The El Segundo Unified School District (ESUSD) is sharing powerful learning strategies with a national audience through Innovation Portfolios, a new online storytelling platform where school districts can share educational innovations taking place in their district.
ESUSD is involved with Innovation Portfolios through its membership in the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools, a national coalition of 102 forward-thinking public school districts from 33 states.
“The El Segundo Unified School District has worked diligently in the past few years to implement innovative learning strategies into our K-12 curriculum to maximize the strengths of every learner,” said ESUSD Superintendent Melissa Moore. “We hope that by sharing our stories and successes, other school districts will be encouraged to innovative their own curriculum to provide a relative knowledge base for 21stcentury learners.”
ESUSD’s Innovation Portfolio may be viewed online here. The programs ESUSD is featuring as its educational “Innovations in Action” are:
- A District-wide Graduate Profile- a clear visualization of priority goals for teaching and learning that can be easily communicated to students, parents, faculty, and staff to align their collective efforts
- The RULER Approach for Social Emotional Learning- the RULER Approach provides learning tools for educators, students and parents to better recognize, understand and manage emotions and personal feelings.
- El Segundo Middle School’s 8thGrade Community Project- a yearlong undertaking where all eighth graders must research and select a local, state, national, or world problem and design an intervention to address their chosen problem.
- El Segundo High School’s Biomedical Science Pathway- a four-year course of study involving a rigorous curriculum in the life sciences and health care technology.
As an educators’ tool, visitors to this website can search for Innovation Portfolio entries by searching/filtering for categories such as district location, district size, a district’s percentage of free and reduced lunch, and urbanicity. Additionally, stories are tagged by challenge topics identified by educators on the Digital Promise Challenge Map.
Innovation Portfolios represent a new effort by Digital Promise to share a wide breadth and depth of innovation in education, empowering school districts to tell their own stories of successful programs they have designed, supported and nurtured. Nearly 170 entries across dozens of districts offer models, strategies, and lessons learned.
“Stories have the power to inform, inspire, connect, and mobilize,” said Digital Promise President and CEO Karen Cator. “Innovation Portfolios present powerful stories of important accomplishments across public education. We’re excited to see how this resource grows as more districts contribute.”
To further explore the Innovation Portfolios, visit portfolios.digitalpromise.org.