Last week, Nido hosted a four day in-person Adaptive Schools Foundation Seminar led by our MS Principal, Miss Sheena MacLeod. Members of the Nido Administration and teaching staff attended the course as well as faculty members from Santiago College. The goal of Adaptive Schools Seminars is to develop the collective identity and capacity of organization members as collaborators, inquirers and leaders.

“Adaptive Schools is transformative. Organizations change and grow in the same way that students do. By building capacity in our teachers and leaders to be better collaborators and inquirers, we shift from being a school to a truly learning-centered community. The more we have members of our team trained in Adaptive Schools, the more we increase the productivity, efficiency, and efficacy of Nido,” explains Patricia Podorsek, Nido’s director of Teaching and Learning.

The training not only explored what makes teams effective but also how to develop skills as facilitators and informed group members, both in informal and formal settings, small and large groups. It took participants beyond the idea of professional learning communities to their actual implementation, describing specific ways to weave the collaborative fabric of a faculty, develop group member skills, and acquire the principles and understandings to engage in a continuous cycle of team and individual improvement. Adaptive Schools is the “how” of professional learning communities: how to behave in groups, how to lead them, and how to facilitate them for improved leading, teaching, and learning.

“This year, we were pleased to welcome nine school leaders from Santiago College. This kind of partnership with our fellow schools in Chile helps improve the quality of education for students across the country. We are better when we collaborate, sharing insights and solutions that can help us all grow,” says Mrs. Podorsek.

In the four-day Adaptive Schools Foundation Seminar, participants developed an increased capacity to initiate, develop and sustain high functioning groups, gained new lenses for diagnosing the stages and phases of group development and expanded repertoire of practical facilitation tools among others.