Have you taken the pledge? Every school district leader should take the Future Ready Pledge to work with all stakeholders to create learner-centered environments which:
- Foster a culture of collaborative leadership
- Provide rigorous academic content for all students to build life skills
- Empower personalized, professional learning opportunities
- Help schools and families transition to anytime, anywhere learning.
- Rethink the use of space and time
- Implement thoughtful data and privacy policies and protocols
- Focus on long-term sustainability
- Share and mentor for continuous improvement.
If this sounds like the goal of your district and you haven’t taken the Future Ready Pledge, now is a great time to do so. Future Ready is an initiative of The Alliance of Excellent Education. Their goal is to assist district leaders to work collaboratively as they develop and implement personalized, research-based digital learning strategies that enable their students to achieve their full potential.
In addition to the Future Ready Pledge, they offer several ways to help jump start a district’s vision and planning efforts. The Future Ready Schools Institutes are free two-day professional development events that are designed to connect schools and districts who are implementing personalized learning in a digital environment. The goal is to provide regional networks to make it easy to share best practices and lessons learned. Check out the agenda for these free events and their locations.
If you don’t have the time or the resources to attend one of the Institutes (even though they are free!), their webinars are an excellent way to connect with experts and practitioners with good advice on issues pertinent to teaching in a digital classroom. Here are a couple to check out: Future Ready Librarians: What’s Not to Love, Amplify: Digital Teaching and Learning in the K-6 Classroom, and Blended Learning: Recommendations and Resources. Be sure and check out their upcoming webinars and chats.
Future Ready also partners with education conferences and conventions to identify sessions that are related to their 
frameworks. We did this at TCEA 2017 and will do so again at TCEA 2018. Tom Murray, from the Alliance for Excellent Education, will be presenting three sessions at TCEA 2018. Come learn ways you and your district can implement the concepts you learned at an FRS Institute. Or perhaps Tom’s sessions and others may inspire you to attend a future Institute.
Finally, you might want to check out the Future Ready Dashboard. It is a free interactive planning tool that could be used by your district’s planning team as you implement blended learning. It will provide you with a Digital Learning Readiness Report with valuable information that ensures you keep your focus on student learning as you transition to a digital teaching and learning environment.
This blog post is not meant to be exhaustive. The Future Ready initiative is not a one and done type of effort. They have proven over time that they are committed to their mission and are willing to adapt and grow. This is why TCEA is proud to be considered one of their partners. Hopefully I have whet your appetite to know more. Start by checking out their website.
