About the District
Douglas County School System is headquartered within the Atlanta Metropolitan area, in Douglasville, Georgia. Consisting of 20 elementary schools, 8 middle schools and 5 high schools, this school district has an enrolment of about 25,500 students.
The Challenge
Douglas County School System was looking for a better way to monitor all staff initiatives. Principal, Dr. Sean Kelly, of Douglas County’s Chapel Hill High School, describes:
We wanted to be able to intelligently answer the question, “What is happening in your school?”
Dr. Kelly is very passionate about the effectiveness of regularly conducted classroom walkthroughs, and reinforces this statement by proclaiming, “The most important thing we do is visit classrooms and provide meaningful feedback to educators.”
They did not want their professional development initiatives to fade over time and therefore needed a solution to keep them organized and on track.
How Did Media-X Assist?
In 2008, Douglas County School System chose eWalk from Media-X and began with 13 licenses. They soon realized just how powerful this solution can be.
“Virtually everything we do to develop, implement and monitor improvement initiatives is done using eWalk” – Dr. Kelly
Quickly, this grew to 137 licenses, a 954% increase, and is current to this day.
What were the Final Results?
eWalk has assisted by substantially improving the staff monitoring process. Dr. Kelly proclaims, “eWalk has been the vehicle by which we have transformed the culture of our school.”
Dr. Kelly hit the nail on the head when he explained, “There are no (absolute) final results. eWalk is fluid and evolves with us as our needs evolve.” When it comes to anything involving professional development, it never ends. Dr. Kelly demonstrates this by revealing, “I learn something new about my students and my teachers each time I visit a classroom. The conversations that have resulted from walkthroughs have proven to be invaluable.”
eWalk provided this school district with a platform to build customizable data collection templates that focused on information relevant to their students, teachers and their schools.
Referring to the original question of “What is happening in your school?”, as Dr. Sean Kelly puts it:”eWalk allows us to intelligently answer that question.”