New Tech Network Aligns with Success Features for Redesigning High Schools

 One of NTN’s four Focus Areas of a Supportive & Inclusive Culture supports school communities in fostering a school-wide culture of belonging, care, community, and growth for adults and students. This type of culture helps ensure that students and teachers alike have ownership over the learning experience and school environment. Many NTN schools share this view and have created Advisory Programs for building relationships between students and teachers. 

When schools focus on a culture that allows for positive developmental relationships there is a shift to regularly engaging in identity affirming practices like Circles of Identity and Storytelling. These two practices are included in the NTN Culture Practices Card Set. 

• Community Circles: A ritual and routine that involves learners collectively connecting, reflecting, and developing social and emotional learning skills. When used routinely, community circles support the cultivation of belonging, care and community within a learning environment.

• Storytelling: Asking learners (and families and community members) to share stories about who they are.

You can find these cards by downloading the NTN Practices Cards Sample Deck here.

Feature 2: Safe, Inclusive School Climate

LPI’s report shares that according to brain research, “When we are in an environment that feels unpredictable or threatening, our brains are flooded with cortisol, which increases stress levels, reduces memory and focus, and impairs concentration. Moreover, this reaction is heightened if we’ve experienced toxic stress over time, which makes it even more difficult for our brains to focus on learning. External stresses are exacerbated when students experience bullying or harassment on campus, creating a fight-or-flight response and further undermining learning. Good schools do not wait for such incidents to occur; they work proactively to create environments where all students feel safe and included.”

 Similarly to Feature 1, NTN’s Focus Areas of a Supportive & Inclusive Culture supports school communities in fostering a school-wide culture of belonging, care, community, and growth for adults and students. When NTN schools focus on the work of a supportive and inclusive culture they cultivate a learning environment that feels safe, inclusive, and emotionally supportive by creating rituals and routines that support connection, relationship building and emotional well-being.

Examples of these supports are in NTN’s Culture Practices Cards:

• Co-Create Community Agreements: Can generate active cooperation, collective sense-making and equitable inclusion of voices. Ensuring each and every student has an opportunity to co-create shared processes for engaging in learning is a key component to equitable learning environments.
• Community Circles: A ritual and routine that involves learners collectively connecting, reflecting, and developing social and emotional learning skills. When used routinely, community circles support the cultivation of belonging, care and community within a learning environment.
• The Incredible 5-Point Scale: a tool used to assist learners in becoming aware of their emotions and helping them advocate for what they need to self-regulate. 

Culture practices like these are required to create the kind of classroom community that is supportive and inclusive for all students.

You can find these cards by downloading the NTN Practices Cards Sample Deck here.

Feature 3: Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Teaching

LPI states that students need to: ”feel valued and seen for who they are. In addition to designing the school for relationships and creating a physically and psychologically safe, inclusive culture, this work involves an explicit commitment to culturally responsive and sustaining teaching, which promotes respect for diversity and creates a context within which students’ experiences can be understood, appreciated, and connected to the curriculum.”

In addition to the focus of a Supportive and Inclusive Culture, NTN’s second Focus Area of Meaningful and Equitable Instruction, centers the instructional approach on authentic, complex thinking and problem-solving. Based on experience, high-quality, relevant PBL is the best way for students to experience deep, contextual, shared learning, as well as, acquire and demonstrate proficiency in college and career ready outcomes. 

Each of the Learner-Centered Practices, aligned to this Focus Area reflects an underlying shift in the way learners and facilitators cultivate their day-to-day instruction.

Shift From Teacher-Centered to Learner-Centered – These practices cultivate a learning environment where communities take ownership of their learning and center the instructional approach on authentic, complex thinking, and problem-solving. When designed with an intentional focus on encouraging cultural assets and identities, these practices can be highly responsive and lead to sustained learner assets and growth in learning outcomes across all subgroups.

Applying Culturally Sustaining Approaches – These practices encourage opportunities to extend and build learners’ knowledge, skills, and mindsets – including their ability to critically examine systems (and system inequities) and engage in positive change.

Examples of these supports are in NTN’s Culture and Learner-Centered Practices Cards:

• Establish a Warm Demanding Stance: holding learners to high standards, convince them of their own brilliance, in order to foster an atmosphere of belonging and connectedness where learners can engage and bring their full-selves as active contributors in the community. 
• Chalk Talk: Learners respond to prompts in writing and then respond to what other students said which allows learners to connect with and gain insights from each other. 

You can find these cards by downloading the NTN Practices Cards Sample Deck here.

Feature 4: Deeper Learning Curriculum

 In feature 4, the report shares that, “We know from research in the learning sciences that students learn at different paces and in different ways that build on their prior experiences and connect to their interests, modes of processing and expression, and cultural contexts. Further, the most powerful mode of learning for human beings is generated by meaningful inquiry that awakens the brain to search for answers.”

Deeper Learning at New Tech Network is a comprehensive approach to creating learning experiences that embody our Focus Areas. We define deeper learning by these five conditions: authentic, active, relational, responsive and complex. While deeper learning is the endpoint, NTN mapped a developmental progression towards deeper learning and created the NTN School Success Rubric and the Focus Areas. In order to ensure each student develops outcomes that matter, their learning environment must exhibit NTN Focus Areas, which are essential aspects of deeper learning.

NTN’s Focus Area of Meaningful and Equitable Instruction, centers the instructional approach on authentic, complex thinking and problem-solving. Based on experience, high-quality, relevant PBL is the best way for students to experience deep, contextual, shared learning, as well as, acquire and demonstrate proficiency in college and career ready outcomes. 

All NTN Practices Cards help to build and support a deeper learning curriculum. You can access these cards by downloading the NTN Practices Cards Sample Deck here.

Feature 5: Student-Centered Pedagogy

According to the report, “Student-centered pedagogy begins with structures that allow teachers to know students and their learning strategies well; takes place in a safe, inclusive school and classroom culture; values students’ identities and cultures; and enacts an authentic curriculum that is meaningful to students. All of these elements help create the essential conditions for a young person to learn.”

Each of the NTN Learner-Centered Practices reflects an underlying shift in the way learners and facilitators cultivate their day-to-day instruction.

Shift From Teacher-Centered to Learner-Centered – The practices curated in this set cultivate a learning environment where communities take ownership of their learning and center the instructional approach on authentic, complex thinking, and problem-solving. When designed with an intentional focus on encouraging cultural assets and identities, these practices can be highly responsive and lead to sustained learner assets and growth in learning outcomes across all subgroups.

Applying Culturally Sustaining Approaches – The practices curated in this set encourage opportunities to extend and build learners’ knowledge, skills, and mindsets – including their ability to critically examine systems (and system inequities) and engage in positive change.

Learning activities with students at the center, can take different forms in how they might be implemented but all have the same aim. NTN Learner-Centered Practices encourage equitable collaboration and discourse, idea generation, diverse voices and perspectives, complex thinking and problem solving. 

Two examples of NTN’s Learner-Centered Practices Cards are: 

• Chalk Talk: Allows students to articulate, expand on, and revise their knowledge, helps students brainstorm and use written communication skills to connect with and gain insights from each other. 
• Card Sort: Is a hands on way to give space for students to provide their own reasonings, promotes self assessment and can also serve as a formative assessment.

Feature 6: Authentic Assessment

 NTN’s Focus Area of Purposeful Assessment cultivates shared, school-wide understandings of equitable, purposeful assessment and grading practices that inform teacher instruction, emphasize individual student growth, and demonstrate progress towards college and career readiness. 

School Communities that actively commit to cultivating purposeful assessment emphasize student growth over time, intrinsic motivation, and peer feedback, reflection, and revision.

Creating learner-centered environments must include purposeful assessment therefore, NTN created a set of Assessment Practices Cards that provide support for educators. Each of the Assessment Practices reflect an underlying shift in the way students and teachers approach assessment:

Shift #1: Focus on Feedback

Shift #2: Assess for Learning

Shift #3: Grade for Equity

Shift #4: Routinely Calibrate Assessments to Inform Instruction

Shift #5: Prioritize Performance Assessment

A classroom that is student-centered uses assessment to inform instruction and emphasize learner growth and intrinsic motivation, prioritizes asset-based feedback to further build on learner strengths and support growth in knowledge and skills over time. 

Two examples of NTN’s Assessment Practices Cards are:

• Running Rubrics: Using a rubric to capture conversations about progress helps students understand criteria for the task and what next steps they might take so that students take charge of their own learning. Running Rubrics also help students who are working towards mastery, take action on feedback in a project or assignment.
• I used to think…Now I think: A formative assessment that helps students reflect on their thinking about a topic and explore how it has changed and encourages students to develop their reasoning abilities. 

Feature 7: Well-Prepared and Well-Supported Teachers

NTN believes that the role of the instructor must shift to a facilitator of student inquiry and a cultivator of a supportive and inclusive environment. Rather than merely delivering content, PBL facilitators guide students through the project process, fostering a collaborative and student-centered environment that supports all students in growing and tackling the demanding work of project-based learning. The changing roles of teachers require ongoing adult support that enables new ways to facilitate deeper learning. Strong adult learning is at the center of the New Tech Network’s (NTN) work with schools. 

NTN has designed NTN Teacher Learning Targets that are intended to help both elementary and secondary teachers reflect on their implementation of the New Tech Network Model and move towards a more meaningful, equitable, and inclusive learning environment for all students. The NTN Teacher Learning Targets guide the design of all NTN-facilitated school team learning experiences. They are aligned to the NTN School Success Rubric and are organized around the same four focus areas: Outcomes, Culture, Instruction, and Assessment. Each focus area includes subdomains that make up its key attributes along with a set of developmental learning targets to guide teacher learning, reflection, and growth.

Feature 8: Authentic Family Engagement

NTN strives to connect schools with their families and the NTN School Success Rubric outlines this when we encourage schools to, “Implement practices that build meaningful family and community partnerships that leverage the assets of the community in service of student success.”

NTN schools engage families in their day to day with Learner Led Conferences, Project Nights that allow students to present to parents and community members, and capstone project presentations to family, teachers, peers and members of the community. NTN also encourages other partnerships that support schools with family engagement like Ave Frontera.

Two sample practices from NTN Culture Practices Card Set below can be used to foster family engagement:

• Community Circles: A ritual and routine that involves learners collectively connecting, reflecting, and developing social and emotional learning skills. When used routinely, community circles support the cultivation of belonging, care and community within a learning environment.
• Storytelling: Asking learners (and families and community members) to share stories about who they are.

Feature 9: Community Connections and Integrated Student Supports

 Similarly to feature 8, NTN strives to connect schools with their community and the NTN School Success Rubric outlines this when we encourage schools to , “Implement practices that build meaningful family and community partnerships that leverage the assets of the community in service of student success.”

NTN has several supports for connecting to communities. For example, The Framework for Co-Creating Community supports schools in engaging campus and community stakeholders (such as students, staff, families, and local partners) in co-designing structures that support deeper learning conditions in their learning community, interrupting inequity, and ensuring all students have access to opportunities, especially those who have been historically marginalized. For community stakeholders, this framework guides schools in how to best engage families and community members in ways that authentically leverage the community’s assets in service of student success. 

NTN has been working alongside Lancaster County, PA to support connecting community business partners with project-based learning classrooms. This article highlights why and how they organized this partnership and shared NTN’s Spectrum of Authenticity that emphasizes the need for community partnerships in PBL.

Feature 10: Shared Decision-Making and Leadership

“Ongoing success of a redesigned school also depends on staff, students, and family members all understanding and supporting the community’s vision. This requires shared decision-making and leadership.”

NTN believes that school transformation requires a shift from a “top down” model to a more distributed, shared leadership model that involves the whole school. The School Success Rubric outlines this, and all leadership teams should consider all of the roles and responsibilities of leadership and how these will be delegated across the school. This article highlights how Hardin County Schools with support of New Tech Network, created a vision for shared leadership across their district.

 Examples of these supports are in NTN’s Culture Practices Cards:

•  Co-Create Community Agreements: Can generate active cooperation, collective sense-making and equitable inclusion of voices. Ensuring each and every student has an opportunity to co-create shared processes for engaging in learning is a key component to equitable learning environments.

New Tech Network (NTN) is a national nonprofit dedicated to systemic change in education. We center K-12 schools as the units of change, working closely with district leaders, school principals, and classroom educators, to co-design an approach to change that is specific to their context. If you are interested in additional details on how New Tech Network can support your school’s vision of deeper learning, click here, to learn more about our services.