For years we thought that education wasn't evolving as fast as other areas of the human being. We decided to investigate different academic sources, among many others; proposals like project Zero at Harvard University, Hattie metanalysis, the area of brain, mind and education were giving crucial information on how we learn better, we decided not to go only on 1 line but to integrate them all.
Schools invest lots of money on teachers' professional development with little results or none. Transformation is not an event is a process, so we structured a program (Kotter 8 steps) that gradually helps teachers and schools to achieve short term wins with a long term vision, making it sustainable by transforming the culture into a culture of thinking (R Ritchhart). To achieve it, we provide 5 levels of training, each one integrates new tools and knowledge so the teachers have time to absorb and implement step by step. Training is not enough so we add other strategies like coaching, some are virtual (Zoom), also support from an international network of schools and teachers who share learnings through the VESS Platform.The training and coaching can be on site or virtually. Today there are thousands of teachers and students fully engage on active meaningful learning while developing thinking skills. The program is endorsed by the chair of neuroeducation of University of Barcelona Spain
The program has been implemented in schools regardless of their size, socioeconomic status, religion, curriculum, country or culture. It has been implemented in early childhood centers, public or private primary and secondary education. The spreading has been achieve mostly through worth of mouth, participation on conferences around the world, articles and books and alliances with other educational organizations and Universities like the University of Barcelona and the chair of neuroeducation. The program has been recognize and awarded as one of the most innovative proposals to transform education like "Premio Magisterio 2018" in Spain, the model has been also certified by the state of Florida USA. We are working now to make the VESS model more accessible through digital technologies.
There're many videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC43O5_cU3GGAFWZpglhL0Kg & https://vimeopro.com/edu1st/vess, you can also attend our annual summit in which teachers who have been implementing the model share their experiences and learnings, schools of the VESS network open their classrooms for visitors to see the implementation in real time or contact us at gpinzon@educationfirstinc.com
