SDCO Board Minutes continued
By Rita Glavin
SDCO Board Secretary

Board members John Sweitzer, Sherri Houghton and Tyrone Olverson will be attending the NSDC annual conference in December.  While there, they will host an affiliate reception for SDCO in partnership with the Michigan and Indiana state organizations.  SDCO is grateful to Solution Tree and the Hope Foundation for helping to sponsor this reception.  We look forward to John, Sherri, and Ty gaining new knowledge and resources to bring back to Ohio to share with all of SDCO membership.

The Board continued its discussion and book study on Learning Along the Way by Diane Sweeney.  Licking Heights High School Data Coordinator, Jeff Boyer, shared his personal enthusiasm as well as that experienced in the building as a result of using this adult learning book.  Jeff described gains made in student achievement and instructional practice those results from the collaborative professional development currently in progress at Licking Heights High School.  Both Jeff and Tyrone recommend this book for use with a PLC.

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News from the Ohio Department of Education continued
By Deb Tully
Ohio Federation of Teachers and SDCO Board Member

Social Studies standards are being revised. H.B. 1 requires revision of Ohio's academic content standards in social studies and other subjects by June 30, 2010. Proposed revisions include reduced breadth, increased depth and the combination of process and content standards. The number of standards will decrease to four: government, economics, geography and history. Benchmarks and grade-level indicators are being replaced with themes, topics and content statements.

For more information about the standards revision process for social studies, English language arts, mathematics and science, visit ODE's Web site.

One-day mentor training now available for Resident Educator Program.Sixteen one-day Instructional Mentoring Training Sessions are now available in STARS for the Resident Educator Program. Individuals who have had previous mentor training or were certified Praxis assessors and have mentored a beginning teacher within the past three years are eligible to complete the training during a one-day program. Two-day mentoring training sessions are also offered in for educators who do not meet these qualifications.

Educators who have scheduled a two-day training but are eligible for a one-day session are encouraged to cancel their two-day registration as soon as possible so that individuals on the wait list can move into those slots. Additional one- and two-day training sessions will be scheduled until all mentors are trained. For complete program details and a list of current one-day sessions, click here.

Physical education content standards workshops to be held in November .To help educators learn how to structure local curriculum using the new physical education standards adopted by the State Board in June, ODE will hold free workshops. Space is limited and pre-registration is required. Individuals must register through STARS by visiting education.ohio.gov and clicking the SAFE Account link at the top of the page. Additional workshops will be scheduled throughout the school year. For more information, see the Events link on the ODE home page or contact Lisa Lyle Henry at lisa.henry@ode.state.oh.us.

 Introducing Third Graders to Ohio's Agricultural Industry -- Free Instructional Materials for Third-Grade Teachers Ohio's agriculture industry has developed a new, free resource to help third-grade students better understand where their food comes from and the important role agriculture plays in Ohio's economy. The "For Your InFARMation" materials were developed in consultation with a practicing third-grade teacher and curriculum, and support Ohio's academic content standards for social studies, language arts, math and science.
 
Materials include the following:

• Student Guide containing a variety of nonfiction text
• Teacher's Guide with complete lesson plans
• Ready-to-use worksheets reinforcing key content and skills

All "For Your InFARMation" materials can be viewed and downloaded free of charge at www.ForYourInFARMation.com.

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Six Lessons Learned at Williamston Middle School continued
By Alan Blankstein
Alan Blankstein is Founder and President of the HOPE Foundation, a not-for-profit organization whose Honorary Chair is Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The HOPE Foundation (Harnessing Optimism and Potential through Education) is dedicated to supporting educational leaders over time in creating school cultures where failure is not an option for any student. Founded in 1989, HOPE has focused for the last decade on helping districts build leadership capacity to close gaps and sustain student success.

Getting everyone to do meaningful walkthroughs necessary for achieving their writing SMART goal was made easier due to the trust that was built prior. "I know Laura's favorite ice-cream, and that is a wonderful thing to begin with. What the academy allowed us to do, however, was share our work with one another using tuning protocols and that allowed us to get to know one another on a professional basis while building trust."
To further refine the common tools outlined in the above SMART goal, principal Christine Sermak and a small group of teachers decided to pilot the writing across the curriculum with two science teachers, an art teacher, a PE teacher and a Spanish teacher. "We partnered them with a language arts teacher who helped walk them through a writing assignment using the common graphic organizer and rubric that we had developed prior.
"The first year success was manifest in part by our taking ownership and finding our own answers," said Laura. "Everything wasn't coming from Christine anymore…we were the ones kind of leading the school and it had a different feel than having an administrator always giving direction from the top. Everyone was investing in the whole system."

Year Two Outcomes
An e-mail goes out now if a teacher is going to teach using the graphic organizer, for example. Others will sign up to watch that and someone from central office will cover their classroom. It is now the expectation that everyone will see someone's classroom, and have their class opened for viewing as well. We were able to do this due to the relational trust built in years one and two."

Staff meetings are now often focused on a particular student's work. Teachers use the common rubric to collectively view and analyze the work, and then strategize around how to improve teaching accordingly.  This leads to more embedded PD, and more walkthroughs around what the team had determined they would do in the grade level or cross-curricular meeting.  

"Collaboration has increased and intensified" said math teacher Laura Hill. "I've been working with a teacher who teaches an academic lab but is really strong in writing and literacy. We'll get together over lunch and I'll pick her brain about using the editing tool in my math class. She'll give me a good idea, and I'll say 'how about if we do that as partners!' Then we'll send out an e-mail for others to watch and give us feedback."

Teachers and other staff are also taking the formal lead in continuous learning and improvement. "They talked about their experience in front of the whole staff. It worked extremely well which led to everyone signing up to see another teacher teach writing." Appendix 6 shows the agenda for a full PD day they conducted. The district mission is on top, followed by the FNO six principles, and the focus is on achieving the SMART goal in this case study.

Growing the leadership capacity to collaborate focused on teaching for learning, and based on a foundation of trust has been the key to this schools' success.

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SDCO Book Review: Learning Along the Way continued
Author: Diane Sweeny, Stenhouse Publisher, 120 pages
By  Tyrone L. Olverson, MEd
SDCO President

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Everything's Changed continued
By Michael White
Dr. Michael White is a Professional Development Associate with the Leadership and Learning Center and the Director of Educational Consulting Services, an educational organization in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is also a licensed pediatric psychologist.

Dr. White consults with school systems throughout the country on issues relating to standards-based instruction and assessment. A strong advocate of "assessment as instruction," he is the author of four books and numerous articles on standards, assessment, and effective schools. His web-based teacher resource, Learning Connection Online, was the National Staff Development Council's "Technology of the Year" award winner for 2003.

His newest book titled:  Extraordinary Teachers: Teaching for Success is available through Lead and Learn Press (866-399-6019)

Adequate Yearly Progress, Peer Review, Value Added, and Corrective Actions are terms, or threats, that did not exist a few years ago, but today they influence our day-to-day work.  More changes seem likely.  And chances are the next set of changes will be bolder and probably make No Child Left Behind changes seem comparatively modest. 

Don't want to be nagged?  Tough! This isn't about what we want.  It's about what we need to do to achieve the best results possible for the children entrusted to us each year.  We need to embrace a way of doing business that combines pragmatism, idealism and the bottom line--student achievement.

Teaching needs to change because the world has changed.  Schools have already been pounded by tougher standards, foreign competition and more student diversity.  Welcome to Round 2 of schools vs. society.  The past year has taught us that a good education beats a big house or big portfolio every time.  And good schools could be the most potent anti-poverty program in the country. Unless we get more students through high school and through college or vocational programs, no bank bailout, stimulus package or cash for clunkers program will be enough to regain our prosperity.

The day when a high school education would serve a graduate for a lifetime is gone.  And the margin of error for teachers in this new economy is also gone.  Knowledge--the stuff jobs are made of, no matter the economy--is a person's most valuable asset.  And that makes teachers more important than ever.  Those who would prefer to keep their job and also be good at is--and that would include most of us--must admit how important we are.  Let's also admit our system is broken and let's do something dramatically different, and let's do it now.  But let's not just tinker around the edges.  Let's not just play with it.  Let's fix it.
What does improve instruction and hence raise levels of achievement:

• A team of teachers meeting regularly--and continuously--to design, test and then adjust their lessons and strategies in light of their results.

Boatloads of schools attest to the power in this simple formula.  And yet: the typical school or district improvement plan takes us in an entirely different direction. 

More typically, district and building improvement plans contain a dizzying, incoherent list of activities and responsibilities within columns and categories like "Goals"; "Action Plan"; "Objectives"; "Timeline"; "Resources Needed"; "Evaluation"; "Target Areas" and more.  They are large, handsome documents; school boards, district offices and the folks who make bumper stickers love them.  In the end, these plans are more public reform than practical – more symbolic than real.

It is time to close the gap between what we know and what we do.  We need to recognize that teachers, working together, have the capacity--right now--to raise student achievement.  Let's grab this opportunity and ditch much of what we now do in exchange for regular times, at least monthly, to design, refine and assess our instructional strategies.  And then, just as regularly, let's honor and celebrate our success as we develop and share better lessons and strategies with each other.  It is no overstatement to say that in any school, such practices would yield immense and immediate benefits.

All of this is within our reach if we zero in on the primary tools of school improvement.  The unexpected stars:  Collaboration, Common Instruction, Common Assessment and Common Sense. 

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Raising Achievement by Engaging Students continued
By Michael White, Amy Crouse, Cara Bafile and Harry Barnes
The Leadership and Learning Center

Emotional Engagement
In The Schools Our Children Deserve, Alfie Kohn warns us, "The most immediate and pressing issue for students and teachers is not low achievement, but student disengagement" (page 128).  The same rules that apply to the school playground apply to the classroom:  Children do not work or play well with others whom they don't like, and they don't keep playing a game in which they always lose.  In other words, your students will be engaged as long as the material is relevant, as long as they think someone cares and is there to help, and as long as they believe that there is a chance for them to be successful.

Think back to your days as an elementary or middle school student.  Who were your best teachers?  They may have shaved their heads, kissed a pig for fundraisers, or slept on the roof of the school building if every student read twenty books.  But, more importantly, they proved that they were willing to go the distance to engage you and make you feel that they had a personal stake in your success.  Even when you weren't excited about an assignment or a chapter in the book, that wasn't as important as the attitude you had toward the teacher and the class.

Here are some suggestions for fostering emotional engagement with your students:

• Meet students at the door in the morning.
• Take pictures of the students working and display them.
• Smile, listen, and always stay calm.
• Use humor.
• Use words from students' lives—"sketchy," "tight," and "fly." (Note that words change quickly.  The ones that are "in" this week will be "out" next week.) Also, use words that you have heard their parents or grandparents use ("persnickety," "turkey," and "bonkers").
• Volunteer to serve as a sponsor, advisor, or chaperone for after-school clubs, organizations, and events.
• Compliment students on what they are wearing.
• Make a point of watching at least one television program that your students watch. 
• Be aware of video games they are playing and their music and Internet culture.

Academic Engagement
We have seen lots of things in our years of teaching, consulting, and traveling, including a polar bear riding a bicycle, but we have never seen a child who is "hooked on phonics." And, like your students, we think that the answer to the question "What fraction is larger—4/11 or 5/13?" is "Who cares?"

It only makes sense that the more engaging an assignment is, the more likely students are to immerse themselves in it and stick with it through completion.  But what makes a task more interesting?  What causes a student to be more engaged by one unit than another?  How can you design work that will keep students' attention at the same time it draws them more deeply into the process of learning?

Engaging Scenarios
Teachers who are most successful in engaging students develop activities with students' interests in mind (Marzano 2007).  Try to create units and assignments that relate to student's lives, are fun, and arouse their curiosity.  The information gleaned from parents, surveys, and your morning meetings should provide you a treasure trove of material with which to work. 

Doug Reeves (2004) suggests using engaging scenarios to introduce your units.  Rather than starting with, "Today we are going to learn how to determine the area of a rectangle," hold up a contract signed by the iconic pop star of the week.  Pretend, with the class, that she is coming to give a concert, and her contract demands that the stage be 100 square feet, with security rope around three sides.  Your class spends the rest of the morning working in small groups designing stages and computing how much rope they will need. 

How about instruction that can be applied in real life?  Most students are eager to do "grown-up things."  Why not use their desire to act "grown up" to teach?  What do grown-ups read?  When do grown-ups use math?  Older students might be hooked into reading or doing math by reading and discussing USA Today or helping you balance a checkbook.  Showing students how a classroom activity is related to the world of work or money are sure bets to get their attention.  Table 1 shows some engaging scenarios that you might use to introduce your instruction.

Menus, Not Mandates
Another way to academically engage students is to provide them with choices—a menu of tasks rather than a single task.  Menus allow students a degree of control over learning and allow you to offer challenging but achievable tasks to all of your students regardless of their proficiency level (Reeves 2004). 

Let's imagine that you wanted to teach the following standard: Describe and give examples of ways in which people interact with their physical environment, including use of land, location of communities, and design of shelters.

Rather than requiring everyone to create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast a "big city" and a "wilderness region," you might offer students these choices:

Task 1—Draw a region map of a wilderness area or a big city.
Task 2—Write a letter to a friend back home in the city describing your new life in the wilderness or your new life in a big city.
Task 3—Pretend that you are a real estate agent and design a wilderness brochure that encourages people to move from the city.
Task 4—Develop a skit entitled "A Typical Day Where I Live."

A menu of tasks is a great tool for individualizing student learning, meeting special needs and learning styles, and keeping all students engaged and interested.  While the above example varied the tasks based on learning styles, you could also provide a menu of tasks based on difficulty level (skill building, test level, and advanced).

Always remember that while you're wondering how your students are doing in their work, they're wondering why they're doing it!

References

Kohn, Alfie. 1999.  The schools our children deserve; Moving beyond traditional classroom and tougher standards.  New York:  Houghton Mifflin Company.

Marzano, Robert J. 2007.  The art and science of teaching; A comprehensive framework for effective instruction.  Alexandria, Vir.:  Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Reeves, Douglas B. 2004.  Making standards work; How to implement standard-based assessments in the classroom, school, and district.  Englewood, Colo.:  Advanced Learning Press.

Schmoker, Mike. 2006.  Results now: How we can achieve unprecedented improvements in teaching and learning.  Alexandria, Vir.:  Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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Implementation of a Freshman Academy and Its Impact on Student Achievement continued
By Jessica Darcy
Licking Heights High School, School Counselor

It was important to investigate how other schools in our area were operating their Academies.  A team of two freshman teachers, one administrator and myself visited two schools with working academies.  We were able to gain valuable insight as to how these programs operate why they are successful.  Our team took many of the practices we had observed and modified them to fit our specific student needs. 

Our Freshman Academy program is composed of two teams: Maroon Team and Gold Team (our school colors).  All students are placed on one of the two teams.  Each team has four freshman teachers from the areas of Math, Science, Social Studies and English, and one special education teacher.  Freshman students were invited to an orientation day in August to get to know their teachers, explore the school, participate in team-building activities and listen to a motivational speaker.  This orientation was very successful and provided a positive introduction to the school year.  Students and parents gave us great feedback, and approximately seventy-five percent of our incoming freshmen voluntarily attended. 

Both the Maroon and Gold teams have a team planning period each day during which they are able to focus on the academic needs of their team of students.  The purposes of team planning period are:  to allow teams to pull students in and discuss academic progress, to make time for calling and emailing parents, to allow for team conferences with parents, and to allot time for cross-curricular and program planning.  Our teams have developed excellent documentation forms for keeping track of the work they do and the students they help.  This team planning time is an integral part of the Academy program.

The RTI process is supported by our team framework.  Teams are able to identify students in need of interventions by observations in the classroom and reviewing achievement test data.  When the team feels that a student is in need of intervention they are able to discuss and implement modifications and accommodations in their classrooms.  Teams are documenting this information and are able to share it with myself and administrators on a daily basis and also through our RTI process.  The gathering of data prior to an RTI meeting will drastically reduce the amount of time the RTI process can take. 

As a guidance counselor I am able to meet with both teams on a weekly basis during team planning time.  I may refer a student to the team for intervention or the team may refer a student to me for further assistance.  This process is beneficial because I am able to get several perspectives about a student in one time period, and I am able to share with a student's team of teachers any pertinent information that may help him/her to be successful.  During this time I am able to sit in on parent conferences and be a part of team discussions.  This helps me to have a more broad understanding of students' needs.

Our brightest freshman students are receiving enrichment through our Academy.  Many of our students who were not previously taking Honors classes are now being offered the opportunity to switch to an enriched English class.  The decision to move a student was made by reviewing data from achievement tests and asking for input from their team.  Also, our top achieving freshmen will be taking the PSAT this October.

Students who are earning low grades are being asked to participate in our REACH (Receive Extra Academic Classroom Help) Saturday school program.  Students arrive at 8:00 am and receive assistance with school work until 10:00 am.  I am there with our principal to provide support and academic information.  During this time any student may come to apply to colleges, get tutoring from teachers for the OGT or ACT, or to work on projects that require additional time and resources.  Academy teachers are able to provide me with valuable information regarding classroom assignments and individual students' achievement that is useful on Saturday mornings.

Thus far our Freshman Academy has been a success.  Freshman students are receiving more intensive interventions from their teachers, and they are a part of a family environment.  Students from all academic achievement levels are being challenged to improve their performance and do their best every day.  It has been an exciting few months for me as a guidance counselor because I am able to access information more readily and be involved in a group process when helping students.  I look forward to the rest of this school year as our Freshman Academy takes flight!

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Consider the following:

Many experts think that too many students are not interested in school work and that the problem in this country is not an achievement gap but an engagement gap.
Over the last twenty some years we have heard far too many students defend their disengagement by saying, "I'm not going to pass this class anyway, so why should I try?" or "This class is stupid."

While this attitude is undoubtedly disappointing to parents and teachers, from a psychologist's perspective, it is understandable. Students who don't think they can do something discount the thing they don't think they can do. "I think I can't do math or dance, so I decide doing math or dancing is stupid."

The alternative, admitting that the skill, class or assignment is important and that I can't do it, would mean, "I am stupid."

Now, let's look at how grades can play a part in all this. It's mid-September and Chris misses the deadline on a book report earning an "F." Now this F is a deadly grade.  Unlike its cousin the D, the F is Mathematically six times worse. You see, while an A is worth 90 points, and a B, C and D are worth 80, 70 and 60 points, the F is worth zero. So, Chris' mid-September lapse means that subsequent efforts to redeem himself are destined to fall short. If his grades for the rest of the quarter are 80, 75 and 82, his average of 58 is still an F (80 + 75 + 82 + 0/4 = 58).

Chris, well aware of the law of averages, decides to spend his time passing notes rather than trying to pass the class. Ask him why and he'll tell you the class is stupid!

In Virginia Beach the chance of earning a zero has been eliminated.  School official in Norfolk and Virginia Beach say that don't mandate how teachers grade, but they want to ensure that teachers understand how heavily a zero can weigh on a student's final grade.  There fore, at some schools, the lowest score students can receive is as high as 50 or 60 – even if they don't turn in assignments.

Of course this practice challenges the long-held philosophy that if you don't do the work, you shouldn't get the grade.

Douglas Reeves, in a Phi Delta Kappan article, writes "a zero for work that is not turned in is punished much more severely than work 'that is done wretchedly and is worth a D.'"

Some teaches avoid the zero by using only letter grades instead of numbers or points.  Teachers and administrators need to begin dialogue and take a serious look at what the zero does to students.  "One grade should not cause you to fail the entire nine weeks," said Virginia Beach assistant superintendent Maynard Massey.

We all want student engagement and success.  Students will remain engaged if they feel they have a reasonable chance of being successful.  Success is in reach if teachers dump the zero.

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