Katonah-Lewisboro Teachers Begin Journey Toward Educational Innovation

CROSS RIVER, NY — On Tuesday, Aug. 29, 17 Katonah-Lewisboro teachers gathered, along with staff developers and administrators, to begin a two-year journey toward innovation in the classroom. This is the school district leaning in to its Learning Commitment, the educational bar developed by teachers and administrators and supported by the Board of Education at the beginning of the 2016-17 school year. It dedicates the district to creating learning experiences for all students that are engaging, relevant and take place in an active learning environment.

“By supporting the Innovation Grants in the 2017-18 budget, the Board of Education demonstrated its commitment to ensuring that KLSD is a learning organization, striving always to improve how we support our students in their academic and emotional growth,” said Superintendent Andrew Selesnick. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Teachers were invited to apply for this initiative in May 2017, by reflecting on innovation and the role of the Learning Commitment in their practice. The resulting “innovation team” represents every school level in the district and a broad range of disciplines — including occupational therapy, elementary library, math and sciences, the humanities, engineering and robotics and world languages.

The breadth is one of the most exciting aspects of this initiative.

“We don’t have any other structure where teachers gather solely to discuss their teaching practice with a K-12 multi-disciplinary approach,” said Alice Cronin, assistant superintendent of curriculum.

“One of the exciting opportunities presented in this grant is the opportunity to work with a group completely outside of my immediate colleagues on an open-ended project of our own design,” wrote Laurie Griffin, occupational therapist, in her application.

Teachers didn’t need to have a fleshed-out idea in order to apply.

“We were looking for a commitment to innovation, an openness to new ideas, an interest in feedback, an enthusiasm for learning alongside their colleagues, and a recognition of the importance of sharing their practice with others,” Cronin said.

“I was inspired to apply for this program because it is an opportunity to take my teaching philosophy to the next level and work with others to apply it to different content areas,” said Steven Zoeller, teacher of engineering and robotics at John Jay High School, in his Innovation Grant application. “One of the areas I have targeted for improvement is efficiency through student independence.”

In the coming year, participants will gather once a month after school, as well meet individually with staff developers Candy Wilmot and Andrea Kantor, to shape the ideas into new units of instruction. In year two, the educators will pilot and evaluate their methodologies and share the results with the entire Katonah-Lewisboro learning community.

The innovation grant’s first cohort began their journey by reading and discussing “Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions,” by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santan. The book shifts the makeup of the classroom to flip the questions to the students to help them better explore their world.

“Innovation Grants helps us focus on the learner in a way that we haven’t before,” said Selesnick.”

Photo credit: Submitted.