A Guaranteed Curriculum that Challenges Students and Establishes High Expectations

Excellence in Education: A Guaranteed Curriculum that Challenges Students and Establishes High Expectations

As a teacher, I led a transition program for ninth grade students who were considered “at risk.” One of our early mantras was to meet students where they are to help each student grow. After year two of the program, the six-member team--reading specialist, math teacher, science teacher, English teacher, reading specialist, and myself (social studies)--met with our assistant superintendent and a George Mason University professor for what I knew was going to be a tough conversation. By most metrics, we were making progress, but we were falling short in math and science.

Our primary problem lay with our interpretation and application of meeting students where they are to help each student grow. Yes, we must look at each student as an individual to ensure their growth, but for many of our students, this was not enough. We were not exposing our students to a challenging curriculum in math and science. Our well-meaning efforts did not meet the needs of our students.

Some students were totally bored because of the lack of challenge. The curriculum lacked relevancy and complexity. As a result they became bored and did not complete their work. This, in turn, negatively impacted their grades and left them unprepared for future learning and caused both the teacher and student to believe that the students were not ready for academically challenging work.

In math and science we had modified the curriculum to “meet the students where they were,” but in doing so many students were never exposed to challenging learning experiences. They were never given the opportunity to meet grade level standards.

As soon as these facts came to light, the assistant superintendent bluntly said, “You need to change your mindset. They’ll never pass the SOL if you’re not teaching to the standards. They’ll stay below grade level because you’re allowing them to. They [the students] will accept that they are not being challenged and be fine with that. You can’t accept that. We won’t accept that.”

When teachers have low expectations for their students, students are likely to meet those expectations.

Realizing our faults, we committed ourselves to designing and delivering high quality lessons that were challenging and designed to close the gap between students’ current performances and teachers’ expectations. We also recognized the importance of regularly communicating high expectations to our students.

As part of our commitment to our students we must ensure that they are provided a guaranteed and viable curriculum where every student is provided the opportunity to learn a core curriculum which provides them with the probability of success in school. Research from Marzano and others indicates that one of the most powerful things we can do is to guarantee that specific content is taught in specific courses at specific grade levels.

Below are some school wide steps that we will take to ensure a challenging and guaranteed curriculum for our students:

  • Teachers will ensure that lessons are aligned and rigorous with a shared (student-teacher) understanding of what students need to know, understand and do.
  • We will monitor our implementation and student progress through formative and summative assessments as part of our division PLCs.
  • We will use performance criteria to engage students and families in conversations of student learning.
  • We will identify problems of practice and discuss solutions as part of our weekly elementary and secondary meetings.
  • We will visit each other’s virtual classrooms to determine how we can solve problems of practice and learn from each other.
  • We will engage in self-analysis to ensure our instruction is rigorous and what we need to do to make sure our students can master the curriculum.

What else can we do individually and as a school to ensure equitable outcomes and a guaranteed curriculum for all students?

Important Information/Tasks

We welcome a new elementary teacher this week. Lori Ann Stoddart is joining our team! Lori Ann will be working with our kindergarten, first, second and fifth grade children. Lori Ann is a veteran teacher from Cale/Mountain View. Lori Ann brings a wealth of experience and expertise. She is a passionate educator who does whatever it takes to ensure student success.

Attendance Just reminding everyone: we’ve added an early dismissal code (CKE) for you to use. Encourage families/students to email avsattendance@k12albemarle.org or call 434-244-8900. You can also forward emails and notes to avsattendance.

Student mental health concerns/counselors: Elementary school teachers, we have some pre-packaged social-emotional lessons via Seesaw coming to us soon. Secondary teachers, we are working with schools to update counselors in PowerSchool.

If you have any concerns or questions that you would normally refer to a school counselor, please feel free to email/call me and I’ll share the info with the necessary people.

ESL Guidelines for Virtual Students

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qHiJ3iIKf95smwGAFPNvU-hjtlaXni0iD2OMnBhJz4Q/edit 

Quick Assist

Quick assist is a great way for you to help a student with a computer problem. It only works with school-issued laptops.

  1. Open Quick Assist (easiest to type Quick Assist in search box).
  2. Click Give Assistance/Assist Another Person.
  3. Share the security code with the student.
  4. Have student open Quick Assist and enter the code.

TPA is now EPA

For those of you who have been here you know that TPA refers to Teacher Performance Appraisal. It’s now Educator Performance Appraisal and there are significant changes to it. These changes are aligned with new state requirements and our county’s mission/vision/goals.

Some highlights:

  • The rating scale is reduced to 4 levels.
  • A new standard on culturally responsive teaching has been added by the state.
  • It is a more reflective process with student surveys, documentation logs, etc. central to the work.

The county is still putting finishing touches on things.I’d encourage you to get started with these two goal setting documents. Student Academic Performance Goal Setting and Professional Goal Setting. Things haven’t been updated in Unified TalentEd yet, so I don’t know who is on the cycle or not.

Novice teachers, this is something you can/should work with your coaches.

Everyone, once things are finalized, I’ll create a screencast for you to reference.

What’s Our PLC Going to Look Like

Obviously, we don’t have the ability to PLC with teachers who are teaching the same subject in our school. We will focus our PLC efforts around students and common academic enhancements that we can implement and are aligned with our school-wide goals around literacy, creating a community of learners for all students, and ensuring a guaranteed and viable curriculum for all students.

“Weekly” meetings will be divided into elementary/secondary. Prior to the meeting, the agenda and pre-meeting materials will be shared.

5 minutes: Introduction

10 minutes: Reflect on previous week’s topic. Celebrations!

10 minutes: Overview of the plan of action

10 minutes: Collaboration and Discussion

10 minutes: Student specific issues (Secondary, we will focus on 1 middle school and 1 high school student; Elementary, we will focus on students with shared concerns)

Family Tech Nights on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday

Tuesday at 6 Virtual Secondary Families

Wednesday at 5 Multilingual Family Tech Night (countywide)

Thursday at 6 Virtual K-3 Families

Thursday at 7 Virtual 4-5 Families

For more information, check out our family newsletter https://albemarlevirtualschool.blogspot.com/2021/09/family-technology-nights-when-your.html . This edition also includes information for families to help support their children and meal pick-up times.



 

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