The ESU 10 Teaching and Learning Department offers professional learning and support to school districts in 36 different service categories. As we have shared over the past few years, we use a process called SIMPL to record and monitor the services we provide to Nebraska schools. This report will detail some modifications we have made to our SIMPL Services for the 2023-2024 school year.
Our department reviewed our services in the summer of 2023 and determined that we needed to update some definitions and add additional services. We had a service called Non-Core Services which encompassed all of the non-core subject areas that schools offer to students. We removed the Non-Core Service and created individual services for the following areas: Social Studies, Fine Arts, Career and Technical Education, Health and PE, and World Language. We feel this change provides school districts with a more clear description of these services.
We also renamed our School Safety service to School Culture and Climate. We redefined the service to the following:
Service: School Culture and Climate
Definition and Example Activities: Training, support and consultation for sustaining, improving and re-establishing school environments that are conducive and supportive of learning. Examples: school safety teams and plans, crisis teams, psychological first aid, standard protocol response training, suicide prevention, staff and student wellness, self care, trauma informed care, equity.
We have been offering training for school librarians for the past few years. We did not have a specific SIMPL service for these educators. We have added a Media service to our offerings.
Service: Media
Definition and Example Activities: Training, support, facilitation with and consultation for media specialists, including librarians and library paras.
Our team will be reviewing SIMPL and other department level data in the month of December to determine next steps in meeting school district needs.