Realizing Our Vision

At ASW, we have set a Vision based on our Mission and Core Values. This Vision guides our strategic and operational planning and actions, aiming to continually improve and transform our school to benefit students' learning. 

Realizing our Vision is our top priority for the coming years, and it requires ongoing planning, action, reflection, and adjustment. Therefore, we have engaged in the Collaborative Learning Protocol, co-facilitated by our accrediting agencies, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), and the International Baccalaureate (IB). This protocol involves a year-long community reflection phase, and it will result in a new version of ASW's future action planning, ensuring that our Vision remains at the forefront of our planning efforts.

Linked to the ASW Vision is our Objective 2024:
“By 2024, everyone here will spend the majority of their time managing what they do and designing how they do it.”

Based on this statement, our strategic areas were developed and launched, each acting as a key pillar of the pedagogical transformation and ultimately leading to the changes we set to accomplish for our students.

Our mission is to be a community that changes the world for the better. Rather than making small incremental improvements, we seek to achieve a transformational change by engaging in a deep, community-based reflection.

Therefore, we invite all members of the community to participate in a collaborative learning process that will increase awareness of our commitments and establish a shared understanding of our vision for learning at ASW.

ASW’s commitment to growth and transformation began six years ago when we refreshed our Mission, Core Values, and Vision to ensure that our pedagogical practices meet the demands of the 21st century and prepare our students for their future. 

The pandemic reinforced the need to prepare our students in new and relevant ways and that we must reflect on and innovate our practices to face future challenges as we fulfill our Mission. One of our Core Values emphasizes that we need to “Work together. Because without us all, we're nothing.” Therefore, our purpose for committing to a reflection and Vision realization process is a necessity. As a connected learning community that will review and analyze our ‘current reality,’ we need to:

• Reflect on our current position of progress related to the ASW Mission, Vision, Core Values, shared understanding of learning, Objective 2024, and the four strategic areas. Use the ACE Learning Principles as the tools for the next step vision-planning.
• Develop a shared vision and understanding of the pathway to realizing our ASW Vision. Plan, plot, and update our roadmap toward transformational change, guided by ASW Vision and any additional findings from the reflection process.

CLP ACCREDITATION PROCESS
(NEASC & IB)

We engage in this reflection process toward realizing ASW Vision with key partners dedicated to our success. NEASC and the IB have joined together to support schools through the Collaborative Learning Protocol (CLP), which uses the NEASC ACE Learning Protocol to provide professional assessment tools for school growth and transformation required for school accreditation based on Foundation Standards, Learning Impacts, and Learning Principles. The CLP framework provides a model for engaging a wide range of stakeholders in evidence collection, analysis, and discussion that focuses on the impact of learning versus only strategies and actions.  Through the lenses of Learning Impacts and 10 ACE Learning Principles designed from research, a review of learning evidence designed from our guiding statements and the IB curriculum frameworks will take place.

To involve multiple perspectives and voices within our community and expand our understanding of where we are in relation to where we want to be toward our Vision the process was organized into three teams:

1. Steering Committee: The A-Team acts as a lead team representing all departments in the school and will meet to review the reflection process at various touch points between June and November. Each member of the team will support the facilitation of a ROV team.
2. Oversight Team:  This team includes the IB Coordinators, two students, two parents, a lead from each ROV Team, and a Board member. To ensure inclusiveness and collaboration, this team will develop strategies to engage as many community members (staff, students, parents) in the reflection process as possible, and will review, synthesize, and present the results and recommendations that emerge from the deep reflection work.  
3. Realizing Our Vision (ROV) Teams: The core of the reflection process will be managed by six teams of diverse stakeholders who will focus on one (in one case a combination of two) ACE Learning Principle as a lens to evidence of practice and progress related to the ASW Guiding Statements, Vision, the IB standards and practices, and the needs of ASW learning community. The reflection process will involve community members in various roles (students, teachers, parents, leaders, staff, Board members) to ensure that different voices and perspectives have contributed to the final report of findings and future actions.

The community reflection process facilitated by the ROV Teams will take place from February 2023 - November 2023.

• February to June - the ROV teams will meet monthly to curate evidence and artifacts that will guide the teams’ reflection on ASW progress and position as related to the Vision and strategic actions.
• September to October - the teams will finalize their reflections and draft a proposal of action plans and future design opportunities.
• October to November - representatives from each of the six teams will form working groups who will review, analyze, discuss, and synthesize the findings and proposals of the ROV Teams into a coherent report that states 3-4 major learning plans.

The reflection process will be focused on the following Learning Principles:

• Evidence of Learning
• Learning Perspectives & Inclusion, Diversity and Equity
• Learning Autonomy and Engagement
• Governance and Leadership for Learning
• Space & Time for Learning
• Learning Community Wellbeing

These teams will be finding evidence to show impact within each of these Learning Principles. They will be asking for parents to engage in interviews, provide artifacts of their children’s learning, join a focus group, etc. You might be invited to share your perspective or a video or photo of your child that reflects learning. We are learning within this process so new ideas may emerge as a result of the team working with our parent community.