Networks that Drive Change
and Support Innovation
We have supported district, regional, and statewide networks across New York, New Jersey, Florida, Wisconsin, Nevada, Kentucky, Virginia, and Vermont, facilitating educators to together develop sustainable learning systems that, by design, are learner-centered. We work with educators through four key pathways:
We build the capacity of teams to collaboratively center the needs of young people as the systemic driver of decisions, strategies, and actions critical to navigating toward their North Star vision for learning, a vision that creates inspirational and aspirational clarity in its direction, purpose, and challenge.
We facilitate teams in communities of practice to intentionally pivot curriculum, assessment, and instruction toward complex and challenging learning experiences that engage all students to develop and extend their personal sense of agency, efficacy, and voice as learners.
We help teams identify and implement levers of change through purpose-driven, authentic tasks and case studies designed to engage educators in critical analysis of structures and processes existing in their schools today and create pathways to student-centered learning consistent with their learners' current and future needs.
We customize our work to reflect the evolving needs of teams as we help support your networked community of educators. We believe that your needs should drive what we do to support you. We use a zero-based thinking model to build and design a learning model crafted around your aspirations and intentions to better serve young people in your schools and communities. We believe that pre-determined programs, built from a one-size-fits-all professional development model and a replicable recipe, decontextualize your needs. Our goal is to create capacity in teams to not just engage but to invest in and own changes that you identify as critical to your learner-centered vision.
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We serve as thought partners with the leader of this multidimensional statewide network, focusing on developing the capacity of teams to grow significant change in their schools through small project steps.
We began working with the network from “before the beginning” and continue in that role.
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Socol Moran Partners is a member of a collaborative change partnership In Nevada. We facilitate, coach, and support school design teams to take action to move the Portrait of a Nevada Learner from a visionary dream into reality in their schools.
We do this by facilitating and coaching teams through a four-step process to:
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Explore essential questions that we believe educators must ask to strip away a bias toward sustaining anachronistic traditions as they respond to our most critical question: Why would young people come to your school if they didn’t have to?
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Generate “what if…..” questions designed with the end in mind of challenging their current state of school through use of an improvement science model that engages teams in action research (learning by doing), iterative design, and an ongoing learning journey to equitably empower learners and learning through actions that implement the Portrait.
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Analyze and use evidence from multiple sources to identify, design, implement, assess, and case study near-term actions to “test-bed” use of levers of change essential to realizing Portrait outcomes.
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Up-Cycle next steps through feedback loop processes that engage teams to continuously evaluate their community’s progress as the Portrait scales throughout the network.
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Pam Moran and Gena Keller, VaLIN co-chairs, conceptualized the Network concept in 2018 to implement the Portrait of a Virginia Graduate. The design was based in the structures for networked innovation Moran and Ira Socol developed in 2012 with the 26 schools in the system where they worked.
In their educational service as both school division superintendents and state leaders, their expertise in change leadership and management was key to developing a model to implement the Profile of a Virginia Graduate across Virginia’s divisions. Together, they have led implementation of a vision for change grounded in improvement science that has engaged over 75% of the school divisions in Virginia in developing and implementing local initiatives to implement the Profile through deeper learning, active engagement, and equity-driven strategies and actions. They have secured funding, built a coalition of partners, created structures and processes essential to starting up and sustaining a the Network, and led the Network through 5 annual cohorts of school division teams. The Valin Model is built around their shared commitment to the following design principles:
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Professional learning is not an event but a continuous long-term process of engagement in researching and developing expertise to lead change.
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Learning in a network promotes and supports the inside-outside exchange of ideas, solutions, and resources that leverages the strengths and assets of network participants.
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Coaching by design provides a feedback cycle essential to reflective questioning, assessing “blind spots”, and analyzing the impact of near-term actions that build systems-progress in implementing changes.
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Building relationships across a network promotes collaboration and celebration of successes and opportunities for support when inevitable failures occur.
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Socol Moran Partners plans with network leaders to build their support and facilitation based on the needs and aspirations of the network. Their work with network teams is hand-crafted and customized. They keep network participants at the center of their onsite convening design and coaching support process. Their learning intention is for teams to return to their schools and districts with doable actions, tools, and resources to use as they build out small steps to significant and deep change.
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Socol Moran Partners has provided support to the Next Generation Leadership Academy since 2019. We have presented to cohort teams from across the state as well as regional network teams in Jefferson County and Bowling Green. In our work with teams, we support them to move from the project work they have accomplished as a cohort to thinking forward about their next steps to continue, extend, expand, and sustain their innovation portfolio at the school and district level, particularly in support of locally developed Portraits and the new Ky Portrait of a Learner. This continuous improvement cycle is grounded in these action steps of network teams to:
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Consider the future of learning and the implications for continuous innovation design to ensure learner experiences align with the knowledge, durable skills, and competencies students need to thrive in life during school and after high school graduation.
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Use systems-thinking to build their dreams for the next iteration of their project work and identify how implementation of their next steps will impact others across their school and district.
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Identify challenges of equity within the system that limit learning opportunities and experiences that should be accessible to all students and design solutions to address challenges.
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Evaluate what must occur to implement next steps. What about the current system should be kept, tossed out, reimagined, or created from scratch.
