How To Get Started

1. Initial Partnership Building Phase
   During this phase, we acquaint school and district leaders with our comprehensive approach to building a new kind of learning environment, share beliefs and principles and determine the level of alignment between our programs and services and your needs. To help you become familiar with our learning strategies and to engender support, we recommend orientation presentations for your staff and/or community. We may also match you with a site of similar demographics to talk with, peer-to-peer, in person or on-line. Another way of exploring a fit is to attend our annual conference. Bring your whole planning team and fully immerse yourselves in three days of real-world learning with MICROSOCIETY practitioners from all over the country.
   
   
2. Staff Orientation and Program Planning; Building the Micro- Mindset
   A belief in our guiding principles is essential to the success of all MICROSOCIETY programs. We work collaboratively with you on-site, from creation of your plan and time line to implementation. Institutionalizing our organization and management structures helps to ensure long term sustainability. Our National Certified Trainers work with you to help create an environment for real student empowerment, internal motivation, teachers as facilitators and instruction and curriculum content that make real-world connections throughout the day all year long. Once you’ve engaged MICROSOCIETY services, we help facilitate whole staff commitment and a Micro-mindset through professional development via large group and small group workshops and individual technical assistance and coaching.
   
   
3. Organization and Management
   Allowing the same individual volunteers to do all the work threatens the climate of an environment and diminishes the potential for creating a cohesive team. During this phase, we help you develop teacher leaders in part by helping them choose areas of responsibility they enjoy. We assist you in developing an effective Leadership Team and other MICROSOCIETY Alignment Teams. These teams improve morale, energize staff, help prevent burn out and support your change efforts. For educational leaders, they also assist with integrating curriculum and instruction around a Common Micro Purpose and help to ensure a unified comprehensive strategy for improving student learning, performance and achievement.
   
   
4. Academy and Implementation
   During the Academy Phase, students begin to learn what it means to be productive citizens of a society – their freedoms and their responsibilities–using MICROSOCIETY’s Lesson Plans and holding their first town meeting. This classroom work lasts six to twelve weeks.
   
   At the conclusion of the student orientation to citizenship in a school-wide economy, the Implementation Phase begins with the creation of student run business ventures and government agencies. These centers of applied learning provide the hook for students to make school relevant to their lives and motivate them to want to succeed. By connecting the daily curriculum to life, these activities provide a natural platform to purposefully engage parents and the community in their evolution. The result – students learn and practice 21st Century skills in class and “on the job” by managing their own miniature community, not on-line, but in real-time, for one period a day. As constructive communication and effective group processes are established, the thinking skills necessary for mastery and retention of classroom content are developed and practiced daily. Internalizing the content and applicability of the basics occurs naturally.
   
   
5. Continuous and Systematic Professional Development and Leadership Coaching
   All MICROSOCIETY National Certified Trainers are highly respected senior educators and administrators who integrate their academic expertise with their extensive experience in MicroSociety programming. Approximately 20% of the trainer’s time is spent in large group training, exploring the reasons for the new teaching and learning paradigm and behaviors, mindset and techniques needed to be successful; 50% is spent in small group workshops demonstrating key methods and techniques for reinforcing the connections between curriculum and the real world activities, instructional strategies, and vertical and horizontal team alignment and planning for effective implementation; 20% is observing and providing feedback and coaching to individuals along with off-site technical assistance and email journaling; and 10% is evaluating and assessing program progress.


6. Family and Community Engagement Phase
   Meaningful family and community engagement is the hallmark of successful MICROSOCIETY programs. By helping teachers accelerate real world connections and requiring minimal supervision, these Stakeholders discover they have valuable skills, talents, and experiences to share. The resulting feeling of fulfillment causes them to become advocates for the school and district and loyal partners of teachers and children.  By sharing their “real world” expertise with the children, these partners recognize the profound impact of the program and their relationship to it. This kind of real engagement reflects the best of your community – the neighborhoods where your students live, the places where they congregate and their families work, and the overall culture. For the students, a unique apprentice-like relationship develops, filling the need students have for interaction with caring adults while building workplace readiness, citizenship and entrepreneurship skills. MICROSOCIETY helps facilitate orientation meetings for parents and community members. We help you explain the reasons for the school’s shift to a student-centered learning model, the changes expected in student learning and in academic performance and the parents and partners’ important role in supporting the new learning environment.


7. Reflection and Celebration
   Reflecting on progress made, holding "conversations" openly and candidly about attitude and challenges toward the work, and committing to needed modifications for the future are essential, non-negotiables commitments of time and resources for your MICROSOCIETY learning community to succeed. All stakeholders: teacher facilitators, administrators, students and parents must have time to listen and be heard by each other. Time set aside for adults to hear various student focus groups offers perhaps the single most helpful staff development opportunities of the year, enabling the entire community to move forward with a unified purpose and renewed commitment. Research shows that constantly and consistently reinforcing positive behavior and celebrating every possible success creates independent teachers and learners and an interdependent team - the kind of combination that is necessary to produce the best and long lasting results.
   
   
8. Networking
   Opportunities for MICROSOCIETY member schools, after school sites and district/organization staff to interact on substantive issues, gain support from like-minded peers, share best practices and brainstorm new strategies, include Regional Forums, Leadership Academies and the Annual National Conference. The organization’s newsletter and this web site also provide constant updates of the latest and greatest tips and tools from headquarters and success stories from our member sites. Member contributions or success stories and good news help us help you spread the word - as we all need a boost now and again.
   
   
9. Assessment and Evaluation
   Trainers provide ongoing assessment and evaluation through a variety of instruments and strategies. These include the use of authentic assessments and student, teacher, parent and program rubrics. Periodic review sessions are held throughout the year for program reflection and adjustments and a year-end review session is held which establishes continuity from one year to the next. MICROSOCIETY Trainers meet with the Program Team at the home office to evaluate site progress and collaborate around improvement strategies six to eight times per year. In addition, our Trainers provide Interim Progress Reports after each training visit and continually monitor and assess implementation progress through the use of MICROSOCIETY’s Benchmarks, Program and Student Assessment Tools, and Performance Rubrics.
   
   
10. Sustainability and Ongoing Support
    To jump start and sustain Stakeholder engagement, the year typically begins with a parent/partner orientation and progress update is followed later in the year with additional activities when parents, partners and district /organization officials observe students “on the job." MICROSOCIETY trainers and other MICROSOCIETY staff are available to help you secure and maintain the support of the district and business community. This investment is essential to support the growth, maturity, and development of students and their ventures and agencies as well as to ensure long term program sustainability. If you would like us to visit you and help rally your business community, check out our calendar to see when we will be traveling near you! Or call us at (215) 922-4006.