MET... MMMMetttttttttttt... Never has the word, met, sounded so beautiful. This past week our elementary school received information that we have met our goal of getting out of School Improvement within two years. It has been an insightful journey. Contrary to popular belief, there is one positive aspect to a school being placed in School Improvement: It opens eyes that growth has an opportunity to happen.
One of the major negatives is that change is rarely welcome. People tend to like the status quo and do not want the apple cart overturned. Our first year was fraught with change; change in vision, strategies, instructional methods and materials. Through it all, our staff preserved as we worked on our improvement.
Over the course of my educational experience I've collected a list of criteria that I believe create an atmosphere ripe for improving student achievement. Here I will call it:
Top 10 Ways to Improve Student Achievement and Create Learners
Disclaimer: This is by no means all that schools should be doing. Note that these are broad actions; there are many more detailed actions that need to be taken.
1. Share a Vision -- Review your school's Mission Statement. Your new vision should be tied to your district's Mission Statement, but build up on it. The vision should describe why it is important to achieve your mission statement while looking to the future. It should portray what will be achieved if the school is successful in achieving its goals. Everyone should be invested in the vision with a total buy-in from the entire school. You have to keep your eye on the prize and never veer from your vision.
2. Your School Should Be a Change Agent -- Change agents are passionate and driven about their vision. They make the tough decisions keeping what's best for the students in focus. When complaints about change and improvement come rolling in, and they will, pay close attention to your leadership and their decisions. If the leaders of a district do not want to upset the teachers or parents by moving forward, then your district's chances of improving are minimal at best. It's then that you find out what your leadership is made of in your school; from your school board on down to the principals.
3. Analyze Data -- Everyone involved must be data analysis; from the administration to the teachers. The secret to data analysis is to do something with the data. Many schools analyze the data and do not do anything with it. Celebrate your strengths, keep the focus on improvement and draw up plans on how you're going to improve on your weaknesses and implement it.
4. Introduce Students to Their Data -- As obvious as this may sound, many times teachers take on the burden of the responsibility and do not allow students to take ownership of their education. Involve students by sharing their data with them from standardized test data to classroom data.
5. Increase Rigor -- Schools are looking for miracles and the cure is right under their noses. Schools can do everything else in this list, including reducing class size, but if a school does not increase the rigor in instruction and learning, they are spitting in the wind. The key is recognizing the difference between hard questions and complex questions. Many teachers will tell you that they have rigorous assignments, when in reality, they do not. This one thing will make the biggest impact in not only learning, but in scores. If schools were to increase the rigor and complexity, the scores would take care of themselves.
6. Teach Students the Levels of Rigor -- Teach students the difference between recall, application, and strategic reasoning. When students learn the difference between how much thinking is required to answer questions at each level, it assists them in not only answering questions, but also in their learning. I've taught the levels to my former students and it was a defining moment in their careers as learners. This strategy paired with the above mentioned increasing rigor in instruction and assignments is a powerful combination.
7. Expectations -- Expectations go hand-in-hand with increasing rigor. Students will rise to expectations. Make sure the expectations are not set too low and demonstrate an expectation that all students can achieve the objectives of courses.
8. Teach Students How to Learn -- Students are taught what to learn. In order for them to be successful as learners, they also have to discover how to learn and to develop an appetite for learning. I'm convinced that one of the reasons some students do not succeed in college is that they sail through high school learning the prescribed curriculum, but never learn how to learn.
Students, at an early age have to be taught how to:
• self-regulate their learning
• set their own academic goals
• develop strategies to meet their goals
• reflect on their academic performance
9. Teachers as Learners Environment -- Teachers are all about instructing their students. Teachers should also invest in themselves. I'm referring to teachers actively pursuing knowledge because they want to know more. The best teachers continue to grow and don't rely solely on school designated professional development hours as their outlet to learn new concepts and ideas about education. This could include reading professional development books, blogs, or articles online. One powerful way to continue to grow as an educator is to join an online personal learning network and/or develop one on Twitter.
10. Teach Smarter and Not Harder -- Incorporate research-based teaching and learning strategies. In order to grow the district and its teachers need to be on top of the latest developments in research-based strategies.
These are the highlights of what I deem as important to creating an atmosphere that encourages student achievement. Our school still has changes that need to be made. Hopefully, we will strive to continue the good work we have begun and combine that with goals toward the future. Last year the number of schools in School Improvement across the United States was 12,599. That number is staggering, but if there's one thing I know about educators, it's that we are dedicated and we never give up. To quote the latest Robin Hood movie, we shall "Rise and rise again until lambs become lions."
Follow Pam Lowe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/prlowe91
"STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best, from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Author: Francis Bacon 1625
1. Fight Poverty....FOR REAL. It's no great mystery why failing schools are in impoverished neighborhoods. During the last eight to ten years we have seen a significant jump in the number of kids that now fall below the poverty line. Any guesses as to how this has effected their education?
Neighborhoods entrenched in poverty have higher crime rates, high rates of illiteracy, and the greatest number of one-parent households, with the absent parent being truly, truly absent or unknown. Any guesses how this might play out in a child's education? FIGHT POVERTY.
2. Repeat number one as necessary.
Chris Bowen
Author of, "Our Kids: Building Relationships in the Classroom"
The problem is child poverty -- kids coming to school sick, abused, malnourished, and sleep-deprived.
Give them *BREAKFAST*, lunch, a mid-day nap and healthy after-school activities while they're unsupervised in the afternoon.
Try that *FIRST* and then work on "the vision thing", K?
2. Abolish Race to the Top- another terrible that pits schools systems against each other in a deregulating orgy. Dereuglating crashed our economy and now we're letting it crash our school systems.
3. Fire Arne Duncan--when he was head of Chicago Public Schools he did great damage to those schools. No, he's pushing his terrible programs nationawide.
To create learners, empower them.
Reform places empowerment as reward for complying with processes of enablement which were conceived and implemented by those with power.
Renewal places empowerment first, seeing it as the means by which processes of enablement can be engaged.
And remember - schools exist to serve learners.
They do not exist to serve god, or religion, or country, or parents, or society, or the Constitution, or industry or capitalism or socialism.
They exist to serve learners.
So fundamental, so ignored in general in this debate. Like Yeats said, "Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire." For all the outrage I've seen spouted over that infamous WfS bucket animation, it seems that many still view kids as buckets as opposed to active agents in their education. Thanks for hitting on this.
1. Intrinsic Inquiry -- Intrinsic Scholar/Dynamic Learner (Super Ego) Enlightened Nature
A learner under own direction and assisted by directions of a teacher. Always asking for deeper understanding and meaning. Intrinsically motivated to learn and curious! Loves literature, loves knowledge, loves inquiry!
Grades Kill Inquiry and Creativity Eventually! Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic!
We lose creativity, innovation, curiosity, "thought experiments," "travels on the ship of imagination," and reasoning tools of the creative intrinsic mind with modern canned curriculum. Art, creativity, theater, and music play a key role in building intrinsic desire. The arts are the foundation of the visual spatial mathematical logical intelligence that is the essential 21st century skill. We over analyze and formulate grades and rubrics for all human activity and call this research and progress, yet we lose our creativity. The dawn of humanity is the intrinsic desire to better oneself; this coincides with that dawn of geometry, math, agriculture, science, astronomy, architecture, sculpture, painting, theater, math, agriculture, and humanity. The artist, mathematician, playwright, and architect are one in the same. Leonardo da Vinci an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. We need a Renaissance that creates erudite scholars not...
Sean Taylor M.Ed
http://reading-sage.blogspot.com/
"It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.” — Albert Einstein