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NHLI | New Hampshire Learning Initiative
All Students Deserve a Quality Education
/ May 23, 2018
School ReTool
Leadership in a competency-based system is critical. Recognizing this, the Learning Initiative has been seeking ways to support school leaders in deepening the mindsets, knowledge, and skills and dispositions needed to effectively develop a competency-based and personalized model designed to meet the needs of all learners.
The Learning Initiative, in partnership with the Stanford d. School, offered its second cohort of School Retool, a professional learning fellowship that helps school leaders redesign school culture using small, scrappy experiments called ‘hacks’. With our facilitators, Margaret Angell and Kippy Smith, along with NHLI’s local collaborator Jonathan Vander Els (a former principal of a competency-based school), participants learned about deeper learning, change processes, and the hack mindset, an approach to change that involves quick, small interventions and a willingness to try, fail, and learn.
Congratulations to our School Retool fellows:
Jon Vander Els
Director of Collaborative Learning
Jonathan serves as Director of Collaborative Learning for the New Hampshire Learning Initiative, overseeing and participating in the personalized and competency-based work throughout the State of NH. Formerly, Jonathan was principal of Memorial Elementary School in Sanborn Regional School District in New Hampshire. Under his leadership, Memorial School became a nationally recognized model PLC and competency-based learning elementary environment.
Jonathan specializes in supporting teachers and administrators in schools and districts across the country in developing, sustaining, and enhancing structures to support all learners, and is co-author of Breaking With Tradition: The Shift to Competency-Based Learning in PLCs at Work with Brian Stack. As a practitioner, Jonathan blends his experience and expertise to meet educators where they are and assist them in developing practical next steps to ensure high levels of learning for students in their school.
Jonathan has consulted, coached, and presented at conferences and Institutes throughout the United States on building highly effective PLCs, implementing competency-based and personalized learning, and developing balanced and rigorous assessment systems. Jonathan was involved in the New Hampshire Performance Assessment of Competency Education (PACE) initiative as a member of the PACE Leadership Team and facilitated the state’s initial effort to integrate skills and dispositions into curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Jonathan has an education specialist degree from the University of New Hampshire in educational administration and supervision, a master’s in elementary education, and a bachelor’s in history. Jonathan is currently enrolled at the University of New Hampshire in their Ph.D. Educational Leadership and Policy strand, with a focus on competency-based learning. Jonathan lives with his wife and three children on the New Hampshire Seacoast. You can follow Jon via Twitter @jvanderels.
Categories: NHLInsights, Research and Resources