News

At its May meeting, the Career Ready PA Coalition showcased our collaborations with Covestro as examples of “Community Partnerships in Action.” Consortium Program Director Sarah Brooks and Covestro STEM Education Lead Ben Renwick presented an overview of the work and the impetus behind it. The meeting also featured presenters on “Employability Skills and Industry Credentials”, […]

Consortium veteran Jackie Foor became our new Executive Director on Monday and shared a few thoughts with our network in a letter. Watch our website to learn more about her plans for the future when a new school year unfolds next fall.

Educators and employers alike attending our Future Ready Partnerships Conference earlier this month found plenty of leads to follow up. Expressing a sentiment heard widely during the daylong event, Deer Lakes School District’s Assistant Superintendent Bobbi-Ann Barnes said, “I have a lot of emails to send out and phone calls to make—I’m excited.” She noted […]

The Consortium kicks off summer with two professional development opportunities. First up is an Introduction to Design Thinking for Education, a series of four half-day workshops beginning June 21 that will acquaint participants with the design cycle and how different Human-Centered Design methods can be used. Participants will leave with the knowledge and skills they […]

Coaching the Hampton High School students who participated in our Future Readiness Lab last year helped Scott Stickney take a few new tools into the Career Explorations Class he’s teaching this year. The Consortium piloted the Lab last year in collaboration with The Heinz Endowments and eight school districts as a novel framework for supporting […]

When Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab invited the Consortium to become a lead partner in launching Hear Me! in 2011, we saw it as an opportunity to help schools harness the power of “student voice.” The Hear Me! project aimed to help kids understand that their thoughts, feelings, and ideas were important, and to encourage […]

With her last day as our Executive Director coming up Friday, Mary Kay Babyak offered this farewell reflection on her time here and the people with whom she worked.

In 2007, we launched the Middle High Forum, a network that brought together districts aiming to improve the transition students make between middle school and high school. At the same time, we jettisoned our old name—the Mon Valley Education Consortium—because new programming, like the Forum, was attracting participants from an expanded geographic footprint. When the […]

Lots of Professional Development opportunities for educators aim to illuminate ways to personalize learning or demystify concepts like competency-based assessment and Universal Design for Learning. Participants in our Future Ready Alliance had a chance this month to learn how all three are working together at California Area School District, where educators are piloting the innovations […]

Educators who would like to learn the basics of design thinking and Human-Centered Design (HCD) are invited to register for a free, hour-long webinar on Wednesday, April 21 at 3:30 pm. Our trainers will give an overview and provide tips, tricks, and design methods needed to get you started using HCD in your districts, schools, […]