THE VIVA (VISION IDEA VOICE ACTION) PROJECT Authoritative, Authentic Public Policy Directly from Classroom Teachers

Building a System that Drives Effective Teaching & Student Learning  The VIVA Project seeks to bridge the gap between policy and practice by building online platforms where classroom teachers collaborate to provide specific input on policy issues.  VIVA Project based on a few simple principles:  Classroom teachers need & want systemic policy solutions that support highly effective teaching  Education policy at every level must link to instructional practice  Policy needs to be created from the classroom out and from the context in  Translation from technical practice to system incentives is often incomplete

VIVA Project is a One of A Kind Tool to Gather Unvarnished, Authoritative Input from Teachers  Proprietary web-enabled platform  Deliberative conversation  Actionable solutions  Unit of change—federal & state  Create the incentives that enable effective implementation at district & classroom  Put students at the center of policy, through their teachers 

New York Demonstration Project: VIVA Teachers & State Teacher Evaluation  70 ordinary classroom teachers accomplished more than an entire 50 person task force created by state legislation  Why? They want more respect for their profession & know evaluation is a lynchpin  They shared their hard-earned expertise to think deeply together about what would be meaningful evaluation that makes them better teachers  They deliberated about implementation hurdles and carefully balanced the perfect and the practical

New York Teachers’ Created a Roadmap for Regulations Specific Recommendations A Detailed Report Written by Classroom Teachers

Overview of How the Dialogue with Teachers Operates  Identify goal  Frame discussion & build web platform  Recruit teachers (3 tactics)  Reach existing teacher networks  Recruit new targets with lists  Collaborate with Influencers in the Social Sphere to recruit teachers (ORBIT)  Moderate deliberative conversation—generate creative ideas  Form representative task force to capture creativity of the group and create a specific actionable plan  Share action plan with public/policy maker  Activate participants to support implementation

Two Possible Approaches for Illinois  Option 1:Have teachers create new policy and place it at systems level  Option 2: Engage in deliberative conversation to identify a frame of reference that will obtains teacher buy-in & ownership for long term implementation  Added Tool: Elements of the methodology create leadership opportunities from communication strategies & can be used as a stand-alone approach

Quantifying Influence in the Public Debate  The ORBIT Report® is considered the most rigorous, in-depth and insightful analysis of mainstream and social media  Analyzes specific measurable facts and statistics about various websites (in multiple languages)  Applies a proprietary algorithm to identify the extent to which discussion on a website impacts a brand, issue or organization  The five specific factors which underlie the ORBIT™ methodology:  On-site Engagement - Depth of engagement of visitors on a given website;  Reach - The number of people who are likely to confront information about a subject;  Bias - The extent to which the perspective of a website helps or hurts the general goals of an organization;  Influence - The degree to which a website’s perspective is picked up and linked to in dialogues and discussion on other websites;  Topical Frequency - The regularity with which a topic is discussed

The Message & Medium is Quantified Approximately 5000 Sites Scanned Daily

Following Topics Over Time and Across Platforms and Quantify Impact by Volume and Influence

Suggested Next Steps  Determine outcome sought  Strategic communications program  Deliberative discussion to identify evaluation elements or process from Illinois teachers  Reflective conversation to obtain feedback on possible evaluation elements from Illinois teachers  Meet with VIVA leadership to receive detailed briefing on ORBIT & review project proposal  Have strategy session with VIVA leadership  Questions: