Winter Institute 2022

The School District of Waukesha strives to provide all professional staff with meaningful, engaging, and purposeful professional development opportunities that align to our district goals and priorities. An annual professional development event hosted by the district is the Waukesha One Conference which has evolved into the Winter Institute. This year’s Winter Institute is scheduled for Monday, January 17, 2022. The design of the Winter Institute has shifted to allow time to focus on content area/role-specific professional learning, curriculum development, and intentional instructional planning across our system. 

The Winter Institute will be hosted at two school sites which is a change from years past. The host sites are Waukesha North High School for all secondary teachers (6-12) and Waukesha West High School for all elementary teachers (K-5), special education teachers (K-12) and student services staff. A detailed schedule for the day will be available in early January as well as the SCHED for registering for your assigned sessions. 

Another significant shift for this year’s Winter Institute is the professional learning will only be half of the day and the other half will be instructional planning and staff work time. There are a few exceptions for some professional staff that are engaging in curriculum writing and/or other pre-planned role-specific training such as the NVCI training. The sessions will run 8-11:30 and 12:30-4:00 with a one hour lunch break in between. There will be space available for work time at the host sites or staff can work in their own school buildings. Professional staff are not allowed to work from home on this day. 

Please keep an eye out for an email the week following winter break with additional event details and registration information. Have a relaxing and wonderful winter break! Thank you for all that you do to make a difference in the lives of the students you serve each and every day! 

Leveraging the Coherence Progression as Transformation GPS

The Coherence Progression is a tool for analyzing the current level of coherence for each component of the coherence framework. This comes from Michael Fullan's book titled: Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts, and Systems. 

play.google.com

Your SAIL team should be using this progression to help identify your strengths and gaps as you identify your selected strategies for improvement during your next 100 day action planning cycle. What components are you celebrating? What components is your team focusing on as you move from emerging to accelerating to mastering?

This comprehensive GPS will enable you and your school to become much more effective and much more likely to become more sustainable with your area of focus. Achieving coherence in a school and a district our size takes a long time and requires constant attention. SAIL teams and all of us must do our part to coalesce our energies into the things that will garner the greatest impact for our students.

Make a difference by being a coherence maker! This will be a true gift for yourself, your colleagues, and our students.