Opportunities for all educators
MCIEA Mini-Grants
2020/2021 School Year
Using foundational experience with MCIEA to meet needsMini-grants are presenting opportunities for schools and districts to deepen work and spread QPAs within schools, using educators with previous experience with MCIEA/QPA to lead the work.
Attleboro: Two projects (one at Attleboro HS and one across the three middle schools) are being led by educators who have participated in MCIEA Institutes and received QPA coaching. Boston: The Grew Elementary School was a MCIEA Cohort 2 school and their mini-grant project is being led by teacher leaders who went through MCIEA institutes and QPA coaching. The Grew will be using context-specific SQM surveys as a pre- and post- measure of their revised QPAs. Milford: Woodland Elementary was a Cohort 4 school and is using a mini-grant to build out Math QPAs led by a team of teachers that went through the QPA process. A QPA coach provided a “QPA 101” session for new teachers, but the project is led by the teacher leaders. |
Explicit focus on equity and social justiceSeveral districts and schools are using the mini-grant projects to explicitly take on equity and social justice-seeking work.
Boston: Orchard Gardens is creating a math-based social justice QPA focusing on nutrition, food desserts, and racism in Boston. Additionally, ODA is leading a district-wide project seeking to understand how QPAs can lead to a more anti-racist assessment system. Lowell: Butler MS is using SQM survey to help design equity-seeking PD opportunities. Milford: Stacy MS is developing an interdisciplinary unit and QPA addressing social justice, race, and equity. Revere: Paul Revere Innovation School is using SQM data to better understand how teachers are understanding and incorporating professional development focused on dismantling racial bias. |
Integrating QPA and SQMProjects are using QPA and SQM together to inform practice and build something new.
Boston: The project at the Grew involves both QPA and SQM, with the school team working with the SQM coach to adapt SQM questions for elementary school grades and implementing a pre- and post-survey. The team will then use the SQM data to inform the design and revision of QPAs. Lowell: A QPA and SQM coach are working with a team at Lincoln Elementary School, using the SRI-Atlas protocol to analyze SQM data. The results of this analysis will then be used to inform QPA design and revision. |
The mini-grants are enabling further collaboration at several levels.
Within school collaboration: several projects are building interdisciplinary teams to design new QPAs (e.g. Attleboro HS, Grew Elementary in Boston, and Stacy MS in Milford) Within district collaboration: Several projects include teachers collaborating across schools in the same district (e.g. Attleboro middle schools, Boston has teams working across schools and grades to develop QPAs) Cross-district: A few projects are focused on middle school Civics/Social Studies enabling MCIEA coaches to build cross-district teams of teachers to provide examples and feedback on work. |