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Check in #4 - Calendar, Monitoring Plan and Communication Plan (Due 5/11)
1. Indicate what will happen from September to June, 2015-16, in your plan. Include contact with Leadership, Advisory Team Meetings (you should create a group to oversee process), professional development, assessments, and any activities (ex: parent sessions, student meetings, etc.) Targeted students from this (2015 -2016) year will remain on the list and be spread among the 11th grade team (each team member having 2 students and 1 having 3). Also identified will be one individual to identify, and create a similar google document for each grade level. The qualifying criteria will remain at 10% or greater absences, checking in weekly for the first 4 weeks, and monthly thereafter. This person could be the support personnel with each grade level, and the group to oversee the process will be the grade level team (as they meet once a week). Each team member and support personnel will have a brief review of restorative practices and restorative language. This PD will take place during the first week of school, as well as a team meeting. At this meeting the team will identify 10% of their population that struggled with absences based on the previous years data. One team member will be identified as a community liaison. This person will be responsible for communicating with administration to see what community development activities are available. If limited opportunities are available they will coordinate to identify potential opportunities. 2. List data to be gathered throughout the year to determine progress and guide adjustments. It can be weekly, monthly, biannually, yearly, etc. 3. Describe how you will communicate progress with stakeholders (leadership, teachers, families and students). The primary data will be collected through a shared google document. There will be an individual document per grade level. Targeted students will be identified on this list and split among the team. Each team member will be responsible for positively contacting targeted students and their family on a weekly basis. Also, to ensure parents are aware of students actions there will be an automated voicemail (phone call) home each day a student is absent. For the first 4 weeks of school, data will be gathered weekly to identify students that are missing 10% or more of school. After the first 4 weeks, data will be collected monthly, using the same 10% or greater criteria. Progress will be communicated monthly and compared to the previous months data. CHECK IN #3
-Describe how leadership, teachers, families and students will be involved in this process. What role will each play? -What are the interventions that you plan to implement based on your goals and objectives? Indicate interventions for students, faculty/staff, and families/communities and indicate whether they are focused on individual students, groups, grade levels, or whole school. -What type of support will be needed to carry this out? For example, time, professional development, materials, etc. For my proposed action plan the leadership team will play a limited role. This limited role is important and already established within the HSHMC culture through the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model. This model is used for both students and staff and is intended to allow for the individual to retain greater responsibility. By placing the responsibility on the individual or grade level team, other higher priority issues can be addressed by the administration. If the individual or team identifies a concern they feel should be addressed by administration, the issue can be presented to and discussed with the leadership team. The 11th grade teachers will play the primary role. The targeted student group (13 students) will be placed on a shared google form and the document will be shared with the team members. Each team member will be responsible for maintaining positive contact with 2 students (one teacher will have 3 students) per week, and their parents. This will be done through small counseling sessions, letters to the students, and letters to the parent/s. The team will meet at lunch to readdress restorative language that is associated with restorative practices. A page with sentence frames and starters identifying this restorative language will be presented to each staff member and posted on their desk. By having these sentence frames in plain view they are more likely to be used and become a consistent part of the team and teachers language. As stated previously this target group is an isolated sub-group within the eleventh grade. Check in #2
I am still extremely excited about our student voice data, but recognize that it is limited in its ability to specifically target a small sub-group. This difficulty was identified because of the data being anonymous. The anonymous component is beneficial because the data collected is authentic, it does however make directly targeting a small group a bit difficult. Also many of the questions that were asked require further questioning to gain clarification. For this reason data was collected from both the incomplete list, and the attendance log. This data was compared to isolate a target group of 13, 11th grade students (not the previously stated 14). These students have a minimum of 2 incompletes (at least 1 per semester), and have 11 or more absences on the year and 46 or more tardies on the year. I recently consulted with our student information data system to identify that all 13 students come from low income communities, 11 are considered Hispanic or Latino, 5 are English Learners and one student is supported by an IEP. IDENTIFYING THE ROOT CAUSES: I believe with some data the root cause is staring you in the face, but with the current data I am struggling to identify the root cause. When Identifying organization and culture I believe that HSHMC strives to create a comfortable and accepting environment for all students. The beginning of each year is started in multi-grade level “family groups” for a week of policy and team building activities. The only "culture" information I can identify to support my targeted group is that 6 out of the 13 students transferred into the HSHMC, and did not start as a freshman. External factors and student demographic would seem to be the closest to the root cause. All of the identified students are from low income communities, a majority are Hispanic or Latino, and almost half are English learners. These percentages mirror our student population. As for preparation and curriculum, all teachers are trained in SDAIE strategies and have supports available to them. There is also a specific intervention program for EL student who need to reclassify under the CELDT. The intention is to support these students to reclassify and avoid the TOEFL exam (which notoriously has a low passing rate). GOAL: Over an 8 week period, if targeted students are counseled weekly (by a preferred staff), and positively identified weekly (both in person and letter), their attendance rate will improve. Objective: 1. Identify 2-3 students to target weekly with positive praise. (Split this among 6 team members so all students are met) Objective 2. Create a google doc to share with the 11th grade team to ensure that all target students are positively praised weekly. Lastly I would like to do some further investigation to ensure that I understand what the students understanding of achievement is. I may identify an area or strategy that I believe allows them to feel accomplished, but if they do not have the same definition I will not be able to target this achievement. Similarly, we were needing clarification with what vale meant with our students. Through the student voice survey it was identified that only around 60% of student felt valued. As a team we found this concerning and wanted a better understanding of what students understood as value and what made them feel valued. We also changed the question to identify being a valued member of the HSHMC community. The results changed dramatically, and went from 60% feeling valued to 86% feeling valued at HSHMC. Below is a screenshot of the google survey, and the reslts.
The idea of data and data collection is not new to any teacher or business leader, but what separates a great district, school, teacher, or business is using recent data to influence decision making to continuously improve leading, teaching and or business strategies. Some schools are intimidated and overwhelmed by the data, and are hesitant or do not know how to respond to it. Other schools understand that there is always room for improvement and accept the challenge of analyzing, interpreting, and implementing strategies to address data trends (p. 1, James-Ward et al.). As a future leader and educator it is my responsibility to motivate and empower the community around me, so that they identify instructional improvement as the shared responsibility of all stakeholders, and not the sole responsibility of the principle. Our book: Using Data to Focus Instructional Improvement identifies that most of us have structured our lives to make positive choices, or complete tasks and things that we should do. These are usually prompted by a cue or subtle message to nudge us, such as a gym bag or healthy food choices in the refrigerator. These nudges can be used to nudge ourselves and other . The statement is also made that "data could be used more efficiently if we increase the number of people who view it (p. 15, James-Ward et al.). At my current placement at HSHMC this is evident as many streams of data are available, and while everyone may not be using all of it, someone is using, interpreting and analyzing some of it al all times. So, What type of student achievement data did I analyze? I actually chose to use three different sources of data to hopefully identify a target group. The first source of data was from a recent "student voice" survey, and under the title of "sense of accomplishment". Under this title 28% of the 11th grade population identified that they have not been recognized for something positive at school, and only 57% identified that teachers let their parents know what they are doing well. After continuing to look at the data I recognized that it would be difficult to identify a small target group, as I do not have access to personal responses (anonymous survey). I continued to look at the "student voice" data and wanted to somehow stay under the umbrella of "accomplishment." At HSHMC we have a Never Too Late To Learn philosophy where students can make up work at anytime (up to 12mo after), and are not given a failing grade but an "I" for incomplete. I am making an assumption here, but I assumed that a student who has an incomplete for both first semester (ended January 2015), and currently has an incomplete for this semester (IN ANY SUBJECT/S) would feel less accomplished than if they did not have any incompletes, and I identified this group as an area of concern under "accomplishment". Using the most current (4/5/15) incomplete list I identified that 28 students or 20% of the 140 or so 11th grade students fall into this concerning category (an incomplete from last semester and currently in this semester). I wanted to further identify and attempt to isolate a target group, so I consulted the daily attendance and tardy log and cross referenced the group of 28 students identified under the area of concern for accomplishment. The average amount of absences per student is 11 days, and the average amount of tardies per student is 46. Using these averages I was able to focus the target group from 28 students down to 14. These 14 students meet both criteria of missing 11 days or more, and being tardy 46 days or more. It would be interesting to see if the priority of positive feedback (identified through personal interactions, meetings, and letters) contributes to an increase in attendance and less tardies. Does this increase in attendance correlate with clearing incompletes (passing grade), and improve a students sense of accomplishment? Priority: 1. Absences 2. Tardies 3. Incompletes 4. Positive feedback (student and parent) Through out the process above I had many questions: 1. How do I identify accomplishment? 2. Are there other overlapping data sources that can help me target a group? 3. All of these 28 students are not consistently missing school, how can I isolate a better target group? 4. Can it be connected to attendance / tardies? 5. How will recognizing this group positively and making their parents aware of their accomplishments influence their attendance, tardies, and sense of accomplishment? 6. What is the students own expectation on being absent or tardy? Reference: James-Ward, Cheryl et al. Using Data To Focus Instructional Improvement. Print. |
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