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You
are here: Structuring for Students' Success
Education Reform. Transformation. Leave No Child Behind. Disproportionality. NCLB.
No matter how you spell it, abbreviate it, or say it, educators know that we are losing our children. We have planned, taught, tested, and remediated, but have we moved forward?
At Maple Elementary in Seattle our Transformation process began in the autumn of 2000 with a hard look at where we were and where we needed to be for the success of all of our students. Our data analysis led us to a math focus, concentrating our strategies on WASL related skills of comprehending the questions and using science and NUA writing strategies for explaining the answers.
Our Spring 2001 math WASL scores increased 21.4% points. Our writing scores increased 13.7% points and an additional 5% points the following year. As we continue to try to maintain our positive trend in math and writing, we are tackling our stagnant growth in reading. Our data shows that while our students do well in comprehending literal text, they are falling behind in vocabulary development and comprehension of literature-based text.
For us, this data makes sense when we take into account our demographics. In addition to those on this link, in fall of 2001, we added an intermediate EBD, Emotionally and Behaviorally Disabled, program to our school. As 4th graders last year, we believe that those students' scores also profoundly affected our test results.
See Maple Elementary's test data for the current academic year here: http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/summary.aspx?schoolId=1066&OrgType=4&reportLevel=School&year=2006-07
In my estimation, these positive trends in math and writing did not happen overnight, but continue to come from our increased focus on students' writing and inquiry based learning techniques. Maple has been in the forefront with staff participation in training in the National Science Foundation inquiry based curriculum. These methods require students to record their analytical thoughts in science journals. One hundred percent of our staff is trained and use this NSF curriculum. We also have 100% of our staff using strategies taught by the National Urban Alliance Literacy Initiative. These methods begin with our Kindergartners, a majority of whom are ELL, English Language Learners. They are taught to write their own words, using best guess spelling. This journal writing in language, science and math continues through 5th grade.
We continue to assess our data and modify our goals to find instructional success for all of our students. Although we feel good about our successes in math and writing, we continually struggle with our lack of growth in reading. However, with approximately 62% of our students qualifying for federal bilingual support, we are aware that when our children enter Maple, they are faced with learning to speak the English language while at the same time they are learning to read, write and compute in a foreign language that is only practiced at school.
Further analysis of this data through our Transformation Plan, led the staff to identify a common need that was imperative for all staff in order to accelerate student achievement: Time for Communication. In our open concept building teachers realize the importance of teaming and collaboration. They have voiced their frustrations with the lack of time set-aside during their workday devoted to communication and collaboration with their colleagues. It was strongly felt that this need for communication exists both across the grade level teams (horizontally) and vertically from one grade level to the next. We then began the task of structuring our school day to provide time for this horizontal and vertical teaming.
Since Maple is an open concept building, our staff, teachers and instructional assistants, works in a physical environment that is conducive to sharing and teaming. We have now structured our school program to provide designated time for our horizontal and vertical teaming. We have reorganized our recess times and our PCP (Planning, Conferencing and Preparation) times for intentional communication.
We are also deliberate in setting team goals that reflect what we have gleaned from our data. Our professional development is now focused around studies in racial disproportionality, cultural competencies in instruction, and study group work that meets individual staff areas of interest.
Finally, we have brought on board an extremely excited, active, culturally representative PTSA, with parents who are visible every day in our building. They are enthused about school activities. They have revived our Newsletter. (Please see our Maple School website.) They are welcoming to all families. In the past 2 years we have worked together to replace both play structures on our kindergarten and main playgrounds. This was an enormous task which involved many private and public agencies, grants and in kind donations with costs exceeding $300,000, and many families putting in back breaking hours of digging, hauling and communicating in many different languages.
Maple is a school like no other, which we all believe, and is true of each of our schools. Our successes and failures cannot be attributed to any one area. But our commitment for student success is a burning fire in the hearts and minds of our staff, students, and families. We are continually questioning, investigating, learning, and working together to build in structures for students' success. Although we often feel many frustrations and have much more to accomplish in a day than is humanly possible, we continue to strive to improve and modify our instruction to best meet the needs of student learning.
This is Pat Hunter's fourth year as principal at Maple Elementary in Seattle. During the past 20 years she has been actively involved in SPS as a volunteer, parent, PTSA President, School Newsletter editor, teacher, tutor, head teacher and principal. She obtained her undergraduate degree in psychology from Gonzaga University in Spokane. While in the Central Valley School District in Spokane, she taught remedial reading to students in grades 1 – 5, as well as being an intermediate classroom teacher. She completed her M. Ed. at Eastern Washington University in Cheney.
Pat says, "Although my experiences in education are varied, including my first job as an Instructional Assistant at Great Northern School, the last one-room schoolhouse in Washington, and my 85 mile a day commute to teach in the Bethel School District, my dedication and drive stem primarily from my lessons learned as the mother of my 3 racially mixed children. I have never heard them refer to themselves as "biracial". They are always "mixed" and very proud of their black heritage through their father's lineage. However, society has also made them very aware that they "get it from both sides" and have used this adversity to strengthen their resolve for social justice. Our oldest son will be completing his degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics at Portland State University this school year. His younger sister graduated from the University of Washington last spring and is now a first year law student at Yale University in New Haven, CT. Our youngest son is in his second year at the University of Washington, where he also works as a Student Ambassador in the Department of Minority Affairs. "
Pat welcomes your comments, questions and observations. Email: mailto:phunter@seattleschools.org
©2003 Patricia Hunter
Posted with permission March 2004 by
New Horizons for Learning
P O Box 31876
Seattle WA 98103 USA
http://www.newhorizons.org/
mailto:info@newhorizons.orgFor permission to redistribute, please
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