PROJECT THINK

Project Think

Project Think Logo beside an image of a lightbulb containing gears.

Since its creation in 2012, the Houston Learning Network has been dedicated to sending Houston ISD teachers to professional development programs at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We've concentrated on sending groups of teachers and administrators so that we can help develop a critical mass of practitioners and a thriving community of practice when teachers return to school and implement the skills they develop at Harvard.

In 2022, the HLN launched Project Think, a new initiative to better understand the impact of the organization's investment in teacher professional development. To lead this project, the HLN has engaged All Kids Alliance in the College of Education at the University of Houston to facilitate a developmental evaluation of the work of teachers and principals at two HISD schools, Travis Elementary and Oak Forest Elementary. The HLN wishes to help the teachers and principals deepen their understanding of what engagement with cognition, thinking, and understanding means and how they intend it to benefit teachers and students alike. Further, HLN wishes to underwrite the efforts at Oak Forest and Travis to focus on key elements in Project Think that are believed to produce the outcomes desired by the principals and teachers in order, to design a process of rapid-cycle continuous improvement.  The end results for HLN and the schools will be:

  • a more complete understanding of the theory of action behind Project Think,
  • a way of gauging the value of HLN’s investment in Project Think, and
  • a replicable process for enhancing the outcomes produced by Project Think, while maintaining accountability.

About All Kids Alliance

All Kids Alliance is Houston’s first advocate for “collective impact” and among the first organizations in the United States to embrace the StriveTogether Network’s Theory of Action (strivetogether.org). All Kids Alliance supports non-profit organizations in Greater Houston. It facilitates strategic planning, project management, logic model building, results-based meeting design, and the intentional pursuit of outcomes using the principles and practices of collective impact.

Faculty and Staff
Dr. Robert K. Wimpelberg: Professor Emeritus and Executive Director

Source: https://www.uh.edu/education/research/institutes-centers/