Are your students developing their own project-based learning ideas? Are anti-racism and social-emotional learning core components of your curriculum during this COVID-disrupted year?
Guiding district leaders in implementing and sharing these and other innovative instructional strategies is the goal of The Canopy, a new project launched by the Clayton Christensen Institute think tank and nonprofit Transcend.
“We see this as a way for school leaders and superintendents to access information they’re unlikely to find elsewhere,” says Chelsea Waite, an education research fellow at the Christensen Institute who’s leading the Canopy project. “It’s a door into a community of other school leaders who are also innovating.”
Educators can visit The Canopy website to search by 80-plus tags and practices—such as social-emotional learning—to find ideas for how other schools are embedding the approach into their curriculum this year.
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Users can also navigate the site by type of school—such as high school or charter. This site can also be filtered by geography and demographics.
School profiles are being built out as administrators add details about their approaches, Waite says.
For instance, an administrator could explain how their school or district turned SEL from a small component of the school day into a core part of the curriculum, she says.
The site will also provide contact information for districts.
“School leaders can get access to others who are trying to do something really new in this moment,” Waite says. “They can learn from others who can provide a light forward to implement student-centered and innovative models during COVID-19.”
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