Wow! We have some talented kids!!
Since my last blog post, I've seen Lianna Mack finish 8th in the Division 1 Cross Country Championships, watched the best high school drama production I have ever seen in our Les Miz (involving upwards of 60 students), and watched 6 athletes compete in the Division 2 Swimming Championships, including one of them, Oliva Chao, opening the event with an awesome rendition of the National Anthem on her violin. That's a ton of Awesomeness in just a 14 day period!!
On top of that 56 freshmen scored above the 96th percentile with their composite score on the EXPLORE. And 43 sophomores scored above the 90th percentile on the PLAN. And 40% of all the grades earned by our students during the 1st quarter were As! Again, very good work by our students and faculty.
On top of that 56 freshmen scored above the 96th percentile with their composite score on the EXPLORE. And 43 sophomores scored above the 90th percentile on the PLAN. And 40% of all the grades earned by our students during the 1st quarter were As! Again, very good work by our students and faculty.
But, there is more work to be done...
22 freshmen failed to achieve a composite EXPLORE score above the 33rd percentile. The same can be said for 13 of our sophomores on the PLAN. And 119 students earned 203 failing grades during the quarter.
We have a plan for Wednesday for students to interact with their PLAN, EXPLORE, and ACT results and to discuss with teachers ways that they can access our curriculum such that it will help them get better scores in the future. And we have begun to talk in ARP revision about making changes that will allow us to have greater access and time with those students who have failing grades in our classes.
Which leads me to a greater conversation...
about something I meant to have us discuss in our August in-service, but we ran out of time. I've looked for a way to bring it up in staff meetings since, but we always seem to have an already full agenda. Since I know that most, if not all, of our faculty read this blog, maybe this a place to get the conversation started.
A conversation about what kind of school we are, and what kind of school we want to be. It can be a complicated conversation; one I've had lots of times in schools over the last two decades. As educators we can tend to dive into the minutia of what a school is and have lengthy debates about grading practices, course offerings, staffing plans, and schedules. But it can also be simple. As simple as this example from Rick Dufour, one of the founders of the PLC movement.
Dufour, in just about every session I've seen him give, has identified 4 kinds of schools: The Charles Darwin School, The Pontius Pilate School, The Chicago Cubs School, and The Henry Higgins School. And in every session I've been in, facilitated by a Solution Tree professional, the audience has been asked to identify which of these schools they currently work in, which school they want their children to attend, and which school they would prefer to work in. Of course, the real fun starts when the discussion centers on the respondents who select different kinds of schools for questions 2 and 3. :-)
I won't ask you to respond to these questions publicly in this space today, but as we move forward over the next 5-6 months with redefining who we are at SPHS, I'll ask you to keep these simple descriptors for these 4 kinds of schools in mind and to reflect on which school you want to work in:
The Charles Darwin School
Motto: We believe that all kids can learn – based upon their ability.- Student aptitude is fixed and not subject to influence by teachers.
- As a result, we create multiple programs or tracks to address differing ability levels.
- Tracking gives students the best chance of mastering the content that is appropriate to their abilities.
The Pontius Pilate School
Motto: We believe that all kids can learn…if they take advantage of the opportunity we give them to learn.- It is the teacher’s job to provide all students with an opportunity to learn by presenting lessons that are clear and engaging.
- It is the student’s job to learn, and if they elect not to do so, we must hold them accountable for their decisions.
The Chicago Cubs School
Motto: We believe that all kids can learn …something, and we will help all students experience academic growth in a warm and nurturing environment.- A student’s growth is determined by a combination of his/her innate ability and effort.
- Since we have little impact on either, we will create an environment that fosters their sense of well-being and self-esteem.
The Henry Higgins School
Motto: We believe that all students can and must learn at relatively high levels of achievement, and our responsibility is to work with each student until our high standards have been achieved.
We'll talk more about this in coming weeks and months.
Things I'm reading and thinking about this week:
The article discuss a research focus on so-called "positive deviants" and the power of studying the individuals who have the same challenges and resources as everyone else but yet achieve substantially better results. We all know that we have positive deviants in our school, both among the faculty and the students. What could we learn for our own practice by studying the ways they are successful?
Better Ways to Use Technology in Schools by Kristen Swanson
I use Kristen's stuff often. (Jumbo Jenga was a modification of something she shared over the summer.) Here she speaks in this podcast about educational technology. Take away? If you are using technology as a different platform to do something you did without the technology, you are missing the point.
Intended vs. Actual Learning by Cale Birk
I spent a bit of time thinking about this post over the weekend. While the majority of the article didn't seem to apply to me and my work, the final sentence, where the author challenges himself to improve his faculty meetings based on this dichotomy, has me questioning myself. Our staff meetings have not been a participatory as I would hope so far and I think I have to take some of the blame for that. Maybe I haven't done a good enough job of structuring them to be participatory and engaging. I'll need to think longer about how I can improve that.
Points of Entry by Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher
With CCSS and our own discussions about literacy, I found particular interest in this month's copy of Educational Leadership, which is focused almost entirely on "Tackling Informational Texts." Since this is a form of literacy that is applicable to all subject areas, and since this article offers some practical solutions to helping students, I thought I'd share it here. Enjoy.
Be careful out there!!
Intended versus actual..... At the beginning of the year when someone questioned the idea of faculty meetings after school ,,, you responded that we would be there cause we would value the opportunity. I view my classroom in the same way. Maybe students are assigned to me certain periods of the day, but I need to provide an engaging classroom so they can feel like it is important to be there. Providing that engaging classroom every hour, every day, all year long is a challenge. If my principal expects me to have an engaging classroom, then I expect my principal to provide an engaging faculty meeting once a month. The challenge lies in the "how" for for administrators in the same way it is a question of "how" for teachers in their classroom. I have found our faculty meetings to be more engaging this year. As teachers we may not be familiar with such a process. We may have to learn how to be more engaged. When I went from being a sage on the stage to a guide on the side in my classroom I had some resources to use for the transition. I had to help my students transition from a sit and get format to a learn by doing format. Raising the expectations for learning was a challenge that still exists today. Being engaged takes effort. We can raise our own level of engagement at faculty meetings. Challenge on! How about it colleagues ... will you prepare by reading the agenda and be ready to engage in our faculty meetings? Bring a reference to research that relates to one of the agenda topics?
ReplyDeleteI find myself getting frustrated during the staff meetings because I feel like we're constantly moving from an agenda of seemingly minor business items into much deeper discussions. This causes us, in my opinion, to do a poor job of both--there's too much discussion to effectively hammer out small decisions, and there's not enough time to really develop conversations about who we are and where we're headed as a school. I'm left wondering what our purpose is in staff meetings. What should be the focus of these relatively short chunks of time where we all get together--little decisions or big discussions?
ReplyDeleteIf it's little decisions, could they be made more efficiently through email surveys? By committees?
If it's big discussions, could we benefit from paring down the focus of each staff meeting to just one or two larger topics?