Hi! This Field Notes edition covers my visit to the San Jose Evergreen Community College District, and a new collection of five tools to strengthen your craft and make the work easier for you. (Note: For more snapshots of colleges, visit my Instagram.)
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Campus Visit Spotlight
Completing a strategic plan is one thing. Implementation is another. I had great fun visiting San Jose City College, Evergreen Valley College, and the District as they transition from planning to action.
Having fun is critical to campus morale.
It's a privilege to coach SJECCD this academic year!
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Resource Spotlight
A new collection of free professional development tools for college educators are now available.
These PD tools are based on effective practices I’ve used in my coaching work with colleges and write about through the Continuous Learning Institute. They are designed to help educators pause, reflect, and turn useful ideas into action.
The collection currently includes five tools.
The 3-Month Rule
One of the most common challenges in colleges is not starting new work. It is sustaining it. The 3-Month Rule is a way to help you implement initiatives, priorities, projects, etc., when the calendar works against you.
The Five Process Elements
Implementation problems are not always about the idea itself. Sometimes the issue is how the work was organized, communicated, supported, or managed during the planning process.
Use the Five Process Elements playbook to examine the conditions that support effective process planning and identify where greater clarity, structure, or attention are needed. It is especially useful when planning feels stuck but the reason is not immediately obvious. Ensure a seamless transition from planning to implementation.
Institutional Planning: Creating Common Language
Strategic plans, educational master plans, equity plans, enrollment management plans, and other institutional plans begin to be doable when everyone is clear about terminology.
Use this tool to create common language across your planning documents.
Avoid Costly False Starts in Grant Development
Before writing the proposal, use this tool to work through institutional capacity and budget so a promising grant opportunity does not become a wasted effort or an implementation problem.
The grant development reflection tool is designed to help teams slow down before they speed up. The goal is not to discourage grant seeking. It is to help colleges avoid spending significant time developing proposals for projects they may not be prepared to implement or sustain.
The 5E Learning Cycle
The 5E Learning Cycle is often associated with classroom instruction, but I have found it equally useful for workshops, professional development, presentations, and student services.
The five stages are: Engage. Explore. Explain. Elaborate. Evaluate.
The reflection tool helps you think about whether a learning experience gives participants opportunities to engage with the topic, make meaning, apply what they are learning, and reflect on what comes next.
It is a simple framework that can significantly improve how we design and implement learning experiences.
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Thank you for spending a few minutes with me. I appreciate the opportunity to continue learning alongside educators across the country who are doing the challenging but meaningful work of improving outcomes for students.
See you in the next edition.
Onward…
Dr. Al Solano
Founder, Continuous Learning Institute | About Services
A meaningful test of success is how helpful we are in contributing to our fellow human being’s happiness.
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