Abbie Forbus is the Director of Teaching and Learning for KnowledgeWorks. She taught for 15 years in Lindsay Unified School District in California starting in K-2, then high school counselor and eventually became Dean of Culture. In her new position, Abbie works with learning communities across the country to coach them in redesigning learning structures toward personalized learning.

I have participated in several convenings with KnowledgeWorks since 2009 and learned about Abbie who is Director of Teaching and Learning and the Back to School Toolkit. I was excited to have a conversation with her and even met her in person at iNACOL. Below are excerpts from the podcast.
 
I read that you worked with Lindsay USD for 15 years. Can you share your experiences there and what it meant to be the Dean of Culture?
I taught K-2, then became a high school counselor, and eventually Dean of Culture of Lindsay USD. Lindsay implemented the Performance-based System during my high school counselor role. I remember going through transcripts of incoming freshmen from their 8th grade year and encountered three transcripts in a row that had a 0.0 GPA.  After starting PBS, where every learner was required to show mastery before being promoted, I was embarrassed about some of the things we had done in that traditional world…like a 9th grader failing English 9, then putting them in English 10 the next year…because they could take English 9 in their senior year when they had more room in their schedule.

My former Kindergarten Students at their HS graduation (Lindsay HS)
 
Your role as Director of Teaching and Learning for KnowledgeWorks?

I get to work with various learning communities around the country who are working to create personalized, competency-based learning environments. At KnowledgeWorks, we are passionate about helping educators create learning environments that truly enable success for every student.
One of my favorite parts of this work is that we work with districts who are ready for this work, and we personalize it for them. Our teaching and learning team jokes sometimes about the idea of slidedecks…since we tailor everything to the district, none of our professional developments are ever the same. We do a lot of research on our districts and get to know them really well which was one of my hopes coming in to this job.  I worked in a rural community for all those years and would love when we had visitors come learn from us. I wanted to know what was happening “out there!”  These districts we work with love their students and want to do what’s best for them.
We use what we call the 10 district conditions for scale, which are things like learning environments, data systems, instruction, student supports, learning environments, professional development, leadership development, curriculum, assessment systems, technology, and partnerships. We know that when a district transitions to Personalized, Competency-based Learning, you can’t just talk about curriculum in isolation, We help districts create a system-wide plan to achieving their vision, understand opportunities for growth and build capacity for sustainable alignment in all critical areas.
 
You had an integral part in developing the Back-to-School Toolkit from KnowledgeWorks. Can you share the toolkit?
This culture toolkit is something that should be used throughout the year. Culture is something that learning communities and environments have to re-establish every year, but we all know we don’t just work on culture in August. We’ve drawn on the experiences of school leaders: superintendents, principals, teacher leaders who have done this work of Personalized, Competency based learning.
http://www.knowledgeworks.