Friday, June 29, 2018

Our Quest For NJ Future Ready Certification

A little over a year ago, I found out about NJ Future Ready Schools.  My friend Elissa Malespina, mentioned her involvement with the program through a Twitter conversation.  I was well aware of Elissa's involvement in the national future ready initiative.  Elissa is the middle school librarian at Somerville Middle School in New Jersey.  In addition to working as a school librarian, she is the ISTE Librarians President,  a national presenter, and has received numerous technology and library educational awards.  Here is one of Elissa's presentations on Future Ready Librarians.

What is Future Ready Schools?

Future Ready Schools is a national initiative which helps K-12 public, charter and private schools prepare students for their future careers, college experiences, and citizenship by maximizing digital learning opportunities.  Superintendents can take a future ready pledge through the website Future Ready Schools  The National Future Ready Framework includes seven gears which include:  Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment;  Personalized Professional Learning; Robust Infrastructure; Budget and Resources; Community Partnerships; Data & Privacy; Use of Space and Time; Collaborative Leadership


Very soon after the national framework was defined, other frameworks that match positions held in school districts started coming into existence. 

  • Future Ready Librarians
  • Future Ready District Leaders
  • Future Ready Technology Leaders
  • Future Ready Coaches
  • Future Ready Principals
Each of these groups has their own framework, which can be found here

Once the Future Ready Librarians framework was released, I knew this was an initiative I wanted to be part of.  The framework for Future Ready Librarians makes it easy for librarians to see what they should be doing to make transformations in their space and become agents of change in their building(s)  This past week I attended the ISTE Conference in Chicago, and the new Future Ready Librarians Framework was released!  The new framework is so exciting, because Literacy is such an integral part of the framework!



In addition to providing an excellent framework, Future Ready Librarians offers many webinars, Twitter Chats, a Newsletter and in--person trainings for librarians.  Here is a direct link to their website.

What is Future Ready Schools NJ?

Future Ready Schools New Jersey is a coalition between the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the New Jersey School Board's Association, and the New Jersey Department of Education.  It is a school certification program designed to support the efforts of the national Future Ready Schools initiative.

In 2016/17 school year, Future Ready Schools NJ began creating task forces to begin writing indicators which are used in each school's certification process.  When a school decides to take the path to certification, they must produce evidence under each indicator.  The three main areas for certification include:  Leadership; Education and Classroom Practice; & Technology Support and Services.  As a district works towards certification they accumulate points to get certified, and they can get certified at either the Bronze or Silver level.  The Bronze area requires less points than the silver and is a little less involved.  Both levels however require a lot of time and effort on a schools part.  When a school begins certification efforts, there are three phases they must work through:
  • Phase 1:  District Committment
  • Phase 2:  School Participation (This is done by school and not by district)
  • Phase 3:  School Certification
The nice thing about this initiative is most of the work has been accomplished through educators of New Jersey (Classroom Teachers, Librarians, Administrators)  I was fortunate enough to serve on Task Forces, and have recently become involved in the Awards Committee.

My School's Future Ready Certification Endeavors

In April of 2017, after serving on the NJ Future Ready Schools Task Forces, I brought the Future Ready School initiative to my superintendent and director of technology.  We began communicating with Jeremy Reich (NJ Future Ready School's Project Manager) through a Skype conference.  Jeremy explained the steps to us, and we began planning our road to school certification.  In October of 2017, we attended one of the national Future Ready School Institutes in Philadelphia area.  This was very helpful and allowed the other members of our future ready team to work in breakout groups.  This spring my school began working on producing evidence to Future Ready Schools NJ.  Our technology director assigned different indicators to different members of our future ready team and we had designated work periods to complete the creation of our evidence.  On our final day of meeting, we were thrilled to welcome Jeremy Reich, Linda Carmona-Bell (NJ Department of Education) and Chris Murphy (Principal Extraordinaire from New Zealand) to our school, to show them some of the ways our school is future ready.  We are in our final stages of planning/submitting for certification and hope to receive this October of 2018 at the New Jersey School Boards Convention.

     Our Future Ready Team and Visitors Jeremy Reich, Linda Carmona-Bell, and Chris Murphy



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