“The world keeps changing; it’s time for us to change as well.”
These words, spoken during a Goalbook-sponsored webinar called “Three Effective Strategies to Address the Special Educator Shortage and Staff Burnout,” inspired a group of North Carolina special education leaders to approach change management within their special education program in a new way.
Mooresville Graded School District in North Carolina has been a partner of Goalbook for over three years. The district’s special education leaders attend nearly all of the Spotlight Series sessions as the webinars have proven to be valuable and transformative for them.
Goalbook offers free Spotlight Series webinars exclusively for district special education administrators as part of our holistic approach and commitment to support school districts and the special education community. The webinars feature expert presenters across multiple areas of practice in the special education field.
Mooresville’s Team Gained Fresh Ideas to Transform Their Program
Mooresville Graded School District has a five-year strategic plan, and one of the priority areas is to recruit, grow, and retain staff. As part of their own ongoing professional learning, the district’s Exceptional Children leadership team attended a Goalbook-sponsored Spotlight Series webinar presented by former superintendent and nationally recognized special education consultant, Nate Levenson in the spring of 2023. After attending the webinar, the Mooresville Student Services and Exceptional Children leadership team was inspired to think differently about solutions to support their district’s goal.
Ms. Shelley Laska, now a retired Compliance Specialist at Mooresville, shared that the presenter “said things I’d never believed in before. He brought up a lot of topics for us to really discuss how we can revamp special education and how the roles of our teachers can shift and change.”
“We learned through COVID-19 that what we didn’t think would work for students and staff might actually be a huge benefit,” said Dr. Sandra Albert, Chief Student Services Officer. “We learned that people are different, have different experiences in the teaching profession and they showed different strengths with online learning. This was reinforced by what we learned in this particular Goalbook webinar.”
The webinar’s audience was challenged not to get stuck in their past thinking. “Nate said that you’ve got to grow within this profession … what you did five years ago may not work now,” said Ms. Laska.
The Goalbook Spotlight Series webinar sparked outside-the-box thinking for the Mooresville district team, who began to brainstorm needed changes to support their special education teachers.
Key Learnings the Mooresville Team Put in Place
Mooresville Graded School District’s Student Services and Exceptional Children leadership team, led by Dr. Sandra Albert, the Chief Student Services Officer, showed audacity, courage, and open minds in their approach to change management. They revamped their special education program in the following distinct and practical ways as a result of the webinar:
- Streamlining Meetings and Paperwork
One of the strategies presented in the Spotlight Series webinar to reduce teacher burnout was to streamline meetings and paperwork because these are big reasons special educators leave the field. The first key step to doing this is to really believe it’s possible.
Mooresville took the first step and not only believed it was possible to streamline meetings and paperwork, they also took the following actions to make this happen:
Changing the Format of Regularly Occurring District Meetings
The leadership team previously held EPIC (End Paperwork Insanity Class) Mondays monthly after school for 1.5 hours. The barriers to holding meetings in this way were: 1) each school ends at a different time, so some teachers had to stay extremely late and others had to leave early; 2) the leadership team had to present twice to different groups; and 3) there was minimal teacher engagement.
After the Spotlight Series webinar and rethinking these meetings, the new plan, which was tried out in the 2023–2024 school year, was to set aside five full days throughout the school year with the teachers and get substitutes for those days.
A full day started with focused training sessions in the morning. In the afternoon, teachers had the option to attend work sessions with district specialists for support and collaboration, or to return to their buildings to work independently. New staff and teachers teaching the extended content standards received individualized training in the afternoons.
The leadership team received great feedback from teachers, and they noticed significant teacher engagement with the training.
Using Goalbook Toolkit to Improve Teacher Effectiveness
To further support special educators and help make their processes more effective, the leadership team encourages all special educators to use Goalbook Toolkit.
One particular way the leaders encourage all special educators to use Goalbook Toolkit is in developing IEPs with more focused, data-driven present levels of performance. This has resulted in multiple positive outcomes for the district:
- Special educators have become more effective in designing instruction because they’re focusing on how a child functions within an educational setting.
- Special educators are now better able to provide parents with a detailed progress report on their child’s academic, functional, and social strengths instead of solely listing personality strengths.
With special educators district-wide using the same resource, both the IEP team’s communication and the transition from one teacher to the next is now more efficient.
- Condensing District Messaging to Every Other Week
“Instead of sending multiple emails throughout the week or the month, we condense all of our messaging into every-other-week messaging in the Monday Message using a slide deck,” said Ms. Laska.
The Monday Message includes district announcements, resources, and professional learning opportunities for teachers. The message also praises schools or team members with high usage of Goalbook Toolkit in developing and implementing IEPs.
Dr. Albert said, “The amount of time that we put into the continuous flow of information has really helped reinforce our teachers’ behaviors.”
- Allowing Staff to Play to Their Strengths
No one can be an expert in everything, and the Spotlight Series webinar challenged the audience of special education leaders to see if that is what we assume and expect of special educators.
“It’s an unreasonable expectation,” Nate said. “Stop pretending everyone is good at everything. Ask them what their strengths are, and then let them play to their strengths.”
Mooresville heard that message loud and clear, and they are letting teachers lean into their strengths. In the upcoming school year, some schools will have one teacher completing most of the initial paperwork for their school (referrals, transfers, etc.). The other teachers will have a higher caseload, but will only complete annual reviews and re-evaluations.
This shift in practice has been communicated to all teacher leads. The district leadership team will meet more often (bi-weekly) with them to provide on-going training and support as they work through this change.
Mooresville’s Special Education Leadership Team Models a Growth Mindset
The Mooresville Graded School District’s Student Services and Exceptional Children leadership team has created an environment of trust and support, resulting in a growth-mindset culture in which educators feel safe enough to take risks and try something new. They model this through their own ongoing learning and willingness to change.
Dr. Albert reiterated, “If we have to make changes along the way, we’re flexible.”
Learn more about how Goalbook supports districts.
