Jamie Meade has been setting a new standard for ESC professional development this school year.
Meade has led a series of popular workshops focused primarily on standards-based education strategies and understanding and using Ohio’s accountability data. For example, in October she helped participants understand their local report cards to point them toward “strategic, collaborative root cause analysis and improvement planning.”
These are areas where many districts and community schools are actively looking for guidance.
“The Center for Achievement strives to offer sessions that are timely, relevant and aligned to the needs of the districts,” Meade said. “When we find topics of interest and relevance, we offer the session to a larger audience.”
Meade’s audience has certainly gotten larger. More than 500 educators from school districts, state support teams and community schools around the state participated in Meade-led workshops from October to February.
“The workshops have been offered as a direct response from work previously conducted within Franklin County districts,” she said. “For example, the Vertical Progressions workshop was based upon six different sessions I conducted for South-Western City Schools in the fall.”
While Meade’s in-district work often leads to topics for her larger open presentations, those larger workshops also feed into more focused in-district sessions
“Much of the work that I conduct in the field comes from follow up requests after a workshop here at the ESCFC,” she said.
Momentum is growing for standards-based strategies, and Meade praised the goal of moving toward a systematic approach for rigorous education. However, she also realizes that the progress is being pushed along by mandates such as No Child Left Behind legislation.
“I would love to believe the momentum stems from our awareness as educators of the importance of a systemic, cohesive, research-based approach to identifying, implementing and monitoring what all students should have the opportunity to learn as they progress through public schools,” she said.
“However, the current reality behind the momentum of standards-based approaches most likely lies within some collective middle ground between those with deeply held convictions for standards-based education and those with basic compliance to the federal mandate of NCLB.”
Meade joined the Center for Achievement this school year after working with State Support Team Region 11, which is run out of the ESC, last year. She was quick to share credit with other Achievement staff for the success of the workshops.
“We always hear wonderful feedback on how smoothly our events run,” she said. “Amy Dunson, Lois Love and Sandy Denney coordinate all the behind the scenes details.”
“This is all due to the collaborative teamwork of our Center for Achievement staff.”
With no quick end likely to the standards movement, the center and Meade likely will continue to have more opportunities to shine. |
