Commemorating 10 years of Framework within the School District

According to Upper Moreland School District () director of education , the Framework for Continuous Improvement DVD has been a decade in the making.

“It turns 10 this year,“ Lehman said.

According to Lehman, in order to commemorate the district’s decade-long progression for professional development and increasing academic rigor, a video documentary was commissioned to narrate the district-wide efforts of teachers and administrators.

“We put together a DVD that will take us to the next 10 years and give us an indication of where we have been, where we are now, and where we hope to go,” Lehman said.

The video shown during the committee meeting was an approximately10-minute trailer of a feature-length version. The longer video is expected for wide release to the public via the school district website. Another shorter version of the documentary will be distributed to realtors.

According to Lehman, the Framework for Continuous Improvement makes UMSD unique among its neighboring school districts, including those in Bucks and Montgomery counties.

“They have curriculum cycles, but they don’t have a systemic process like this,” she said.

According to several school district websites, a curriculum cycle involves the evaluation of a curriculum after a set period of years, as compared to the Framework process at UMSD.

As explained in the video and on the district website, the Framework for Continuous Improvement provides a continuous cycle of “curriculum, instruction, assessment and professional development,” as defined by phases to further the development of a “standards-base curriculum within each cycle area.”

The phases are as follows:

• Planning
• Development
• Implementation
• Assessment
• Monitoring

Presented in Black and White

The trailer video was divided into two portions. The first was a look back at the 2003-2004 year of the framework process, with interviews from some of the framework leaders. This portion of the video was also presented, tongue-in-cheek, in black-and-white.

“My most valuable experience has been to be able to be a part of the panning for the future of the World Language Department in the Upper Moreland community,” John Grande, world languages teacher said in the 2003-2004 footage. “And thus, provide for more excitement and more ways for being the best teacher I can be to my students.”

Also in this earlier portion of the video trailer, superintendent of schools Dr. Robert Milrod spoke from inside a district school bus to further explain the value of creating a framework process.

“Why are we taking this shot from the school district bus parking lot?” Milrod asked into the camera. “It’s to create a visual analogy.”

Milrod explained that the school district’s bus replacement cycle replaces a few buses at a time to the point when the entire fleet becomes refreshed. He said that the process is equivalent to implementing a curriculum framework.

“It works here with our school buses, it should also work with our curriculum,” Milrod said.

The second portion of the video featured footage from more recent years, and was shown in color. Many scenes included teachers and students working side-by-side in .

Such scenes provided the examples used to explain each of the areas of the continuous cycle, as well as its defining phases.

For example, according to Grande, who was interviewed a decade later, the world language framework committee was in its phase 1, which involved researching best practices and continuous surveys to compare, review and refine the curriculum.

In light of the committee’s research, Grande shared that the high school was awarded a Golden globe in the last two consecutive years by the Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association.

A Framework Built by Many Hands

According to Milrod, with his opening voiceover in the video, the framework has become a part of the language and discussion at the schools and district levels as it continues to develop into the document that provides the vision of the district’s learning community.

“One of the things that I’m so proud of is that we believe in distributive leadership,” Milrod said, prior to the video screening.

In terms of the Framework’s main focus on curriculum, instruction, assessment and professional development, Milrod said that the committees make the decisions. He added that the framework leaders (teachers and district administrators) form these committees.

“And that process has been very helpful, I think, in encouraging all our teachers and all our administrators to become leaders,” Milrod said.

Milrod said that now about 50 percent of the staff do not know a time when there wasn’t a framework in place.

He also reminded the school board committee that when the framework progress started, no scope and sequence document was available at the time, something which the Framework will ultimately provide.

“Throughout the years, the board, teachers and community have been very supportive of the framework plan,” Milrod said.