional learning • Implemented new social-emotional seminar in seventh grade • Launched parent education on social-emotional learning

Spring 2017

Several task forces led by members of our Board of Trustees are currently evaluating and addressing critical and stimulating topics around the next capital campaign and philanthropy at Langley. The goal is to grow and steward Langley’s resources responsibly and plan for the future, while ensuring Langley remains an educational leader in our area.

You will hear a lot more on this pillar during the coming months, especially as we prepare for Langley’s 75th anniversary next school year.

We are thrilled by all the progress we’ve made in such a short time. We’re grateful to the many people supporting the strategic plan process, and proud of where our beloved school is headed. Best of all, we’ve seen for ourselves what these processes and commitments have already done for our teachers and students as they energetically investigate new ways to learn together. And it’s clear: our students can’t wait to come to school every day and find out what’s next.

• Communicate proposed changes to our schedule • Complete review of social studies curriculum • Implement changes to hiring practices • Propose plans and targets for sustainability focus areas

Fall 2017

• Implement revised schedule • Reflect on social-emotional learning program so far and communicate next steps • Langley’s 75th anniversary celebrations begin, alongside initiation of sustainability work

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