Planning Events in September 2020

Community Planning Team on September 18, 2020

Last Friday our multi-stakeholder Community Planning Team met for the first time this academic year. The charge for this meeting was to align ourselves as a team, embrace new and continuing members, and explore our role in the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA) accreditation and self assessment. 

MSA leaders shared strategies and action plans for the objectives included in the MSA report for comment and acknowledged the contribution of the planning team in gathering the ideas and evidence required for the reporting areas of Strategic Planning and Foundational Documents. The team was also briefed on the upcoming MSA Virtual Visit planned at the end of November.

This meeting also represented the handover of the facilitation of the team from Sherriden Masters to Joelle Basnight. Please join us in thanking Sherriden for his support, guidance and facilitation! 

As is always the case with planning team meetings, it was a pleasure to bring together a diverse group of stakeholders to work together toward a common goal in support of our school’s development. The slide deck from the afternoon is available here. Please feel free to ask any of our team members about the work of the Community Planning Team.

Planning Team Retreat May 2020

Just over a week ago, the Community Planning Team gathered online, in virtual synchronisation, to approve and add 16 goals to the Futures Plan for the 2020-2021 school year. We were also led to a deeper understanding, and enjoyed hearty dialogue, about the implications for planning as part of the MSA Accreditation process. Thank you Dan and the MSA Coordination Team for the opportunity. I am so happy that I was able to be there to facilitate this experience, and warmly appreciate your flexibility, interdependence, and insight.

	From this event, we now have a clear, systematic perspective on our Futures pathway goals for the coming academic year, and we are refreshed in our perspective with reference to them.
	The event report shows the layout and details of the goals that were approved during this event, and also provides the platform to consider the action plans and onward implications for these pathways.
	AISC remains flexible and dynamic, we will continue to retain direction and systematic oversight of our futures planning model, and enjoy the multi-stakeholder support and engagement from our Community Planning Team.
	The report also outlines the next steps for the 2020-2021 academic year and looks towards the sharing of action plans for the pathways early in the Fall Term, which will facilitate the publication of a full Futures Plan.

Thank you again for all that the Community Planning Team has given to AISC this year! We would not be where we are today without their support and perspective. I have deeply enjoyed working, and learning, with the Community Planning Team this academic year, and warmly look forward to doing both in the future.

Community Planning Team End of Year Event

This week marked the final meeting of the community planning Team for the Academic year 2019-2020. This event is a crucial step in the futures planning process, and has traditionally had three distinct aims;

1. To ensure clarity of our futures planning process, and the futures pathway goals within it.
2. To celebrate and provide insight into the success of the current year’s goals, to the widest stakeholder group
3. To reach consensus on the approval of futures planning goals for the year to come

These aims ensure that AISC has a wide range of community input into the inception and confirmation of the Futures Plan. The Community Planning teams draws from the widest range of any AISC team, enjoying membership by parents, alumni, board and council of advisors members, faculty, administrators, and a number of students.

This year’s aims were no different, and through virtual means, we successfully reviewed the various successful outcomes from the Pathway Goals from the current academic year. We also highlighted areas where the impact of campus restriction and global closure had slowed/paused, or accelerated, the work of these pathways.

The goals for next year were explained and clarified in a parallel process, allowing highly engaged conversations and feedback about the planning for next year, within smaller groups. The pathway leaders moved each small group towards consensus about the pathway goal, and the outline of how to achieve it. Then, in a culminating presentation and consensus step, the AISC Planning Team approved the goals outlined in the latest futures plan, that will be published in the coming months. The photo shows our consensus in action.

In the second session, the Planning Team reviewed the implications for planning, within each of our Middle States Association (MSA) Accreditation standards. These planning statements direct the conversation within our accreditation process, and the planning steps that may be taken after our self study, and site visit are completed.

With over 30 members present, the event was a remarkable success, and I offer my warmest appreciation to the members for the flexibility, dynamism, group coherence and resilience they show when working through this system wide complexity. VIrtual meetings add to this complexity, and they dealt with it admirably.

The Community planning Team will reconvene in September, for further goal review, and action plan discussions. 

Community Planning Team Mid-Year Work session

Our multi-stakeholder Community Planning Team met for the second time this academic year. The charge for this meeting was to reach clarity and understanding at the year midpoint, on all of the pathway goals being undertaken this year. In addition, the Planning Team was tasked with the refinement and exploration of our objectives for the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA) accreditation and self assessment.

The goal and the work of the year was described by each pathway leader, and clarifying questions were sought to support the continued insight of the Planning Team in the work of the Futures Plan. Pathway leaders were also given feedback, that serves to inform both the pathway tasks as they continue this year, and the goals and action plans in the year to come.


In the final session of the day, under the guidance of team facilitators and our MSA coordinators, we unpacked, explored, and reconstructed the student performance objectives and organisational capacity objectives that will make up our action plan for re-accreditation. It is with warm gratitude that I express my thanks to all involved in the sessions for the day, and it was another opportunity to see multiple groups working coherently towards our goals in this area, with the team working attitude I have come to expect, and continue to vastly appreciate, within our AISC community. See the slide deck here, and feel free to ask any of our team members about the work of the Community Planning Team.

Teaching and Learning in a New Decade

On the 23rd and 30th of January 2020, Sherriden Masters and Dan Love hosted a two-part, back to back, conversation with parents and community members on the future of teaching and learning as we move into a new decade.

We began by highlighting and signposting the drivers that we are recognising in a global context, in society in general, and then specifically in education. This was followed by a deeper dive into the signals that we are now seeing as a result of these drivers, again in education in general, and then more specifically in our work at AISC. Finally, we organised a dialogue around our Futures Plan (linked in the sidebar to the left) and how our work in the Vision for an AISC Learner Pathway, and our emergent work in Competency-Based Education.

Both sessions were recorded as a tool for future use, and are available to watch by anyone who would like to know more about our perspectives on the future of learning.

Teaching and Learning in a New Decade (Session 1 & 2)

The sessions were also informed by a wealth of recent research from Knowledgeworks, OECD, Mckinsey, and the World Economic Forum. The source reports from these organisations can be found collected in a zipped file linked below.

Teaching and Learning in a New Decade - Source Reports