Monday, November 4, 2013

Informational Resources about what PBE is!

So, let's see if I can offer some links to help people better understand what Proficiency Based Education (PBE) is.  Below is a listing of several links and a brief overview of each that might help people better understand what PBE is.

The purpose of all this information is to help inform parents and community members in RSU 3 about what PBE is and to prompt further questions - FEEL FREE TO ASK QUESTIONS - that's how we understand!  Here goes:

First, here's a little primer to help you understand the reasons why our educational system has to change.  Many of you might have seen this before - its a Sir Ken Robinson Video entitled:  "Changing Educational Paradigms"  Here's the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Next up is a link is a link to Maine Department of Education's "Center for Best Practices" page that gives all kinds of resources to parents and community members to better understand what PBE is.  Please keep in mind this is a state level perspective, so local systems will vary regarding the details of how their systems work - including ours!  Here's the link:  http://maine.gov/doe/cbp/resources.html

Next up is a link also from the Maine Department of Education - but this one is a warehouse of all kinds of short videos archived there that help people to understand some of the great work going into the creation of PBE systems across our state.  These videos give perspectives from students and from teachers and offers a great insight for parents into what truly is going on in the classrooms vs. what some of the misconceptions are of this system.  Here's the link:  http://www.maine.gov/doe/cbp/videos.html

Another great link from the Maine DOE is their frequently asked questions site.  This site is geared specifically to help parents and community members from across the state better understand what PBE, and what it isn't.  Here's that link:  http://www.maine.gov/doe/cbp/faq.html

At this site - you can check out several "case studies" of school districts in Maine that have moved to PBE and are probably about 2-3 years "ahead" of RSU 3 in their work.  Here's that link:  http://www.maine.gov/doe/cbp/case-studies/index.html

If you'd like to see some of what's being done with PBE on a national level, here's a link to the Reinventing Schools Coalition, a national foundation whose work is to help school systems "reinvent" themselves into PBE systems.  Here's that link:  http://www.reinventingschools.org/

Another national organization that is working to help schools systems move towards PBE is the Marzano Labs.  RSU 3 is utilizing the "Art and Science of Teaching" as our instructional framework in this work.  Here's that link:  http://www.marzanoresearch.com/instructional-strategies

I think that is plenty of overall information for now. .. future posts will focus on how RSU 3 is implementing this system!


4 comments:

  1. Very informative links. This helped explain a lot in regards to PBE

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  2. Thanks Chris. . .. I was worried it might be too much! Let me know if questions pop up while your reading up on PBE - I'd love to help answer any in relationship to our work here in RSU 3!

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  3. Good morning Heather, I want to be an active part of your blog feedback community... I read some blogs here and there and respectfully offer that one link per blog post might be make the information more accessible if you are trying to reach a broad group. I know I'm just one reader, but when I saw all of these links it was overwhelming, because I have a 10-15 minute daily window to spend looking at this, but this single post was clearly going to take way more time than that. Since I am one who feels strongly about taking the time to learn more about PBE, I worry others who don't may just skip it altogether. Part of the beauty of technology - blogs and e-mails - are the ease of communication for the sender. I've found for myself that I have to clearly keep in mind the true time and energy of the people on the receiving end, or that good effort can be lost. Anyway, just two cents for you to consider!

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  4. Afternoon Kate! Thanks for the comments. .. you know its funny - my Doctoral Committee advisor is constantly on my case telling me I write too much and could say just as much with about 1/2 the words! :) The feedback about 10-15 minutes is very good feedback and a reasonable "target" to create for future posts! THANK YOU!

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