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Debbie Hedgepath: My name's Debbie Hedgepath. I am the assistant superintendent of curriculum
and professional development with the Dale school district. One of the things that we
really focus on is understanding that this is a change. Implementing common core represents
a change, and one of the greatest assets we can have for our teachers is to make sure
that they have access to experts. So what I mean by those experts are people at the
school site who spend lots of time looking at standards and learning what standards are
really saying, comparing them to what we currently do and identifying how instruction will have
to change as we implement common core. So we invite teachers from every grade level
at every school site to get together and we go through a process of really diving in to
those common core standards and hold conversations around what are our most important key standards,
and what does student work in that area look like? As the teacher spend time together,
they become true experts in the common core. They can talk with their colleagues, with
at grade level teachers, with their teams and answer questions and be a resource. So
one of the things that we've done is really focus on building this experts at each site,
and each grade level. We've also looked at how technology fits in and it fits in in a
couple of ways. Our students have to be proficient in using the technology so we have some plans
to provide opportunities to students there, but we also look at what technology means
for us. Technology is a way to accelerate the good things that are already happening
so we use technology, our Beyond Textbooks program, specifically as a way for teachers
to connect to each other. It's a way that they can share resources and they can upload
lesson plans, they can identify activities or tasks or give those problem-based learning
activities that are really meaningful, and they can share those with teachers across
the district or across the state. When teachers have an opportunity to collaborate and to
share, good things happen. So we focus a lot of our technology attention in connecting
our teachers and accelerating that change process.