The day after Thanksgiving Break, all RCDS faculty and staff gathered in the Performing Arts Center to kick-off Professional Development Day, which was centered on Competency-Based Learning in learner-centered environments.

Eric Hudson is a facilitator and strategic advisor who supports schools in making sense of what’s changing in education. He specializes in learner-centered assessment, human-centered leadership, and strategic program design. Most recently, Mr. Hudson spent a decade at Global Online Academy (GOA), first as an instructional coach and ultimately as Chief Program Officer, working with schools around the world to rethink where, when, and how learning happens. Prior to GOA, he was a teacher at the middle school, high school, and college levels. The classroom is where Mr. Hudson developed his passion for designing learning experiences. He serves on the board of the Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools (ATLIS). His Substack newsletter “Learning on Purpose” has been featured in The Marshall Memo and The Educator’s Notebook.

Competency-Based Learning (CBL) is a framework that prioritizes the development of student skills such as collaboration, communication, empathy, curation, creation, reflection, and digital literacy, with mastery of those skills as the targeted outcome. The focus of competency-based learning is the transferable skills that students can gain from their school experience. The CBL framework is rooted in three concepts: Equity, Agency, and Transfer to create a learning environment where:

• Students are known and empowered to learn with the support they need to meet high expectations (Equity)
• Students have voice and choice in what, when, where and how they learn, and they collaborate with educators to design learning pathways suited to them (Agency)
• Students are able to extend what has been learned from one context to another, transferring their knowledge to as needed college, career, community engagement, etc. (Transfer)

CBL places the student’s performance at its center to ensure measurable growth and development in a particular skill set. The guiding principle is that students, when given agency and individualized support from their teachers, can unlock new levels of knowledge and competency. The benefits of CBL include deeper learning for all students, learner empowerment and ownership, assurance that no student misses out on learning, and a growth mindset.

Explaining what employing a CBL framework looks like for teachers, Mr. Hudson clarified, “All different forms of teaching and learning are part of a CBL environment.” With the goals of student agency, equity, and transfer, CBL is most effective when it is achieved through shifts from content to skills, from grading to feedback, from lessons to experiences, from time-based to performance-based assessments, and from teacher-designed to co-designed inquiry. Mr. Hudson also emphasized that it takes time and practice to incorporate these methods into curriculum and pedagogy.

A particularly energetic part of the day was the Design Sprint activity, where faculty members from across divisions and disciplines teamed up to review RCDS’s Portrait of a Graduate, identify one of its competencies, and brainstorm how it is achieved within their current class or unit. After the brainstorm, teachers were challenged to design new CBL units and discuss the long-term benefits for students of the specific competencies they target.

“One of my areas of focus is exploring opportunities for innovative approaches to teaching and learning that will best equip our students for success in college and beyond. We were honored to welcome Eric Hudson to enrich our deliberation on this important matter. I was especially proud to see our faculty brainstorming together to consider how their teaching, which is already excellent, might be adapted to extend the benefits of an RCDS education even further for our students.” – Head of School Randall Dunn

The day was a wonderful demonstration of Rye Country Day’s commitment to continually and thoughtfully evolve in order to provide our students an excellent education. Mr. Hudson will visit RCDS again during the January 2 Professional Development Day to lead teachers in the next stage in their exploration of CBL.

“It was inspiring to witness the collaborative, generative efforts of the RCDS faculty and staff throughout Eric’s visit and the whole Professional Development Day. We are fortunate at RCDS to have such a supportive school leadership team and talented employee group.”
 - Jessica Flaxman, Dean of Faculty and Employees