Focus on Standards and Students
The two most important parts of increasing student achievement are standards and students. We don’t need to overcomplicate this process. Focus on the standards tested, especially priority standards, making sure whole group instruction is taught on grade level with small-group or personalized learning differentiated on each student's level and targeted need is something we can all do that makes a huge impact. Our data tells us very explicitly that our focus needs to be on reading informational text aligned to the RI standards we need to work on. This will give us the greatest opportunity for improvement. When we examine our outlier data, we see that we could improve 1-3 points in each subject/grade level simply by reducing the outliers past -10. After having parent/student meetings with every student that scored -10, we see two common trends in that there was a traumatic experience in the home during that period from Fall to Winter testing and/or students struggled with virtual learning compared to face-to-face instruction. The impact a great classroom teacher has on a student’s learning was magnified and the need to have most students in the classroom was clearly evident. The need for the MTSS process and immediate social/emotional interventions is more critical now, during the Covid pandemic, than they’ve probably every been. This means that we need to shift some duties and responsibilities around to allow our staff to work with students needing this support more now than ever and that we need to identify and act quicker than we ever have. One interesting piece of data showed that when you removed the scores of virtual students, the students on a 2-3 days/week hybrid schedule performed as well as they normally do on a traditional 5 days/week schedule. If we teach the standards, teach them on the right level, engage our students, and constantly do the process of formative assessment to see what our student know and don’t know….while supporting social and emotional needs, our students will be successful.
ALL IN – Into the Storm
Yes, “ALL IN”
is borrowed from the greatest college football program in the country…the
Clemson Tigers, but it’s so true in everything you do in life and the attitude
you take towards a goal. Part of being a
team means that everyone is committed to a common goal and common vision,
everyone does their job and their part to help the team be successful, and at
the end of the day the name beside the score says “McBee High School” and not
an individual’s name alone. It takes a
commitment from everyone on a team to be successful. We don't always control talent or ability, but we all control our attitudes and actions every single day!
The “Into the
Storm” mentality means that we are going to take challenges head on instead of
running from them or hoping they just pass by.
We know we will MAP test at the end of the school year and this will
give us a longitudinal piece of evidence of what was within our control in
measuring where students started in the Fall and how they performed
academically in the Spring. We don’t
know for certain about SC Ready testing accountability for schools in SC;
however, we do know we will test. Test
or not, no matter how or if it counts, the bottom line is that it’s the right
thing to do in making sure our students are prepared and that we start to close
some of the instructional gaps that we know exist from the shutdown last spring
and challenges during the pandemic.
Keep It Simple
This sounds
much simpler than it sometimes is in education.
We have a tendency in education to make things far more complicated than
they need to be and often confuse people with educational jargon. Winning doesn’t need to be complicated, do a
couple of things that have the greatest impact and do them well will usually
put the team or school in a position to be successful most of the time. We felt that it was very important to make
our plan focused and intentional, to a level where students were an integral
part of the plan and understood the plan and goals. We decided to make sure our mastery trackers
were focused on priority standards and written in simple “I Can” statements so
that they were there for the students, not necessarily the adults. At the end of the day, it’s what the students
know or master that we are judged on.
With limited time left in the school year, focusing on priority
standards is critical. And at the end of
the day, make it fun and competitive for students!
Below is our action plan for finishing the year strong
academically. Some people may ask why we’d
share our plan but to us it’s not a secret and it’s not complicated to do this
process to see our students be successful.
I remember as a coach telling our team that other teams could have as
many tapes of us as they want and I’d even give them our playbook if they
wanted. To borrow a line from Bret “The
Hitman” Hart from WWE wrestling, it’s all about “Excellence of Execution!” It’s simple but it requires commitment from
everyone on the team to carry out the plan to fidelity. It’s important to have a great plan, but “Excellence
of Execution” is also paramount! I have complete confidence in our team and their commitment to seeing students be successful. I'm blessed to work with some great teachers, great team players, a great support staff, and people who will do whatever it takes to help children! While some people are hoping that we don't test or that it doesn't count, our team is eager to see the score at the end of the 4th quarter this year!
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