Dr. Perella briefs School Committee on Competency Based Learning

At the last Revere Public School Committee meeting Revere High School Principal Dr. John Perella gave a presentation on some work that’s happening at the high school particularly around teaching and learning.

Dr. Perella said for the past eight years or so the district has invested heavily into Competency Based Learning, or CBL, which is an innovative system of teaching and learning that supports students in a variety of different ways.

“We’re very excited to continue this implementation this year,” said Dr, Perella. “Tonight, I’d like to talk specifically about what we’re focusing on this year. There are five very general principles that drive CBL and teaching and they are that the learning expectations are explicit and students need to know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. That revision is an essential component of learning. In the past, in more of a traditional view, revisions were not utilized. We basically said that if a student didn’t get it on the first try they failed. We now know that in every capacity of humanity, that trying again, is an essential piece of that puzzle. Another component is that teachers and students recognize that there are many ways to show competency. There is not just one answer and even though there could be one answer there’s not just one way of showing that you understand what that answer is. Pedagogy needs to focus on these complex skill sets in critical thinking. That includes problem solving analysis.”

Dr. Perella said the last piece is that a student’s habits of work is an essential skill in the standalone piece to teaching and learning.

“This year we are really focusing on digging into these principles in each of the semesters and then utilizing what we call instructional rounds to see how they look in practice,” he said. “We are already doing instructional rounds, which includes a variety of stakeholders and administrators and we will be adding lead teachers as well as all the teaching staff to play a role in this. We are starting off small with some of the administrators at first, and what we do is we go around and we look for where there are learning expectations explicit in the classroom. We’ve already engaged this and we’re now starting to dig into principle two about revisions. The rounds that we will engage in this semester will include looking for both revision opportunities for students as well as the expectations are explicit. Then during semester two, we’re doing more of the same except on CBL principles three, four and five. Our hope is that by the end of semester two we will plan on adopting what we call schoolwide core competencies.”

Dr. Perella said core competencies are basically what students need to know, understand and be able to do in order to thrive in learning.

“We hope to also celebrate an annual CBL day at the end of the year as an appreciation for the hard work that educators are putting into this every single day,” said Dr. Perella. “Teachers are engaging in this extremely challenging paradigm shift in teaching and learning and we are very happy to see that we’re progressing this year. We hope to complete the year and really have a stronger foundation for these (five CBL) principles.”