Case Study:
Portledge School
New York, United States
Simon Owen-Williams
The beautiful thing about Atlas is that it is also an opportunity to talk about how they teach
Portledge school is an independent, pre-nursery through 12th grade school. Portledge was recently accredited an International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme School, and is also member to several organizations, such as the National Association of Independent Schools.
What was the problem?
School leaders at Portledge wanted to create a culture of understanding about why the mapping process is important. Leaders saw a huge part of this as extending curriculum to learning results and providing benefits to teachers and their work. Creating an awareness about the importance of mapping would also in turn generate a culture of mapping, founded on collaborative conversations.
How did Atlas help?
Through mapping the curriculum, teachers now have a more cohesive scope and sequence and are able to validate their work and see how it contributes to the formation of the students and student knowledge. Scope and sequence specific reports in Atlas enable teachers to map out their curriculum so it grows on previous years and prepares students for the years to come. As such, each teacher's curriculum becomes a cog in the learning framework.
By housing their curriculum in Atlas, Portledge makes it a more accurate reflection of what is happening in teacher's classrooms, and therefore, curriculum can be tied to student learning results, making curriculum improvement a fundamental aspect of student achievement. Having curriculum transferred from binders to a dynamic, online platform, allowed the curriculum to be a living and breathing document that can be continuously improved. And, having a viable curriculum that is revisited, reviewed, and improved is central to Atlas functionality.
Portledge wanted curriculum to be a collaborative process. Transparency in Atlas – meaning that teachers can see their colleague's curriculum – empowers teachers to collaborate over curriculum, and find opportunities for improvement, interdisciplinary connections, and much more. The collaborative conversations stemming from Atlas's platforms are more structured and informed because of the transparency in the system.
What were the outcomes?
Incorporating Atlas and reshaping Portledge's curriculum process around it has led to more collaborative curriculum planning. Portledge generated teacher buy-in into to the curriculum development process by connecting teacher curriculum work to student learning. With a dynamic curriculum mapped in Atlas, curriculum is now an integral piece of Portledge's strategic thinking.
Testimony
"The value for mapping from my perspective is that it is a collaborative process in and of itself. The beautiful thing about Atlas … is that it is also an opportunity to talk about how they teach … [Atlas] gives you the flexibility to fit the mapping process into your strategic thinking at large."
- Simon Owen-Williams, Head of School