Micro-Investment

CHEERS TO YOU!

We are thrilled to celebrate the work of 142 educators in 23 TrueSchool teams across North Carolina and Nebraska!

Every school team submitted a unique and powerful TrueSchool Blueprint rich in student and educator voice, exciting new ideas, enduring learnings, and plans for growing in the next year!

You also invested over $12,000 in each other’s ideas. As one Nebraska TrueSchool Fellow reflected: “Several schools, including the NC schools, had amazing ideas that we can utilize when working towards our reading vision.”

Read on to learn more about the top investees, how to receive your investment and options for your school to reapply for the TrueSchool Fellowship in 2020.

Looking for School Design Team Blueprints? Click Here. 

 


Ezra Millard Elementary discovered during early Fieldwork that while students could identify the content area they were working on, they were not able to give specific details about what they were learning.

In response, the Ezra TrueSchool team launched clearer, standards-aligned, student-friendly language arts intended learning targets for first grade. In this pilot, they observed students owning and discussing their learning in powerful new ways. They are scaling this model to guide their entire building to write intended learning targets at each grade level in the next school year.

Feedback from Investors

  • “The impact on student learning was evident through the student testimonies on the videos in the presentation.”

  • “We are hoping to use their ideas to implement in our school since our goals were very similar.
    If we are going to borrow…we felt we should invest!”


Micro Elementary developed a reading initiative called #MicroReads to “model a love of reading for students” with daily read aloud, interactive “book tastings,” room transformations, students as “guest readers,” and access to more diverse books.

School Leader TJ Parrish reflects that “it has felt wonderful seeing this transformation. This initiative has rekindled the passion in our staff. I have seen a change in our teachers’ daily approach. Instead of ‘Prove your answer’ and ‘Can you give me three key details?’, we are asking kids, ‘How did that book change you?’ and ‘What did you love about that book?’”

Feedback from Investors

  • “Micro Elementary has a sense of urgency around their work.”

  • “This team showed the personal heart and soul in their blueprint. They put the personal touch
    into their work and I know the money will go toward that love they have for their students.”

This year’s TrueSchool Fellows have contributed tremendous time, energy, and ideas. In total, our 142 Fellows have dedicated over 14,200 hours to designing, testing, scaling, and sharing innovative learning models.

This year’s cohort focused specifically on the opportunity area: how might we dramatically improve early literacy achievement in our school?

Learn about, recognize, and reward the great work of this year’s TrueSchool Fellows! Check out this year’s TrueSchool Blueprints by clicking here. 

Why Micro-Investments?

Through our unique “crowd-investment” approach, we are distributing decision-making for how tens of thousands of dollars will be invested. We believe educators and local community members know best. They decide where this money goes based on the schools they think will achieve the greatest impact for students.

The schools you select as the top investees will also be:

  • invited to attend the 2020 TrueSchool National Convening as speakers

  • published as model case studies shared with a global network of education leaders

  • eligible to receive additional programmatic and financial support