Recommendations and Lessons Learned - 5399 Week 3

In looking at the areas of concern, from our district/campus improvement plans, which include improving curriculum alignment district wide using CScope, creating common assessments district wide for each six weeks to help measure progress, and providing interventions for students who struggle in the core areas many steps have been implemented by our district. I have had the opportunity to be a part of trainings to improve our staff with the concepts of CScope and its implementation.   I have lead in district grade level trainings that aid in correlating each grade levels needs and understandings of the district vision and mission. I have also helped to design and implement intervention strategies for struggling students.  By being an active participant in these areas of concern and seeing some of the actions my district has taken to make these improvement initiatives successful, I have also been able to assess ways to continue to improve efforts to better engage in the action research needed make recommendations for improvement.  One of the areas we can improve in is better trainings and implementations earlier in the year. CScope is a tool that we have adopted in our district to help achieve district wide curriculum alignment. The first year we began this new curriculum, there were still many areas that were being revised but we jumped into it all at once.  This proved to be a challenging and difficult task.  Our scores did not show improvement in math and this was our most needed area of improvement. This area continues to challenge our district, but we are now better trained and more equipped for the task. This year many of our campuses did not meet AYP. One of the tools that our district feels will continue to help us improve is by continuing to implement CScope as the common curriculum. This curriculum continues to allow all grade levels to see what and where we need to be and how we need to get there. Our district continues to bring in CScope specialists to keep us informed on the newest correlations to the TEKS and STAAR testing. Our administrative leadership team is also being better trained in how to lead our campuses in the implementation of the new curriculum. Things are continuing to change from TEA and we all continue to seek the best ways to implement and develop the curriculum that meets those changes.  Our teachers this year have been asked to write common assessments to the core areas each six weeks.  The difficulty in that is that they are writing them in the six weeks that they need to test. One area that we can better improve in to address this is to provide summer workdays for teachers to meet, evaluate and develop the curriculum and assessments. This year’s assessment tools will be valuable to use as guides, but there are many tests that have not proven successful.  The summer meetings would allow the teachers to critique the assessment tools and revamp them as needed. In our grade level sessions many teachers were frustrated with the timeline for construction and assessment. They expressed the desire to have more time to plan and develop tools that could truly be valuable measurements instruments, not just common assessments.  Anytime you put district common assessments in place there is a time for learning and growing. Time management for providing better assessment tools and curriculum alignment will be helpful.  Another recommendation to help implement improvements would be to restructure our intervention schedule and tutoring times. My campus intervention schedule this year rallied around our schedule for computer time and conference time. Some of my special programs that to be scheduled during this time as well. Because of our reduction in staff all campuses have been challenged to be creative in our scheduling and interventions. Our leadership team meets once a month. During this time many things are told to us, but there is little time for true planning or discussion of interventions or ideas. I would like to recommend that time be added to discuss campus ideas and incentives that are working so we can all reap from each other’s knowledge, successes and failures. Our campus has a mentor program. One or two others had one. Now a district program has been designed. I believe this is a valuable tool to use for interventions with struggling students. I would like to continue to improve on our own program and extend it to more community involvement. One of the areas that I believe improves students’ interests for learning is to find an interest they love. My recommendation is to start several after school tutorial programs that focus on higher level thinking and problem-solving.  We have just began an after school drum program for elementary students. I would like to target my teacher interests and use them to reach my students. I would like to consider areas such as chess, outdoor learning center science, cooking, any topic that can tie in to the 4 core areas in a way that can also develop lifelong learning and student success. Technology is an area in which most of our students already excel, but there are so many ways that we can make learning come to life through technology. The world is just a “click” away and we need to provide those “clicks”. Each six weeks I want my staff to present a different technology presentation and focus on how to train our students to use and enjoy learning in this manner. My responsibility, as a campus leader and as a voice to my district leadership, is to continue to look for ways to improve my staff and in return provide for my students. This is my greatest challenge, and I look forward to finding ways to make this happen through presenters, trainings, webinars, conferences, mentors and experts. Another recommendation I want to implement is better parent involvement and trainings. We bring in opportunities for parents to come to our campus, but I want to continue to help them learn how to help their children with school. Time is one of the resources many parents do not have, but if they know the trainings will be worth their time many will find the time. We continue to look for ways to develop the partnership of home and school. Next year I want to implement a parent night every six weeks and train them on the curriculum, assessments, technology, TEKS, STAAR so they will continue to lead and guide their children in what is important and essential for lifelong learning. Many of these recommendations for improvement will be easy to monitor and evaluate. We will use student and teacher input, self-assessments, student progress reports, STAAR testing data, AYP and PEMIS reports to help correlate mastery of curriculum success.  We will use AWARE assessment data, curriculum materials, and TEKS updates to analyze and develop better assessment tools to track measurement and growth for each student. We will monitor student involvement with mentor program, after school tutorial and in school interventions by using surveys, participation rate, achievement data, computer data and surveys. We will meet before the end of this year and develop a school wide schedule that organizes interventions to the best time management available. Teacher, staff, and parent input on all of these areas are also important in assessing the improvement and efforts utilized to develop successful campus and district improvement plans. We are all in this together.