\nAs Superintendent Joe Gothard told Xello CEO and Co-Founder Matt McQuillen<\/a>, the issue is, well, <\/span>personal<\/span><\/i> to him. When he took the Career Ability Placement Survey (CAPS) as a teenager, he was gobsmacked by the things that he was \u201cgood\u201d at.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cI was 16 years old and more than two-thirds of my education was over… I didn\u2019t have conversations with my family about who I was as a learner or as a person to have them help me match it with what I might see in my future. That was a missed opportunity. We have to be more intentional, more urgent and I think we can start with students at a much younger age,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cI want us to have an inventory of the wonderful assets that the children in this community have so this entire community can build them up based on that.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
\nMore than 30 states require it and 10 encourage the development of ILPs<\/span><\/a>. Many have adopted policies that require all middle and\/or high school students to develop and maintain an Individualized Learning Plan.\u00a0<\/span>
\nIn SPPS\u2019s home state of <\/span>Minnesota<\/span><\/a>, \u201call students beginning no later than ninth grade [must] have a Personal Learning Plan\u2026 This plan should be looked at as a life plan that includes academic scheduling, career exploration, career and employment-related skills, community partnerships, college access, all forms of postsecondary training, and experiential learning opportunities.\u201d<\/span>
\nAt SPPS, they aim to do better than the state standard by developing Personal Learning Plans (PLPs) for students beginning in elementary and middle school.<\/span>
\nWe recently sat down with Leah Corey, Program Manager in the Office of College and Career Readiness for SPPS to discuss how they\u2019re prioritizing college and career readiness in their district.<\/span>
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<\/a>\n\u201cWe want to start building a foundation and vocabulary around things like, what is dual credit? What types of post-secondary options are there? What are the career fields that exist,\u201d said Leah Corey, Program Manager in the Office of College and Career Readiness for SPPS.<\/span>
\n\u201cWe want students to think about, what am I good at? What do I enjoy doing? What are my values? And connect them to courses, career development activities, post-secondary programs, and personal aspirations.\u201d<\/span>
\nSPPS has always had some form of Personal Learning Plans in place, but the new strategic vision is to make them more meaningful, more student-centered, and to start these earlier.\u00a0<\/span>
\nThey needed a future readiness platform to help them achieve this important goal.<\/span><\/p>\n
The Solution<\/b><\/h3>\n
When Corey arrived at SPPS in 2019, the district was still thinking about the long-term vision of ensuring all students have the opportunity to dream about the possibilities for their future and put into place an actionable plan to get there.\u00a0<\/span> One of the most important factors for choosing Xello is that it offers even our youngest learners the opportunity to have a technology platform that allows them to think about the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They also wanted that tool to anchor careers in the future planning process and provide a place for students to dream big and express themselves in a variety of ways.<\/span> Corey explained how Xello has become an important tool in developing Personal Learning Plans (PLPs) and for counselors and educators working with students in a group and one-on-one.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cMy role is to take this idea and operationalize it in our district,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cPart of our vision was to design a system that\u2019s PreK-12. We wanted something that we could start early and that could travel with students as they progress throughout their school journey.\u201d<\/span>
\nThe tool SPPS had been using was focused on middle and secondary students and they wanted to start future readiness conversations earlier in developmentally meaningful ways for each grade level.\u00a0<\/span>
\nSPPS issued an RFP for a future readiness program that would accommodate all their needs and Xello emerged as the winning solution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
\n\u201cWe were looking for a platform that would allow students to upload multimedia artifacts. We\u2019ve got students who like to demonstrate what they know through audio or visuals and Xello allows them to capture their work in different ways. It\u2019s important that we support student voice and choice and allow them to reflect on who they are and what problems they want to solve in the future,\u201d said Corey.\u00a0<\/span>
\nXello was approved by the SPPS Board in April 2020 and officially launched in the fall of 2020\u2014smack in the middle of remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/span>
\n\u201cWe launched it mostly to students who are in 5<\/span>th<\/span> through 12<\/span>th<\/span> grades. We\u2019ll be more formally launching it in K-4 in Q4 of the 2020\/21 school year.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThe Results<\/b><\/h3>\n
\n\u201cSchool counselors at the elementary level have been piloting individual advising sessions coined as \u2018Mindsets and Me\u2019 because they\u2019re aligned with <\/span>ASCA model\u2019s mindsets and behaviors for student success<\/span><\/a>.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cCounselors meet individually with 5th grade students to talk about who they are and what their goals, dreams, strengths and interests are. Xello has been an awesome tool to help facilitate that conversation and students have really gotten into that.\u201d<\/span>
\nThey\u2019ve also been using Xello to facilitate the college application process for high schoolers and as a way to document strengths and interests among middle schoolers.\u00a0<\/span>
\nAlthough the school year in which Xello was launched was less than typical, Corey explained that students have responded warmly to the platform.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cEspecially for our younger students, it\u2019s intuitive, visually interesting, and easy to navigate. Features like the About Me page, Interests, Experience, Goals and Plans facilitates the process of building Personal Learning Plans.<\/span>
\n\u201cThis the first year we\u2019re tracking that level of data and we\u2019re excited to use Xello to evaluate the implementation of this work.\u201d<\/span>
\nDistrict counseling leads worked with school counselors to build a core counseling curriculum. Today, counselors deliver lessons on personal, social, and academic skills to students individually and as a group and use Xello\u2019s lessons as a teaching aid. The program is taught from K-12 and the Personal Learning Plans have been layered into it.\u00a0<\/span>
\nOne of the other ways Xello has been a natural fit in helping SPPS achieve their strategic vision is the integration of the program into their universally implemented middle school advisory program, called \u201cFoundations.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cThe partnership between Xello and Foundations, alongside the foundational work our counselors do has been instrumental, at the middle school level in particular,\u201d said Corey.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cStudents are assigned to a Foundations teacher and the curriculum is really focused on community building, social emotional development, and building a Personal Learning Plan in Xello.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cOne of the focus areas of the strategic plan has been building out a middle school model that is grounded in this concept of belonging and becoming. We\u2019re moving away from the notion of junior high and really focusing on community, and identifying social emotional development. Xello dovetails nicely into this work.\u201d<\/span>
\nOther areas of impact include providing a space for students to do college and career research.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cWe started off in Q1 talking about <\/span>who am I<\/span><\/i>? <\/span>What are my interests? What are my strengths and skills?<\/span><\/i> Xello offered a nice space to document that in the platform. As we\u2019ve moved over the course of the year into talking about careers and how you can think about a career that aligns with the interests and skills that you\u2019ve thought about. It\u2019s been a really useful tool to help with that research and provide a central space to go back and document,\u201d said Corey.<\/span>
\nPlans for the future with Xello include rolling out the work-based learning<\/a> feature on a small scale with an internship partner.\u00a0<\/span>
\nCorey said she\u2019s looking forward to uncovering all the ways Xello can continue to enhance and support their long-term vision to provide meaningful Personal Learning Plans for all students in the district.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cOur mission as a district is to inspire students to think critically, solve problems, and change the world and this is very aligned with the vision of our state. Personal Learning Plan work is legislated for a reason. The research and belief is that engaging in this work supports students in building goal-setting skills and more.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\u201cWe\u2019re excited to be able to track the level of student engagement and evaluate the implementation of the work we\u2019re doing with Xello. We\u2019ll compare it with the qualitative data over the next year.\u201d<\/span>
\nDo you have questions about how your district can successfully engage students with college and career planning ? Just click on the link below to book a call with our education consultants and they\u2019ll be happy to assist.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nBook Your Demo Today<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"