Conversation #59, with Maureen Cohen, Ed.D, Superintendent of the Mendon-Upton Regional School District in Massachusetts reimagines adult learning while staying focused on the north star of student needs and experience. I could have done a full post just on the concept of Adult Learning Pathways. Thank you Lori Batista McEwen for nominating Superintendent Cohen. If you have someone you want to nominate, use this form to connect us!

"Our strategic plan hinges on a clear priority: to meet our mission in empowering all learners to thrive. We are committed to ensuring students feel regularly challenged, empowered, and engaged in deeper learning. We have a sharp focus on equity and student well-being, and we are actively developing measurable outcomes to track progress in these areas. As a Mastery Transcript Consortium school, all students will eventually create a mastery learning record, deeply aligned with our Portrait of a Learner. In high school, students are creating self-reflections during internships and we are integrating these reflections into showcases of learning like science and civics symposiums. We are on a journey to embed this across all levels, starting from earlier grades through portfolios and ongoing reflections.

After COVID, the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of our students highlighted the need to weave trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and strengths-based instructional practices into the fabric of our curriculum. Strategies like our equity pause are embedded in our decision-making and curricular reviews to ensure our learning opportunities are for all. We are committed to actively improving our subgroup data because we know that fostering joyful learning experiences means ensuring every child thrives. We complete whole-child reviews to better capture the strengths and needs of each student.

We are focused on building capacity through increased instructional coaching to partner with our exceptional building leadership. Our Instructional Partners — teachers collaborating with district leaders and principals on embedding strategic priorities into daily practice — have been instrumental in our progress operationalizing our deeper learning framework.

We are developing new adult learning pathways, offering choices such as:
💡Deeper Learning Lab
💡Painting the Portrait of a Learner
💡Instructional Practices for All
💡Community & Career Connections
💡Engaged & Authentic Technology Use

Our current AI mindset goes beyond creating policies to address concerns like cheating. We are focused on collaborating with educators to discover how AI can help us achieve our core mission. This fall, we are starting a new initiative to explore how AI can advance teaching and learning districtwide. Led by our Director of Learning & Innovation, Ryan Robidoux, this cohort will explore and pilot AI tools, building our district's understanding of responsible, effective AI use.

External partnerships have helped us secure crucial funding aligned to our priorities, including our strong collaboration with the One8 Foundation. Our secondary schools participated in the Applied Learning Leadership Institute (ALLI), enabling the creation of deeper learning practices/protocols. Our high school has developed and codified an authenticity protocol; middle school is in the process of codifying a set of collaboration practices. Through ALLI, these practices will be shared w/ state and national districts with support from the One8 Foundation. We were also in a School Leadership Network with PBLWorks to train the majority of our middle school staff in project-based learning."