Keeping you informed on the latest TLA activity supporting the Moonshot Moment!
Your Monthly News & Updates for August 2017
 "What does it take to create a Moonshot Community with caring, compassionate, curious, lifelong learners who will improve our world?"
- This is the framing question behind everything we do at The Learning Alliance!
Upcoming Events

September 25th -  Moonshot Monday Open Collaborative, 4:30 - 6:30pm @ TLA Office 

September 26th, 27th, & 30th - Moonshot Rocket Bus @ Vero Beach Museum of Art 

September 27th - Moonshot Community Action Network (MCAN) meeting @ Indian River County School District TEC

September 30th -  Moonshot Weekend Institute, 8am - 2pm @VBE 
Luanne Lewis, Teacher at Rosewood Magnet Elementary shares how The Learning Alliance's Collaborative Classroom training has:
  • Provided her with resources and techniques to make learning visible for students
  • Gear her classroom to be student inquiry driven and
  • How the techniques she has learned helped to transform the life of an English as a Second Language (ESL) student

Moonshot Partnership Launch
The Learning Alliance and eight elementary schools launched their 2017-2018 partnership on August 16th, with an emergent learning design challenge:  What does it take to make public and visible meaningful metrics around social-emotional, foundational and applied literacy skills such that student progress can be showcased throughout the year?

Dr. Mark Rendell & Barbara Hammond opened the event: 


Dr. Mark Rendell, School District of Indian River County - Superintendent 
Barbara Hammond, The Learning Alliance - CEO


All partnership schools participated in this event and shared their best thinking on how they will implement their partnership program: 


Indian River Academy 


Sebastian Elementary

Pelican Island Elementary



Fellsmere Elementary

Rosewood Magnet



 Vero Beach Elementary

 Glendale Elementary


Citrus Elementary

Thank you to all the School District Personnel, Principals, and Teachers who attended. You are invaluable partners in helping 
our community reach its Moonshot Goal!!!

The Making of a Lesson - featuring Mary Chavers & Megan Stranzin
The Making of a Lesson is a documentary video series that follows elementary school teachers Mary Chavers and Megan Stranzin as they create a personalized lesson plan from start to finish by utilizing techniques and resources they learned through participating in The Learning Alliance's professional development series. 

Get a glimpse into the lesson plan creation process as they converse and provide insight into how teachers can create engaging, standards-based lesson plans themselves.

By creating personalized lesson plans that are aligned with standards while meeting students' needs, teachers afford students the opportunity to make educational gains that often meet or exceed the gains made by their peers.

This is more critical than ever considering that many students living in Indian River County are living in poverty or their families are considered working poor. Students who live in poverty often lose as much as two months of literacy and over two and half months of math knowledge they learned in the previous school year because of the summer slide (attrition of knowledge and skills students learn during the school year because they are not engaged in learning over the summer months). 

Moonshot Institute Workshop:  An Awfully Big Adventure in Social Emotional Literacy
Improving teacher effectiveness and success through professional development is more crucial now than ever before due to the mounting pressures to raise standards to motivate and challenge students.

Experts in the education field agree and research has consistently shown that teacher professional development is a necessary support for educator effectiveness and improves teacher success. 

With that in mind, dedicated educators came together on August 5th, their last Saturday before going back to the classroom, for a powerful and energizing professio nal development training. 

They had an opportunity to learn: 
  • Why it is fundamental to develop the social-emotional capacity of their students
  • Structures and routines that create the psychological safety for students to be ready to learn
The resources and tools the teachers acquired at the Moonshot Institute Professional Development enhance their efficacy as educators, which research has shown to have a strong correlation to increased student achievement.


Based on the content of the week-long Moonshot Summer Teacher Institute, it was a whirlwind day of connecting, creating, and committing to starting the school year building strong classroom communities.



Educator and author Wanda Lincoln guided participants through an exercise to identify the values that drive their instruction and how to create a classroom culture rooted in those values. 




Teachers learned the importance of connection and the neuroscience behind why it matters for learning.



Thank you to our Moonshot Community Partners for the support that makes these opportunities possible!

Make a Difference: Volunteers Needed
The Learning Alliance is looking for volunteers to tutor struggling Kindergarten students on early literacy skills at the same time each week. TLA is happy to announce that we will offer 4 volunteer training sessions for the 2017-18 school year.  The training dates are:  

Thursday, October 19, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Thursday, February 8, 2018

Each training session will be from  9:00 to 12:00 at The First Presbyterian Church. 

New volunteers are strongly encouraged to attend a training session, and returning volunteers are always welcome to attend a "refresher" session.  

The training sessions provide an opportunity for volunteers to practice the specific activities they will use during their one-on-one tutoring sessions with kindergarten students using the research-based Fundations curr iculum.  All materials will be provided at the training sessions.  

For more information please contact Pat Shaw at  [email protected]   or by phone at   772-321-4133 .


The Learning Alliance | www.thelearningalliance.org
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