Isolation vs. Community

Do you remember not seeing your teaching colleagues until after 3:15 on a Friday afternoon? Or one meeting a month as a faculty? How about not knowing the upper elementary teachers' names? I do and no one ever had second thoughts about those characteristics of teaching.
   

Fast forward 15 years into my career as an elementary teacher and those practices are considered ancient history. Relationships in isolation between, kids, teachers, and administration has been replaced by a strong sense of community.
 
 In a positive way, our educational culture has changed to benefit all of those involved in the educational setting. Communication and collaboration at Jones Elementary are two of the positive ways that community has impacted students and teachers. As teachers, we communicate daily with each other. The goal, of course, of this communication is to be strategic, share, and create the best practices to help our students succeed in our classrooms. I stop and pause to think about how isolated I felt 10-15 years ago and what a disservice was given to my students. Struggling to help my students reach their goals was almost impossible in that isolated setting. Having several months to accomplish their goals become a time study in hopelessness because collaboration was non-existent. It's a wonder I didn't leave the profession! When you have a strong sense of community like we have here at Jones, teachers feel more confident in their abilities to deliver the standards in the different content areas with a laser like focus. Why? It's because of meaningful collaboration that results from putting 4-5 professional teachers in a classroom with time to analyze data, discuss ways to improve, putting a plan into action, and then working for the benefit of all of those under our guidance.
   The benefits of having community over isolation are having a great effect on our students. They feel successful because ALL of the teachers have a stake in their success. We succeed when they succeed. It had to be a lonely feeling for my students when I was the only one there to celebrate their accomplishments many moons ago.

Thankfully, education has turned away from isolation and toward community. It really wasn't that long ago when examples I listed were the norm. We have come a long way in 10 years. I like the current path we are on with community being such a positive effect on our kids at Jones. Imagine what the next 10-15 years will bring.
   

Transparency Works

Recently I was asked by some of the teachers on my grade level team if they could come and watch me teach a close reading lesson. The thought that immediately entered my mind was, "Please don't come watch me teach reading. I don't even know how I am doing in reading right now. If you only knew how much I want to observe close reading myself." However, because they were on my team and it is my job to support them in whatever way I can, I just smiled and asked, "What time do you want to watch me?" I didn't realize it at the time, but by simply agreeing to allow them to observe me I had made our first grade team stronger.

 I was more than a little nervous. My students entered the room and I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. They were so excited to have the other first grade teachers watch them I found them even more engaged than usual. I had not realized until I watched the students interacting with the other teachers during the lesson that the students had developed strong bonds not only with me, but also with my team. The lesson ended and I looked at my teammates as if to say, " Okay, tell me how I can do it better." Instead I got a big hug and a few thank yous. More than that, we were able to improve our plans for the next few weeks. Now we were all able to look at close reading with the same perspective. I was able to pull ideas they used during guided reading and incorporate them into my close reading lessons and they were able to use what they saw during my lesson as well. Later that day during faculty meeting we were blessed to get to do learning walks in three of our other colleagues classrooms. They were also focusing on guided reading and close reading. Now we had a first grade perspective and a perspective across the grade levels as well. 

Teachers observing other teachers is a daily occurrence at Jones. We all know that we can expect learning walks in our classrooms. The key is to remember they are 'learning' walks. The purpose is not to compare one another to see who is the better reading teacher. The point is to learn from each other. In my opinion, watching another teacher teach a subject I am struggling in is the best professional development I can attend. My best ideas are generated when I collaborate with someone else. I feel blessed to work with others who are not afraid to be transparent and let me learn from them. So take those opportunities to watch others teach and don't be afraid to share what you are doing in your classroom. If I had been unwilling to trust my team then I would have missed out on some valuable input from my colleagues.  It is our willingness to learn from each other that makes us stronger and ultimately is what makes our instruction work.

From PD to PLC: The Next Step in Our Writing Journey

Learning is always occurring whether in the classroom
 or PLC; with students or with adults.  

If you missed the beginning of our writing journey this school year, you can read about it here. At that time I mentioned that the journey had just begun and this is only the next step as our journey to better meet the writing needs of our students continues.

As with most everything, it's through much collaboration
that our systems are perfected. 

With resources in hand, our building began to use the Lucy Calkins materials to help guide writing instruction with a clearer idea of what grade level rigor should look like. Our principal provided  an opportunity for grade levels to talk about writing during a half-day PLC. During this time, we were able to bring unit writing samples and talk about grade level proficiency. Although calibration was not our primary focus, it was definitely a great opportunity to start those conversations. Administrators, facilitators and teachers all sat around the table to get a better understanding of grade level work and participate in the process. The rich conversations were enlightening especially since the provided rubric is based on grade level standards instead of generalized indicators. The positive feedback indicated how the rubric focuses on what the student can do and matches those indicators to grade level proficiency. We walked away from our time with a deeper understanding and writing SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) goals set for our next writing PLC. Because of our current level using data to drive instruction as Miss Mills discusses here, this protocol was a natural next step. This protocol for analyzing student data was introduced by another school in our district to the principles, and the assistant principals and finally to the instructional facilitators. With this common message presented at the district level, we were able to see how the benefits of this protocol could help guide the conversations at our building.

Once a few modifications were made, we were ready to implement. One thing I greatly appreciate at Jones is not having the pressure for a system to be perfected before we give it a whirl. As with most everything, it's through much collaboration that our systems are perfected.

These PLCs occurred at each grade level in late November/early December. Fast forwarding to January, we again focused our professional development on writing and used an entire in-service day to meet with grade level teams to reflect on student progress toward meeting goals, score additional writing, and start the protocol again with the current unit of study. The current information will be incorporated into grade level interventions. Learning is always occurring whether in the classroom or PLC; with students or with adults. 

Community Partners and Mentors

What role does the community play in the success of a school? A big one! Our school could not be what we are today without the wonderful partnerships we have with our community and local businesses. Our community partners play many roles in the success of our school. Many of our programs and achievement would not be possible without them. Many times, schools associate school/business/community partners with financial support. Let's be real; money is always welcome in a school, and we never turn it down. But the roots of our partnerships go much deeper than financial support. Let's take a close look at the various roles and supports community partners and businesses play in our school:

Mentors. One question I get asked often is "How can we support your school?" The answer is simple. If you have an hour to spare each week and like kids, we can use your help. Our community volunteers spend countless hours mentoring at risk students. Many of our students do not have positive adult role models in their lives. A lot of our students come from single parent families or are being raised by someone other than their parents. If they do have both parents living in the home, they often times do not get to see them on a regular basis. The parents work blue collar, shift work jobs limiting the amount of time they can spend with their children. We know by personal experience and mounds of research the importance of building relationships with students. We have seen countless lives being touched by personal relationships that are built within the walls of our school. What a blessing it is for our students to interact with successful business men and women. It helps give them a vision for their future, so they can begin to build a pathway to the lives they dream.

Reading Buddies:  Research tells us the importance of children reading books. Students need opportunities to hear good role models reading out loud, and they need audiences to practice their reading skills. Volunteers can help students be better readers by being a reading buddy to a classroom, small group of students, or individual students.

Resources:  When dealing with at-risk students at a high poverty school, resources become a vital need. The term "resources" often triggers the thought of financial support, but that is not the "resources" I'm referring to. Our partnerships have opened a world to our school. One personal vision I've had since becoming principal of Jones Elementary School is to be a school that meets the emotional, physical, academic, and familial needs of the child. Although academics are important, we know we have to help students and families overcome a lot in order for our children to succeed. We have many community, business, and non-profit organization partnerships to help our school connect resources to our students and families. Community Clinic of Springdale (federally funded health clinic) partners with us to provide a school based health and wellness center. Ozark Guidance (non-profit mental health facility) partners with us to provide two full time mental health specialists and a case manager. Springdale Police Department provides classes to our families and students on various topics. The police department also provided the Sandlot Program during the summer. They travel to schools, apartment complexes, and area parks to provide activities for students during the months of June to August. Fellowship Bible Church of NWA offers a "Life's Healing Choices" class to interested parents to help them deal with hurts, habits, and hangups. Our  colleges and universities partner with us to provide education to families about post secondary education opportunities for their children. They also offer a myriad of classes to parents. Northwest Technical Institute offers an adult education teacher to support our Springdale Family Literacy Program. This is not an exhaustive list...just some hi-lights of the impact of powerful partnerships.

Safety Safety is the number one priority of all educators. We know without a safe environment, children will not learn. It is not uncommon for our partners to be seen helping students cross the busy street in front of our school. Our fire department comes to help carry students (literally carry students) across the street when the perfect rainstorm comes and floods our road.Our district has forged a strong, solid partnership with the Springdale Police Department. It is not uncommon for patrol officers  to stop in and walk our building to ensure our school is safe. Along the way, they stop and visit children with strengthens the relationship between our students and the officers.

Live Event Learning: What better way for students to learn than bringing in the experts to show kids how reading, writing, and math are applied in real life situations?  Children are most engaged when business leaders and community members visit classrooms to talk about their jobs. It helps our children to begin to goal set beyond the classroom into their future.

School Decision Making: We meet with our community partners annually through a community focus meeting. I start by welcoming them to the meeting, share the vision/mission of the school, and set the purpose of the meeting. After my brief welcome, I turn it over to the experts of the school....the teachers. They walk through our strategic action plan with the focus group. They explain things our teachers and students are doing to increase student achievement. Each teacher is assigned a table of community members. Throughout the presentation, tables are periodically allowed to have small group conversations facilitated by the teachers. This allows for questions to be asked in a less intimidating situation. At the end, we ask the community focus group a couple of questions: 1.  What evidence did you hear or see that we are working towards the mission/vision of the school? 2.  What suggestions do you have to make our school better? The answers are shared with the teachers and taken into consideration when doing strategic planning for the next year.

Financial: Our community partners do support our school financially. The biggest support they give us is for the Angel Tree that Wasn't Project. With the high poverty rate of our school, it is impossible for us to have an angel tree at Christmas. Who would take the angels? Several years ago, we started providing Christmas gifts, toiletry items, and food bags for all of our students. Our community and business partners have been invaluable with their support of this project.

There is no way possible to capture the importance of community involvement and partnerships in our school. They are an invaluable part of the culture of Jones Elementary. Everyone involved in the community partnerships benefit. The question is....who benefits the most? The students? The community partners? The teachers? The verdict is still out; each would say they are the greatest benefactor from the partnership. My challenge to the readers of this blog...if you are in education, what are the needs of your school? Who are some people in your community to help your school? If you are a community member, what resources can you provide to help the local school system?

We Read Because We Believe We Can Read

I teach all content areas in 5th grade and very much enjoy the variety of content I get to work with in doing so; however, teaching literacy to English Language Learners is the single most rewarding thing about my job. Saying that is actually quite surprising, seeing as I personally struggled with reading in school.  Being a native English speaker from a middle class family is a blatant cultural difference between me and my 27 students, but the fact that I struggled with reading as a young learner is one connection we most certainly have. Because of this, when I see them succeed in literacy I very much understand what that accomplishment means to them and their life and the freedom they will experience because of it.

When I start each new school year I ask my students what their favorite subject is and what their least favorite subject is. This is a part of an interest inventory that I conduct in order to learn a little more about my students.  The underlying question there is “what is your best subject and your worst subject” because I've found that they enjoy what they believe they are good at. This year the data collected wasn't much different than in years past.  22% of my class reported that reading was their favorite subject. Twenty-two percent. That’s only 6 out of 27 students. What I see in that number is loads of opportunity. When I was ten, I would have been right there with them. It wasn't until I no longer feared reading that I actually succeeded. It is my goal for each of my students to leave my room with confidence in their ability to read and to no longer fear it but embrace it.

One of the methods I use to develop a love of reading among my students is Close Analytical Reading.  The purpose of close reading is to teach students to access complex text no matter their reading level.  This has been extremely successful in my class especially with the implementation of digital text. Only 30% of my class started the school year at or above grade level in reading; yet, daily I challenge them to read above grade level, complex text.  The key has been scaffolding, asking text dependent questions aimed at pointing my students directly to evidence in the text that I want them to attend to and having open ended discussion about the purpose and meaning of the text. Some days this process is brutal, but I live for the moments in the day when I see wide-eyed “Ah-Ha”s all across the room. As the year goes on, those moments come more frequently and students begin to believe they can read whatever I put in front of them.  Once that transition occurs, there is no longer a ceiling on what we can read and the depth at which we can understand it.  Some days I look out at my class and think, “Are you really ten? Can this really be?” The reality is, not only are they ten, but most of them are still learning English! They inspire me beyond words and I am truly lucky to witness their strength and determination daily.

Below is copy of a close read we did last month, an excerpt from a letter that Leonardo da Vinci wrote to the Duke of Milan… it has been one of my students’ favorites!

“Most Illustrious Lord: Having now sufficiently seen and considered the proofs of all those who proclaim themselves masters and inventors of instruments of war, and finding that their invention and use of the said instruments are nothing different from common practice, I am emboldened, without prejudice to anyone else, to put myself in communications with Your Excellency, in order to acquaint you with my secrets, thereafter offering myself at your pleasure effectually to demonstrate at opportune times all those things which are in part briefly noted below:

I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy.

I have kinds of mortars, most convenient and easy to carry, and with these can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these causing great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment and confusion.

I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great that they would break them.

In case of need I will make big guns, mortars, and light ordnance of fine and useful forms, out of the common type. Where the operation of bombardment should fail, I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi (trebuchet) and other machines of marvelous efficacy and not in common use.

In short, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense.”

Jones Elementary Students Featured in International Publication

Children's Mathematics: Cognitively Guided Instruction has been a useful resource at Jones Elementary for the past ten years. Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) has been monumental to the shifts in mathematics that are expected for students to be successful with the Common Core State Standards. This research allows teachers to gain a deeper understanding about students' intuitive knowledge of  mathematics and how they can foster this development in ways that honor children's thinking while still making connections to deep mathematical content.

A second edition of the book was released in October 2014. Highlights include:

• how children solve problems using addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and base-ten
• the development of children's mathematical thinking
• instruction that encourages engagement in deep mathematical concepts
• connections between children's strategies and properties of operations

Also included in the second edition are online videos that capture children's thinking about mathematics and student to teacher interactions. Students from Jones Elementary are featured in the videos to illustrate and support teaching practices that honor the intentions of the Common Core State Standards.

Practice Makes Perfect with the Math Practices

My students are becoming better at math than me! While this may seem shocking, I love it because it means The Common Core State Standards are effective and having more of an impact than standards from the past. While memorization, procedures, and “tricks” in math help people get the right answer, there are no mathematical connections that transfer into middle school algebra and higher math courses throughout one’s education. One of the most important but often overlooked parts of the new standards for math are the Standards for Mathematical Practice. While I believe the grade level standards alone are powerful, they cannot be achieved successfully without the implementation of the standards of practice.

The Standards for Mathematical Practice are as follows:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

So, what do they have to do with the actual grade level standards? Through problem solving, students need to be given opportunities to practice the practices in order to meet the grade level standards. Just like we teach reading strategies and give students opportunities to practice, we have to do the same with math. For example, in reading, students learn to examine the structure and organization of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc. In math they need to learn how to make use of structure (Practice 7) in multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction.

I make a daily math goal around the different Standards for Mathematical Practice. For example, when working on multiplication of fractions (4th grade Common Core Standard 4.NF.4c), The goal could be: I can find regularity in repeated reasoning. Through a word problem**, students might solve 4 x ¾ and determine it is 3. They can use this knowledge to solve 12 x ¾ by understanding that there are three sets of 4 x ¾ in 12 x ¾, or 3(4 x ¾) (Associative Property of Multiplication), or even (4 x ¾)+ (4 x ¾) + (4 x ¾) (Distributive Property of Multiplication). Once they have the answer to 4 x ¾, they can repeat that reasoning 3 times to get the answer  for 12 x ¾ (Distributive Property of Multiplication) or simply multiply their answer for (4 x ¾) by 3 (Associative Property of Multiplication). This reasoning is important because it draws on mathematical properties. At first, I identify the properties with my students and model correct representation through number sentences (which could be tied to the Mathematical Practice of “attend to precision”). These are practices students need in order to be truly successful in math.

Implementing the content grade level Common Core State Standards and the Standards for Mathematical Practice has taken my math instruction to a whole new level. It has been a learning journey for me and I am constantly finding ways to improve my math instruction. I would be lying if I said it was easy, but in the end, my students benefit from my hard work...what more could I ask for?

**Word problems are posed with a variety of number choices so students can try easier or more difficult problems based on differentiation.

Example: Ms. K is making ______ peanut butter sandwiches. Each sandwich needs ¾ of a cup of peanut butter. How many cups of peanut butter does she need? (4)    (12)    (16)  (18)