Aiming for a Blue Ribbon in Alabama's Black Belt

Working Toward EXCELLENCE FALL 2008 THE JOURNAL OF THE ALABAMA BEST PRACTICES CENTER VOLUME 8 ~ NUMBER 1 Aiming for a Blue Ribbon in Alabama’s Black Belt BY JENNIFER PYRON ON THE EDGE of Alabama, 15 miles from the Mississippi state line, lies Aliceville. With only 5,000 residents, the town relies on agriculture and timber for jobs and many of its residents live at or below the poverty level. Driving through downtown, you see three closed gas stations with their prices permanently set at $2.58. A right turn takes drivers past an established housing community and a few newer complexes, and then two long, low red brick school buildings come into view. The town is served by three public schools: Aliceville Elementary, Aliceville Middle and Aliceville High School. The schools are a part of the Pickens County School System, one of the more rural, impoverished districts in the state. Experience might suggest expectations for many students in Aliceville aren’t very high. One might assume that social promotion is the norm; that few students perform on grade level; and that students are lucky to make it to 16 without dropping out. And, in fact, that was a fair description of the situation at Aliceville Middle School just five years ago. AMS was in the state’s dreaded “school improvement” category for poor reading and math scores, and nearly one-third of students were being socially promoted. But in 2004, the “dynamic duo” of principal Johnny Johnson and literacy coach Tammy Brown arrived. Johnson came with one overarching goal in mind: Aliceville Middle School would be a Blue Ribbon School by 2009. It’s been a fairly quick turn- around from school improvement in 2004 to one of Alabama’s topachieving Title I schools in 2008. The story of Aliceville Middle School’s success is a study in having the right leadership and the right resources at the right time. It’s a lesson in how the culture of a school can shift from that of benevolent low expectations for students, and no collaboration among teachers, to a true professional learning community where students and teachers learn together and everyone in the building believes every child can learn. V-Math Live Vmathlive.com Aliceville Middle uses this online math resource by Voyager to create a stimulating online environment for students. Students practice math skills, prepare for tests and play in real-time competitions of speed and skill. Year One: Sharpening the teaching focus Johnny Johnson looks the part of a traditional school administrator as he patrols the hallways in his coat Continued on page 3. Boaz Middle School has changed its culture, its teaching, and its good reputation . . . . . . . . . Page 7 Lincoln Elementary excels thanks to collaboration and community support . . . . . . . . Page 12 TITLE SCHOOLS SOAR TO THE TOP Powerful, homegrown stories of Alabama schools solving Alabama problems . . . . . . . . . . . Page 2 The Human Paragraph: A favorite Strategic Teaching literacy strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 5 Stories of Alabama Schools Solving Alabama Problems Alabama Best Practices Center comments@ bestpracticescenter.org BY CATHY GASSENHEIMER EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT ALABAMA BEST PRACTICES CENTER AMAZING THINGS CAN happen when people work together toward important goals. Noted educator and leadership expert Rick DuFour, in his book Learning by Doing, tells us that “when educators learn to clarify their priorities, to assess the current reality of their situation, to work together, and to build continuous improvement into the very fabric of their collective work, they create conditions for ongoing learning and self-efficacy essential to solving whatever problems they confront.” That’s exactly what this issue of Working Toward Excellence is all about. We feature profiles of three highly successful schools that offer powerful examples of what can happen when continuous improvement permeates everything teachers and principals do. All three are Title I schools, yet they are different in many ways. Aliceville Middle is a rural Pickens County school, in the heart of Alabama’s Black Belt. Lincoln Elementary is a small inner-city school in Huntsville. And Boaz Middle is one of five schools in a community whose population has changed dramatically in barely half a decade. In spite of their differences, each of these schools is made up of professional educators who believe that every student can be success- Working Toward Excellence is a publication of the Alabama Best Practices Center. The Best Practices Center, located in Montgomery, works identify and promote promising education practices, with an emphasis on staff development for teachers and administrators. It collaborates with existing organizations such as the State Department of Education, higher education, local school systems and schools, the regional inservice centers and others. It is facilitated by the A+ Education Foundation, with the generous support of the Malone Family Foundation, Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, Microsoft Corporation, Wachovia Foundation, and the State of Alabama. For more information, call (334) 279-1886. John Norton, Editor ful, and they can make that happen. At these schools you don’t hear, “If only we had different students,” or “There’s not much we can do because their parents just don’t care,” or “They’re so far behind there is no way I can catch them up.” Instead, listen to Aliceville Middle School principal Johnny Johnson: “I came in with the view that we don’t believe in social promotion. Every child needs to learn, and they’ll live up to whatever expectations you set for them.” “I understand we’re in a rural area,” he says, “but whatever teachers tell me they need, I work to get it for them. My role is to get them the resources they need to do the job we expect them to do. That’s what’s put us on the road to achieve our goal.” Or hear Aliceville 4th grade teacher Rhonda Mosely: “Every day…we use the data to move the students in and out of intervention groups, reading groups. You’re constantly aware of where your kids are and where you need to get them. And it’s very powerful for the students to see their progress. They just glow.” The stories are much the same at Boaz Middle School—where more than 50% of students live in poverty, up from 10% just a few years ago. The Boaz faculty’s response to this downturn has been to educate themselves about the linkages between poverty and learning, and to visit students in their own homes and neighborhoods. “This is not the same school it was five years ago,” says former assistant principal Connie Morgan. “We have some teachers who’ve been teaching 25 years, but they are not the same teachers they were five years ago. And it wasn’t because we purchased a lot of programs. It was because we changed the way we think and the way we were doing things.” A potent community partnership is part of the success story at Lincoln Elementary, where a coalition of city churches have offered social supports that make it possible for Lincoln’s teachers to concentrate on students’ academic progress. Teacher collaboration, promoted and nurtured by principal Christy Jensen, has been a second key. Now, says kindergarten teacher Nicole Gross, “we work so closely together, I’m able to use what they’re doing in the upper grades and break it down to my students’ level. We can pick up any grade level lesson plans and know what’s missing. We’re that familiar with what’s going on in other classrooms.” Truly, these are stories of transformation. And they are homegrown Alabama stories—narratives of teachers and administrators who have collectively held themselves accountable to their students and communities. No one claims the work is easy. In fact, many will tell you it’s the toughest job they’ve ever had. But many will quickly add, “it has been the most rewarding.” We hope these articles inspire, inform and challenge you in ways that will help make you an even more successful educator. ❖ 2 Working To ward E xcellence AIMING FOR A BLUE RIBBON Continued from page 1. and tie, walkie-talkie clutched in one hand. But spend a few minutes with him, and it’s easy to see why teachers commute two hours a day from Columbus, MS to teach under his leadership. Johnson is an instructional leader with decades of experience, mostly in Mississippi. He retired in 2000 and soon began a second career in Alabama, serving four years at Aliceville High School and then accepting the principal’s job at Aliceville Middle—a small school with only 240 students (grades 4-6), among whom 99% are African American and 96% qualify for subsidized lunch. “I came in with the view that we don’t believe in social promotion,” he explains in a deep, soft voice. “Every child needs to learn and they’ll live up to whatever expectations you set for them.” “I understand we’re in a rural area,” he says, “but whatever teachers tell me they need, I work to get it for them. My role is to get them the resources they need to do the job we expect them to do. That’s what’s put us on the road to achieve our goal.” Neither Johnson nor his new hire Tammy Brown, the school’s first full-time literacy coach, had seen the student data before they took their positions. “We didn’t know what we were getting into,” jokes Brown. “We sat down and looked at (the data) and realized we had our work cut out for us.” Literacy training. Brown and Johnson began the change process by involving Aliceville Middle in a new program being piloted by the Alabama Reading Initiative (ARI). After years of summer teacher training, ARI leaders wanted to see if teachers could absorb the program’s successful literacy strategies through job-embedded professional development during the school year. ARI provided support, including periodic visits from a regional coach, but Brown bore the main responsibility for training the faculty. Teachers tackled new strategies each month, trying them out in their own classrooms under Brown’s helpful direction. “I heard people talk about the summer training, but what really worked for me was learning the strategies the job-embedded way,” says Shannon Johnson-Lilienthal, a fourth grade reading teacher. “I could learn them and then go right back to my classroom and practice them with my students. I didn’t have to wait two months to try them out, or cram all the training into two weeks. It was very, very helpful, and it surprised me that I was able to start using the strategies immediately.” Sheila Douglas, a fourth grade math and science teacher with more than 20 years experience, recalls the two-week summer training she attended in the early years of ARI. “It was not fun,” she says, matter of factly. “We got a wonderful notebook, but I didn’t start using it until last year! It was really hard to learn the strategies in the summer and wait until the fall to implement them in the classroom. Here, Tammy’s been with us every step of the way to answer questions, model lessons and support us.” New scheduling. With ARI training underway, it was time to introduce a few more changes. According to Johnson, many of the 18 faculty members were teaching subjects they didn’t like in selfcontained classrooms. At the end of that first school year, Johnson and Brown interviewed the teachers to see what subjects they wanted to teach. “If a teacher is teaching all the disciplines, she’ll naturally lean more toward those she likes. Now, the teachers who love math are the ones teaching math,” explains Johnson. “I feel like when folks love what they’re doing, they’ll do a better job.” In 5th and 6th grades, teachers work together in pairs. One teaches reading and social studies, the other math and science, and students rotate between the two during the day. In 4th grade, where student numbers are lower, there is one reading teacher, one math teacher and one social studies/science teacher. Each day students have two-hour blocks for reading and math and an hour for social studies and for science. The school scheduling allows all teamed teachers to share a common daily planning time. In 4th grade, all three teachers plan during the P.E. block. Using data for instruction. Johnson and Brown found that the Aliceville faculty was not accustomed to examining student data. “They may have been looking at it, but there’s a difference between looking at it and using it to drive instruction,” says Brown. “And they definitely weren’t using it to drive instruction.” Johnson leads three mandatory data meetings each month, one per grade level. Teachers talk about individual students, address problems, and make action plans for improvement. “Our data meetings are very robust,“ Brown says. “The teachers do not walk in unprepared. They know their data. We look at grade assessments, DIBELS, the STAR data, pre- and post testing, and intervention scores.” Brown notes that the DIBELS reading assessment is not required by the state for middle school, but he believes it’s important. “It’s time consuming, but it gives you such rich data. And if we don’t have that data, we’re teaching blindly. It’s just one-size-fits-all education if we don’t look at that data and monitor progress.” The teachers quickly came to appreciate the use of data to drive instruction. “Every day we’re looking at data, not just at the beginning of the year or end of the year,” says Rhonda Mosely, who teaches fourth grade math and has been at the school for five years. “Every day we’re using it to make decisions about instruction. We use the data to move the students in and out of intervention groups, reading groups…it’s a constant thing. That means the world to me. You’re constantly aware of where your kids are and where you need to get them. “And it’s very powerful for the students to see their progress,” Mosely adds. “When you can say, ‘You went from a 3.5 grade level to a 5.6 grade level; do you see how smart you are?’, that motivates them. They just glow.” Year Two: Establishing timely interventions In 2005, Aliceville Middle was removed from the school improvement list. Teachers were teaching in their preferred content areas, learning ARI literacy strategies and examining student achievement data more closely. Still, Johnson and Continued on page 4. Fall 2008 3 AIMING FOR A BLUE RIBBON Continued from page 3. Brown knew more was needed. At the beginning of the school year, they introduced an intervention curriculum for struggling readers. They chose the Voyager Passport program and offered it to targeted students for 45 minutes during each day’s two-hour reading block. “We’ve been able to keep our intervention classes to only 8 or 9 kids,” says Brown. “The small group setting with explicit instruction for the struggling students is key. They get a lot of one-on-one instruction during the intervention time.” During intervention time, students on grade level or above will work in small groups or go to the Title I computer lab, where the teacher can assign tasks and print reports to monitor progress. Midway through the year, Johnson and Brown came to see that some students also needed a math intervention program. “I did some research and couldn’t find one that was explicit enough for our needs,” recalls Tammy Brown. “I called Voyager and they said they were working on one, but it hadn’t been piloted yet. I told them I would get the school district to agree to pilot the program. So the whole county piloted Vmath (3-8) just because I wanted it at our school!” Brown acknowledges that running double intervention programs every day can be a real challenge. “You need an excellent schedule,” she says. “We’ve found one that works for us.” The intervention strategies have paid off. A look at recent math assessment results shows that every child in fourth grade has made at least a half-year gain since the beginning of the year. Further, the number of students needing intervention is getting smaller. It’s now down to only a handful of students per grade. “There will always be a need for an intervention program,” Brown believes. “We’ll always have some special-needs students who need that explicit instruction and one-on-one teaching in order to learn. We’re starting to see that most of the intervention students are, in fact, special needs students. But we have to give them what they need.” “Aliceville Middle was chosen because it had most of these things in place already,” says Denise Perkins, who serves as the school’s ARI-PAL regional coach. “Plus, with the gains they were already making, we felt they would implement the program with fidelity and really soar.” Strategic teaching. One of the final “big ideas” Tammy Brown had introduced during her first year as literacy coach was strategic teaching. The framework of strategic teaching calls for every lesson to have a clearly conceived beginning, middle and end, and each lesson must allow students to do five things: read, write, listen, talk and investigate. “We introduced it and we practiced it, but not with much rhyme or reason as to which specific strategies we used,” says Brown. “The teachers were choosing strategies because the kids liked them, or because they seemed to work well.” With the addition of ARI-PAL, which places heavy emphasis on the concepts of strategic teaching, the instruction became much more deliberate. Teachers were required to submit lesson plans weekly, and every lesson had to meet all the tenets of strategic teaching. It took a few months for teachers to adjust to the new demands, but once they saw the positive effects on students, they were hooked. Annie Gardner, who retired after teaching for 35 years in Mississippi, has been teaching fifth grade at Aliceville Middle only one year. She found adapting to strategic teaching “a little hard, but now I really like it because I can see a difference in the students. They are interested in the subject matter. If I lecture too long, I can tell they get bored. The more they own it and work at it, the more they get out of it. You get more out of them.” By incorporating different literacy strategies into the beginning, middle and end of the lesson, faculty members say, the pace of learning accelerates. Students are no longer sitting in desks completing work in isolation. They are working together in pairs or small groups on activities and projects. “When you walk in the classroom,” Brown says, “you can see the teacher is working hard, but the students are working even harder. And that’s not a bad thing. The teachers are the facilitators and the students are responsible for their learning.” “It does put a lot on the teacher,” Rhonda Mosely admits. “It pushes you to get a beginning, middle and end into 50 minutes of class time. It pushes you to keep the kids moving. It also means that we don’t just get to sit at our desk and grade papers while they do worksheets. We have to do that kind of work on our planning time or after school or at home. But it is so worth it to see how the learning has increased.” “The learning from each other is key,” adds Shannon JohnsonLilienthal. “It’s easier to learn from your peers. We (the teachers) are a prime example. That’s what we do everyday. We do demonstrations for each other, observe each other, and learn something new every day.” Professional collaboration. In fact, the teachers at Aliceville Middle School have become very adept at teaching each other. During regular data meetings, it soon became clear that there was a weakness in vocabulary in 6th grade, while the 5th grade students were very strong in vocabulary. The faculty embarked on a three-week rotation to strengthen vocabulary instruction in the other grades. During the first week, the 4th and 6th grade teachers observed the 5th grade teachers in their classrooms. In week two, the 5th grade teachers visited the 4th and 6th grades to model lessons. The third week, 6th grade and 4th grade Years Three & Four: The advent of ARI-PAL In 2006, after two years of Johnson’s leadership, Aliceville Middle was one of 14 schools chosen to participate in the Alabama Reading Initiative’s Project for Adolescent Literacy (ARI-PAL), which focuses on grades four through nine. Guidelines for participation in ARI-PAL are similar to the ARI itself. The principal must commit to attend all training, at least 85 percent of the faculty must attend school-specific summer training, and 100 percent of the faculty must participate in job-embedded training during the school year. In addition, the local school system must commit funds to provide professional development, purchase research-based intervention programs, and hire a full-time reading coach. 4 Working To ward E xcellence teachers modeled back for the 5th grade teachers. This worked so well that the faculty has used the same process to improve students’ ability to solve word problems in math—learning from the 6th grade teachers how to better incorporate literacy strategies into the math classroom. “There is so much behind-thescenes work to make something like that happen,” notes Perkins, the ARIPAL regional coach. “Teachers gave up planning time. There was a lot of sacrifice made in order to do this.” But the teachers don’t seem to mind. In fact, they enjoy the collaboration. Says Sheila Douglas: “One of the best things about ARI is that we get to see each other teach. That is so different from the way I used to teach. It’s the biggest change I’ve seen in my 20 years. We never used to go into each other’s room. You barely knew where the other teacher’s rooms were, much less what they were doing in them. To me, that has made a lot of difference.” During the second year of ARI-PAL, Perkins and Brown stressed purposeful planning. They encouraged teachers to use a wide variety of strategies and to reflect on why they chose particular strategies. “We want the teachers to look at the specific outcome or specific content standard they’re teaching and select the literacy strategies that will be most helpful in getting the students to learn the content,” Perkins explains. “We’re seeing so much more of that this year. They are getting very good at identifying which strategy is best for teaching which content.” STRATEGIC TEACHING: THE HUMAN PARAGRAPH STRATEGY Strategic teaching incorporates creative literacy strategies. Here’s an example provided by ARI-PAL regional coach Denise Perkins, which is used at Aliceville Middle and other schools in the ARI adolescent literacy initiative. Tell students they are going to be involved in a mystery activity, and they have to figure out what they are doing. Tell each student to write a very interesting sentence. Go around the room and choose students (2-5 depending on class size) who have written sentences with subjects that others could easily write about as well. Tell these students that they are going to be the bosses. Have a whole class discussion about what the term “boss” means and give examples as needed. Then discuss the term “employee” and what it means. You need to make the connection between a boss and an employee very clear. Have the bosses come to the front of the room and spread them apart. Tell the other students “these are your bosses” and that the rest of them are going to be the employees. They must write a sentence that they think will get them hired by the bosses they choose. Emphasize the boss/employee relationship again. Have the bosses read their sentences and then have them read the sentences again. Each employee then writes a sentence in order to be hired. Students take turns individually reading their sentences to the bosses. Have each student start with the boss on the end and work his/her way through the bosses until he/she is hired. It is the boss’s job to know when a sentence supports his/her boss sentence. A boss can hire an employee, say no thank you, or say that the sentence needs a little fine-tuning but please try again. After all of the employees have been hired, have all but one group sit down. Have the group members line up single-file behind the boss. The boss is facing the class. Tell the group members that they will need to read their sentences one at a time. Make a big deal out of having the boss take one giant step to the left, which will be to the audience’s right. This is usually when someone will yell out that they are being paragraphs! If not, remind them that their job is to figure out what they are actually doing. You might have to start hinting that it has something to do with language or writing if they don’t get it after the second group reads their sentences. Whenever they guess what is going on, have the discussion with them as to how they figured it out, what the boss represents (main idea or topic sentence), what the employees represent ( supporting details) and what the giant step to the side represents (indentation). Allow each group to stand up, line up, have the boss move over, and read their sentences. Then talk about how a paragraph should flow smoothly, should not have repetitious sentences, should stay in the same tense, person, etc. Have the groups work together to rearrange the employees, fire any that repeat (or have them write another supporting sentence) and fine-tune so that everyone uses the same tense, person, etc. After they are ready to present again, ask them what part of the writing process (revising & editing) they’ve just completed and have that discussion. Have each group present its revised paragraph and have the audience gently discuss the improvements. If a group only has two sentences, it’s a prime opportunity to discuss whether they are actually a paragraph. Once they have completed this activity the first time, it takes less time the next time. NOTE: I have always completed the activity a few times, which takes 2-3 normal length class periods, but the time is well used. After the activity, I use a graphic organizer to model where the boss sentence and employee sentences should be written. I model revisions by numbering my sentences on the organizer. I have the class work with me to complete the organizer and then write the paragraph from the organizer. This may need to be modeled more than once. The next step is to have the students complete their own graphic organizers and write their paragraphs from the organizers. If needed, students could first work in pairs to complete an organizer and write a paragraph before working individually. If you have questions about this process, email us at bpc@aplusala.org. ❖ Sweet success The hallways of Aliceville Middle are covered in student work. There are foldables, graphic organizers and T-charts from math and science classes. Quick Writes and Continued on page 6. Fall 2008 5 AIMING FOR A BLUE RIBBON Continued from page 5. KWL’s* show off students’ comprehension skills in reading and social studies. It’s clear there is rigorous work going on and that expectations are high for every student. While Principal Johnny Johnson is quick to give credit to his faculty, they are just as quick to point to his leadership as the fundamental reason the school succeeds. “Mr. Johnson is not the kind of principal that sits in his office,” explains Mosely. “He’s in the hall at every bell change. He’s in the classrooms watching us teach and the students learn. His total involvement has really made a huge difference in behavior.” And when parents come to school, the principal can tell them what’s going on in the classrooms, says Johnson-Lilienthal. “He’s not a bystander. He can point to all the paperwork and he can share observations of his own to tell those parents how their child is performing.” Sixth grade teacher Valerie Jackson commutes from Columbus MS every day. Johnson, she says, is the reason. “I keep thinking of retiring, but I’m staying as long as he’s here. He’s a wonderful leader. He gets us what we need. He’s right in the trenches with us.” The success stories at this little school are almost too many to count, but Johnson and his faculty never tire of telling them. “We have some of the best reading teachers in the state. It’s amazing,” Johnson says. “The boys here had the attitude of, ‘Well, I’ll get to 16 years old and I’ll just drop out.’ But our boys are our best readers now.” “We have one child who’s read about 300 books this year. Out of 240 kids, all of them have achieved the 10-point club for Accelerated Reader. We sent 75 students on a trip for making the 110-point club. And our library circulation is up to 30,000.” And it’s not just boys who are learning to read. Johnson-Lilienthal has 11 special needs students, most of whom entered her class reading at a first-grade level or lower. All have made significant gains this year; one made it into the AR 110-point club. “If you’d put me in front of a class with 11 special education students five years ago, I would have cried,” she laughs. “But with the strategic teaching and the reading intervention, I’m able to reach them. And on some days, you’d be hard pressed to pick them out.” Veteran teacher Addie Hill, who’s in her 25th year at Aliceville Middle and teaches 5th grade, tells the story of a special needs student who came to the school in the middle of her 4th grade year, with an oral reading fluency of 52 words a *Students use the KWL tool to help organize their thinking. Under three column headings, they write down What I Know (K), What I Want to Know (W) and What I Learned (L). minute. Now, in 5th grade, she’s up to 120. “She has really blossomed. She also scored at Level III (of four) on the Alabama Direct Assessment of Writing.” In addition to improved student achievement, discipline problems have been significantly reduced. “Students didn’t like to be recognized for achievement four years ago,” says Brown. “They didn’t want to be pointed out in assemblies for being on A/B honor roll or for reading a certain number of books. Now, they eat it up. Learning is cool now.” Fifth grade teacher Tara Cargile offers this example, “One of our special needs students was also quite a behavior problem. This girl would lash out, she didn’t care to be here. She’d sleep in class. She did not get along with her peers.” Once the faculty implemented strategic teaching, Cargile says, “we could almost immediately see a difference. She started asking to do the strategies and had her favorite ones. Her behavior and attention improved dramatically, and she worked well with her peers in groups. To see her perform as she does today, at her ability level, is just amazing. We would have lost her without strategic teaching.” Looking forward One common characteristic of highly successful schools is the faculty’s unwillingness to rest on its laurels. Johnson and Brown set school-wide goals every year. In 2006-2007, the goals were to support writing in all grades and to focus on math fluency. State assessments showed that both math fluency and writing improved. “In fact,” says ARI’s Denise Perkins, “this school has not had a student score at Level I on the writing assessment in three years.” In 2007-2008, the teachers decided they needed to integrate more technology into their classrooms and more writing in the content areas. As a result, technology use tripled, with the addition of several new math and reading computer programs and the acquisition of several LCD projectors for the classrooms. “Next year, I can see us taking a hard look at content areas and have writing be a focus,” says Brown. “I want them to have opportunities to watch each other incorporate writing into their strategic lessons.” The school has also been chosen as an Alabama Black Belt Art Initiative school, which carries a financial award of $18,000 from the Alabama Arts Alliance to support the integration of art into strategic teaching, including a week-long professional development opportunity for the faculty. Johnson has a few other things in mind for next year, as well. “Pickens County is going through hard times financially and will be under supervision of the state next year,” he says. “So we are looking at how we’ll manage cutbacks. I know we’ll lose one teaching unit, but I want to use a $25,000 grant we received from the state to put someone on contract so we’ll have the same amount of staff next year. We can’t keep our intervention programs in place if we lose teacher units.” Whatever the future holds for Aliceville Middle School, there is a sturdy foundation of collaboration and high expectations to ensure success. With a strong leadership team, dedicated faculty, and engaged students, the school will no doubt bear the blue ribbon of excellence some day soon. “The attitude of the students has changed,” Johnson says with a firm nod. “They know they can succeed now. They know they can pass. Everyone in the building— students and teachers—has had a taste of success and they want more. They want to be recognized as a good school.” ❖ 6 Working To ward E xcellence The Road from Good to Great BY JENNIFER PYRON THE HALLS OF Boaz Middle School are buzzing with energy. Students walk past bulletin boards displaying their work, as a visitor stops to browse the examples of graphic organizers, short essays, and Chalk Talks—large pieces of butcher paper crammed with different colored sentences and phrases, all commenting on a central theme. Teachers stand in the open classroom doorways, discussing students, strategies and the day’s successes with one another. Students stop to ask teachers for extra help with presentations and projects. Teachers stop students as they pass by just to ask how things are going. It wasn’t always this way. While Boaz Middle had always been a pretty good school, with SAT 9 and SAT 10 scores in the high 50s, it was missing some of the key pieces that make a school great for every child that walks through the front doors. When Principal Ray Landers came to the school in 2000, he brought a new style of leadership and a new vision. He wanted Boaz Middle to evolve into a professional learning community centered around student needs, built on collaborative instruction, and focused on developing relationships among students, teachers and families. The task of living up to this vision has been formidable. But Landers, assistant principal Connie Morgan (now the district’s special education coordinator), and instruc- tional specialist Pam Duke have succeeded in building a faculty of expert practitioners who are themselves leaders of improvement. The school has risen from good to great by focusing on the modern-day three R’s of school success: Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships. Growing a collaborative culture Located in northeast Alabama’s Marshall County, the Boaz community was once known for its booming retail industry of outlet stores. Today, the economy is shifting to agriculture and blue-collar factory jobs. Three years ago, Boaz formed its own city system that now includes Boaz Elementary, Boaz Middle, and Boaz High School. The middle school serves 520 students in grades 6-8, 88% of whom are white, 10% Hispanic and 1% African American. Fifty percent of all students qualify for free or reduced lunch, making BMS a Title I school. “Boaz Middle has always had the reputation of being a good school,” says Landers. “But the hard fact was we were leading Marshall County in failure rate, with 30-40 students being retained every year. As we dug deeper into student data, we came to realize that we were a good school for a lot of kids, but we weren’t a good school for those who were failing.” At the time, most of classrooms at Boaz Middle were “teacher centered,” explains Landers. “There was lots of lecturing. It was an ‘either they get it or they don’t’ atmosphere. It was all about adults, which was shocking to me after 17 years in an elementary classroom. I knew that wasn’t the way you got kids to learn.” The faculty was made up of mostly veterans with 25+ years in the classroom. They were used to doing things their own way. “They felt like the school was about them,” recalls Landers. “Now, in my opinion, you can have 25 years of experience, but many times all that means is you’ve taught the same year 25 times. We really had to change the culture if we were going to make the school about the students.” Landers knew that such a big change required incremental steps. In their first few years, he and assistant principal Morgan moved slowly. Their initial step was to open up the classrooms and get teachers to start collaborating more. “Everyone was in their own little world,” he says. “Teachers would go into their classrooms and shut the door and that was that. We moved to a more open door philosophy almost immediately so that the faculty could learn from one another and see what was going on in the other classrooms.” David Lackey, who teaches 6th grade language arts, was hired by Landers in January 2001. What he found, Lackey says, was a school “doing the same thing year after year and keeping the same mediocre scores year after year.” There was no Continued on page 8. Fall 2008 7 THE ROAD FROM GOOD TO GREAT Continued from page 7. teacher collaboration and no vision for greatness, he says. “We saw Mr. Landers and Mrs. Morgan slowly start to change the culture.” As the old guard retired, Landers hired teachers who shared his philosophy that students are the most important part of any school. His requirements: professionals who love working on a team, have a good sense of humor, an outgoing personality, and a passion for children. “There are excellent teachers out there who wouldn’t do well at this school,” he notes. “To be successful at Boaz, you have to be a good team member. We have a collaborative culture. We want them to be good mentors to each other and share ideas. It’s all about being a learner. If you’re not a learner, then you can’t truly be successful with students.” “At the end of the day, success is not about programs,” he continues. “It’s about people. It’s about hiring the right people and giving them the right training to make them great teachers.” Quickening the pace The pace of change quickened in 2004, when Landers coaxed Pam Duke, a former staff member of the Alabama Reading Initiative, out of retirement and into a role as instructional specialist. “She came to us with a tremendous amount of expertise and all these strategies,” he explains. “At that point our success became exponential. She shared those things with our teachers, who started modeling and sharing with each other.” Landers, Morgan and Duke realized that the entire faculty needed to be trained to teach reading. During Duke’s first year, she led jobembedded professional development on all the literacy components of the Alabama Reading Initiative. “It was very powerful because we gathered together in small groups during the school day to learn the literacy strategies,” says Renee Adams, who teaches 7th grade science. “Then we returned to the classroom to practice. Pam helped us adapt them to our content area.” “When Mrs. Duke came on board, a lot of things happened quickly,” recalls Lackey. “And when the expectations changed, attitudes changed. The focus became all about the students and what they needed. A bond started forming between (Landers, Morgan and Duke) and the faculty. “Doors started opening and we started sharing with one another what we were doing in our classrooms. When the doors started opening, learning started happening, and we saw a big difference in the performance of our students.” The three leaders did away with after-school faculty meetings and increased communication via email. Block scheduling was introduced to ensure that all grade levels and content areas share a common planning time to discuss student progress, create lesson plans, share ideas, and work on developing crosscurricular projects. Most importantly, professional development moved from a “sit and get” experience to a shared, collaborative effort relevant to the learning process. “We’ve gone from having consultants come in and give lectures, to a place where we are learning from each other,” says Jenny Franks, a 7th grade language arts teacher in her eighth year at Boaz Middle. “We are all required to do reflective journals about any outside professional development we do. Professional development is targeted to where our weaknesses are based on what our student data says.” As teachers became more comfortable with collaborating and sharing ideas, Landers found himself having to step out of his comfort zone in terms of his management style. “A lot of principals have a hard time turning over ownership of the learning process to their teachers,” he says. “But the folks in the building are the real experts, and a good instructional leader needs to learn how to share the responsibility with them. We needed help from everyone.” To that end, Landers, Morgan and Duke formed the Faculty Leadership Team that today makes all decisions regarding instruction. They hand-picked the first members of the group, choosing teachers who truly understood the learning process and were experts in their fields. Members were chosen from all content areas and grade levels. Now the team itself selects new members as needed, ensuring that each segment of the faculty is represented. “Mr. Landers wanted those of us in the trenches to make decisions regarding the school,” explains Adams, who serves on the team. “We meet frequently at the beginning and end of each school year, and then as needed throughout the year. We also meet heavily during the summer to do scheduling and planning.” As principal, Landers has the power to veto policies and procedures that come out of team meetings. “But in three years, I’ve never done that,” he notes. “Because when you get a dedicated team together like that, they’re going to come up with what’s best for the boys and girls.” Endeavoring to understand poverty Four years ago, Boaz Middle School was not a Title I school. The percentage of students qualifying for subsidized lunch was around 10%. But, as the jobs in Boaz have shifted toward blue-collar and migrant agriculture positions, the demographics of the community have changed, as 8 Working To ward E xcellence have the demographics of the Boaz City School System. Two years ago, Connie Morgan looked at the rising numbers of students in poverty and realized the percentages at the middle school were only going to increase—and might already be higher than reported. “In middle and high school, selfreporting of poverty goes down, so even though the numbers may say only 50%, we suspect it’s higher,” she says. Rather than make excuses about the difficulties of teaching students in poverty, Boaz Middle School decided to tackle the issue head on. They conducted article and book studies, starting with Ruby Payne’s seminal work, A Framework for Understanding Poverty. In it, Payne contends that relationships and education are the two things that can help children break out of the poverty cycle. “We had the education piece in place,” says Landers. “We just needed to focus on the relationship piece. We needed to make it personal.” “Pam and I did a presentation on poverty and made it very personal,” Morgan says. “We showed our teachers the statistics for our community and then we got on a bus. We drove through the community and stopped at the addresses of our students. We’d get out, knock on doors, and speak with our students and their families. We did this as a whole faculty to see what circumstances our students are dealing with at home.” “I’d been on some mission trips to Mexico and seen poverty up close, but I never realized what was here in Boaz,” says Amy Machen, a 6th grade social studies teacher. “We saw things and places we didn’t know existed here. Now, when a student doesn’t have his homework or looks disheveled and tired, we understand the underlying cause.” In the past, says Lackey, “There were some teachers here who had the attitude that we couldn’t expect anything out of those students because of the environment they came from. But now, it’s all about giving them what they need while they’re here at school.” Following the advice of author Stephen Peters, who writes that before you can teach, you have to inspire and capture the student, the Leadership Team at Boaz created a “lunch buddies” system, assigning teacher/mentors to students identified as needing extra structure and attention. Teachers choose six or seven students whom they feel will benefit from a family-style lunch setting. Six girls eat lunch with a female teacher and six boys eat with a male teacher. Students are made to feel like it is a treat and an honor. As a result, the teachers develop close relationships with the students and the students have a safe forum to discuss issues and problems that are troubling them. Last year, the faculty expanded their consideration of poverty, participating in an article study about tone of voice and discipline. “When you’re working with older kids and you have 30 kids in the classroom, you may think that using the parental tone of voice is the way to go,” explains Duke. “But in many cases, it is not going to work with students in poverty because they may themselves be the parent in their household. Many of our teachers had to learn to use different tones of voice to communicate.” Other changes have also been made to better serve these students. “We give very little homework,” says Jeff Sanders, 8th grade math teacher. “Many of our students, when they go home, they’re struggling to survive. They may not have a regular place to sleep, much less a quiet place to do homework.” “But our scores show that lots of learning is going on here,” inter- jects Duke. “They’re learning what they need to learn during the school day, without the need for homework.” Components of the “Zeros Aren’t Productive” Program • Students are required Shifting to student-centered classrooms The motto at Boaz Middle School is “Learning Is Required,” and the school has many supports and structures to ensure learning happens for every student. Landers and Duke, in partnership with the Teacher Leadership Team, constantly consider the four questions at the heart of Rick DuFour’s book, Whatever It Takes. What do we want students to learn? How will we know when they’ve learned it? What will we do with those that don’t learn it? What will we do with those that do? DuFour’s essential questions, combined with the culture shift at BMS from closed doors and teachercentered instruction to collaborative learning focused on student needs, have produced many visible changes in the school. For example, there are no textbooks in the classrooms. Instead, content standards are taught using primary materials—newspaper and magazine articles, novels, historical letters, photographs and whatever else teachers can find to engage students. Why the switch? According to Landers, using a diverse array of materials makes it easier to differentiate instruction. “If you’re teaching out of a 6th grade textbook but not all of your students are reading on a 6th grade level, you’re in trouble. Or if your students are reading on a 9th grade level, they are going to be bored. “We realized we needed to get away from the textbooks, but we didn’t want to force (the teachers )to do it. We did book and article studies focusing on research that shows textbooks are not the best tool for real learning. And then little light bulbs Continued on page 10. to complete all work assigned. Teachers are responsible to require work that is relevant, concise and within the student’s ability to complete. • One main goal of ZAP is to teach students responsibility, and zeroes are only permitted as place holders until unfinished work is completed (or in extreme cases of refusal to do the work). • Each grade level will have procedures in place that outline how unfinished work will be completed. Penalties will be in place for “late work” or “redo” work that is not completed within a designated time. • Fridays will be used as “Fix It” day. Students may be pulled from other classes to complete work on this day. • Each grade will establish a “make-up window” during which uncompleted work will be completed. Teachers will contact parents during the “make-up” window to let them know that work is due. • Support systems will be in place for students not completing work during the window. These include but aren’t limited to: OSCAR, loss of privileges, One More Chance (at break), parent conferences, denial of extracurricular activities, and removal from prestige assignments (office helper, library helper, etc.) ❖ Fall 2008 9 CROSS-CURRICULAR COLLABORATION: THE BOAZ TOOTHPICK BRIDGE The goal of the project is to build a bridge out of toothpicks. The construction crew that builds the strongest bridge with the least amount of materials wins a certificate and school-wide recognition. Each content-area teacher covers a portion of the project. Language Arts– Students fill out job applications for the positions on the construction crews. Positions include architect, project manager, accountant, transportation manager and construction worker. The language arts teacher and science teacher work together to ensure students apply for jobs according to their strengths. “We discuss vocabulary related to job applications and talk about what’s required on a job interview,” explains Jenny Franks, 7th grade language arts teacher. “We even address the question, ‘Have you been convicted of a felony?’ I tell them if they’ve been in In School Suspension, they’ve been convicted of a felony!” After the students are hired and receive their first “paycheck”, they spend time in language arts discussing housing and transportation options by looking at real estate and classified ads, understanding the language of mortgages and even setting up utilities. Social Studies– The social studies teacher serves as the banker, teaching students how to open checking accounts, write checks, balance their checkbooks, make deposits and pay bills. Math– In math class, students discuss percentages related to their income and expenses. For example, what percent of their salary should go to housing, what percent to transportation, and what percent to basic needs. The math teachers also go over which geometric shapes are best for building a bridge and why. Science– Science class is where the actual bridge building occurs. Renee Adams puts together six construction crews per period. Every student has his or her own job to do, and Adams makes the classroom as close to the “real world“ experience as possible. “They get paid once a week. If they’re late to class, they’re late for work, and their pay is docked. If they miss a day, they’ve missed a day of work and they don’t get paid for that day,” she explains. “Each construction company gets $500,000 to build the bridge and it’s up to them to spend it efficiently. For example, if they don’t get their materials order in on time, it’s an extra $5,000 for same-day delivery. They learn quickly to plan ahead!” The project is ever-evolving. Next year, the teachers hope to include computer class by creating a computer-based debit system instead of having the students write checks for living expenses and building materials. ❖ THE ROAD FROM GOOD TO GREAT Continued from page 9. start going on all around the building. Teachers started experimenting with new lesson plans and leaving the textbooks on the shelves. They had such success that the practice spread like wildfire to other classrooms.” “It was very scary getting rid of our textbooks at first,” says Amy Machen. “But the kids have really enjoyed it. We use so many different types of material. We might pull a photograph off the National Archives website and really analyze it and discuss it. We’ll divide it into quadrants and they might see something they’d missed looking at the whole picture. We ask questions like: What people do you see? What are they doing? What inferences can you make? Or we might closely examine a Presidential letter or other primary text.” “It’s harder to cover the content, it takes longer,” she says. “I may not cover everything I want to, but what we do cover, we cover in a lot of depth.” Another component of student-focused instruction is the daily intervention program. During “home base” time from 7:15-8 a.m., Monday-Thursday, every resource teacher (P.E., Library, Music, ELL, Special Ed, and the Guidance Counselor) works with struggling readers. The students are divided by gender so teachers can easily find articles, stories and small books that fit their interest. English Language Learners are included in each group. Each teacher has two groups of 4-5 students, two mornings a week. They guide them through expository articles at their ability level, digging deeply into vocabulary, comprehension and fluency. In this way, the school is able to reach 50-60 kids per week with intensive small group intervention. The intervention program has been very successful. Landers offers this example: “One of our guys is 15, reading on a 5th grade level. He was interested in getting his driver’s license. So for a few months, his main source of reading material in his intervention group was the driver’s manual. The subject matter has to be relevant for them to be engaged and learn. He’s been able to pass the exam and get his learner’s permit. We look for teachable moments like that.” Students on grade level also get concentrated reading time from 7:30 to 8 a.m. daily. During that time, they read independently, orally or in literature circles in their home bases (homerooms). Teaching out of the box Among the “out of the box” methods Boaz teachers employ to address student needs is the Zeroes Aren’t Productive, or ZAP, approach to grading. ZAP makes it difficult or impossible for a student to “earn” a zero (see page 9). There’s also Fix-It Friday, during which students may be required to leave physical education, computer, library or music to complete unfinished work in content areas. The OSCAR program (On School Campus Alternative Remediation) provides for students to stay after school three days a week to make up work. And high school tutors come in once a week to help kids who’ve been identified as needing extra assistance. The school also focuses on writing across the curriculum. Previously, readying students for the Alabama Direct Assessment of Writing (ADAW)was mainly the responsibility of 7th grade language arts teachers. To spread that responsibility, the school conducted faculty book studies on consultant Rick Shelton’s writing handbook, Write Where You Are. Shelton also visits the school four times a year to model lessons. 10 Working To ward E xcellence In 7th grade, teachers embarked on a “writing camp.” During the first semester, language arts teachers introduce and give explicit instruction and practice on all four modes of writing. Social studies teachers support language arts teachers in at least expository and persuasive writing. “After Christmas, the English teachers revisit one mode of writing per week,” Duke explains. “The task is then handed off to Social Studies, who reinforce that mode for a week before handing the task off to science, who then hands it to math. In this way, we completely immerse students in the modes of writing for the months leading up to the ADAW.” The school also administers teacher-generated writing assessments to 6th and 8th graders at the same time 7th graders are taking the state test. The practice tests are jury-scored by teachers in the same fashion as the ADAW. This helps identify weaknesses and strengths school-wide so instruction can be tailored to student needs. At Boaz Middle, math gets equal billing with reading and writing. All content area teachers feel comfortable helping math teachers. “I coined the term math moment,” explains Jeff Sanders. “Every content teacher is given a math problem every week to go over with their students. I also send out a math word of the week, and every Wednesday, the language arts teachers use it in their vocabulary lesson so the students learn what the words mean.” In addition, math teachers review each new unit to identify fresh vocabulary words, then give the list to all other content teachers so they can reinforce them. teachers work together to address the needs of students. These can be as simple as Sanders giving an extra credit assignment to write a “cinquain” math poem—or as complex as the toothpick bridge project, originally conceived by Renee Adams, and expanded by the rest of the 7th grade teachers. (See page 10.) As a result of all this crosscurricular collaboration, the entire faculty at Boaz Middle now speaks the same language, notes Duke. “It’s about all teachers sharing responsibility for all teaching and learning. We have powerful conversations, because we’re all speaking the same language.” “When I’m in my math moment, I’m using Mr. Sanders’ language,” notes social studies teacher Heidi Battles. “And it really impresses the kids that I can speak his language and that I know what’s going on in the other classes.” “And to see the transition of the kids is wonderful,” adds Sanders. “When I first started talking about demonstrative sentences and pronouns, the students were shocked and said, ‘I didn’t know we were going to have a reading lesson in math class!’ But now, when I say, let’s do a quick-write or write an explanation, they don’t question. It’s second nature to them. They go into any class and they are comfortable with the language and the content they hear.” Reflecting on success The changes that have taken place at Boaz Middle School during the last eight years have dramatically improved student achievement. The numbers show it. The school reduced discipline referrals from 567 in 2000-2001 to 150 in 2006-2007. Furthermore, they’ve reduced the failure rate to zero. In 2006-2007, 89% of all 6th graders, 91% of all 7th graders and 93% of all 8th graders scored proficient or above on the math section of the ARMT. Also in 2006-2007, 96% of all 6th graders, 95% of all 7th graders and 95% of all 8th graders scored proficient or above in reading. Another impressive statistic: the school was able to improve writing scores by more than 20 percentage points in 2007. According to ADAW data, the 5th grade class at Boaz Elementary School in 2005 had 67% of students at levels III and IV. In 2007, when those same students were in 7th grade at Boaz Middle School, 88% of them scored proficient (level III) or above. “This is not the same school it was five years ago,” says Connie Morgan, who moved from BMS to the district office last year. “We have some teachers who’ve been teaching 25 years, but they are not the same teachers they were five years ago. And it wasn’t because we purchased a lot of programs. It was because we changed the way we think and the way we were doing things inside the building.” “It wasn’t an easy journey,” says teacher Jenny Franks. “At first, there were a lot of hard days where I felt like nothing was working and I wasn’t being successful at all. Then, the very next day, I’d hit on something and it would be great. Eventually, there were more great days than bad days, and now it’s second nature. If we hadn’t taken the journey, it would have been a tragedy.” Heidi Battles, who came to Boaz Middle two years ago, thinks back to her days as a high school teacher when “I watched students fail the graduation exam because I thought there was nothing I could do. “Then I came here and now I understand that those students could have learned. They didn’t have to fail. It took me a whole year here to even start understanding how I needed to change my practice. But now I have everything I need—the support, the language, the strategies—to teach every child in my classroom. If they can’t get it one way, they’ll get it another way. And they know we’re not going to give up on them.” “Our teachers will tell you that this is the toughest job they’ve ever loved,” says Ray Landers. “It’s hard to teach the way we do it here. It’s harder to teach good grammar and sentence structure using literature instead of a textbook, because you have to go out and find the material. But that’s what captures the students. “We have to find a way to make learning entertaining to the video game generation,” he insists. “Our teachers are not just dispensers of knowledge. They equip our boys and girls with the tools to go out and find the knowledge for themselves, and then use that knowledge to make their education a more positive experience.” ❖ Teaching across the curriculum The many cross-curricular projects and lessons at Boaz Middle are perhaps the best example of how Fall 2008 11 Teaching and Learning Better Together BY JENNIFER PYRON THE HISTORIC LINCOLN MILL VILLAGE neighborhood in northeast Huntsville is an impoverished inner-city area with its fair share of crime. Just six short years ago, the houses around the old cotton mill had fallen into such disrepair that residents were living in what can only be described as third-world conditions. Many houses had no electricity, no running water and gaping holes in the floors, walls and ceilings. Parents and children were also living there, stuck in the cycle of generational poverty that can be so difficult to break. In the heart of this community sits Lincoln Elementary School, a small K-5 school that, according to 37-year veteran teacher Pam McGowan is “the crème de la crème” of Title I schools. “We have some of the best teachers in the district and great leadership. Everyone genuinely cares about these children.” In 2002, a “perfect storm” came together to transform the school and the neighborhood around it. The catalyst was Lincoln Village Ministry, a broad-based volunteer organization involving 14 Huntsville churches and guided by Mark Stearns, director of mercy ministries at Southwood Presbyterian Church. The church coalition stepped in to provide financial and volunteer support to Lincoln Elementary School and quickly realized that they needed to expand their focus to include the entire community (see page 14). “I’ve seen some big changes in the last six years,” says Melinda Clark, curriculum specialist at Lincoln Elementary. “We’ve always had the trust and support of the community, but now it’s become more organized in various ways to really benefit everyone involved.” First the Lincoln Village Ministry got involved, Clark says, “then Mrs. Jensen (the principal) came on board. We just came together. We shared a common goal, and we all worked hard to achieve that goal. We have good leadership, good teachers, support of the ministry volunteers…everything just started clicking. It’s been a long road, I don’t mean for it to sound like it was easy, but it’s a great example of a lot of factors coming together at the right time to help students.” As a result of the hard work of many, Lincoln Elementary School was named a Torchbearer School by the State Department of Education in 2007, in recognition of its progress with all students. The school has grown into a powerful learning community of teachers and volunteers, all of whom are committed to doing whatever it takes to meet the physical, social, emotional and academic needs of some of Huntsville’s neediest children. A history of hard work Built in 1929, Lincoln Elementary has a tradition of working hard to meet the needs of its students. “This is a mill village school,” explains Donna Plier, a second grade teacher who has been at Lincoln for 24 years. “There are some families that have three generations of students at this school. The grandparents worked in the mill, the parents went to school here, and now the children are going to school here too.” Mingled in with this core group of students is a very transient population. Most of the children live in government housing and move frequently during the school year. Their parents find good jobs and move up into their own private homes. Conversely, families fall on hard times and move into the housing communities. As a result, the student population at Lincoln Elementary fluctuates semester to semester. At the beginning of 2007-2008 school year, there were 170 students. Sixty percent are African American and 96% qualify for free/reduced lunch. The year Christy Jensen signed on as principal of Lincoln Elementary, she and her leadership team (Melinda Clark and Reading Coach Cindy Saseen) initiated changes they knew were needed in order to organize the school around the needs of the students. “She knew she didn’t like the way things were going when she got here,” recalls Yvonne Henry, a 2nd grade teacher who’s been at Lincoln for 16 years. “She never raised her voice, that’s not her style, but she guided us toward a community where we all share responsibility for every child in the building. It moved from ‘this is my child’ to ‘this child belongs to every teacher and the community.’” “There were teachers,” Henry says, “who didn’t want students leaving their classrooms because they felt like they were the only ones who could teach those students. She moved us toward a professional learning community, where we support each other, learn from each other, and work together to meet the needs of our students.” 12 Working To ward E xcellence Reshaping Lincoln around literacy The same year Mrs. Jensen arrived, the school was due for Alabama Reading Initiative recertification. This job-embedded professional development process was beneficial for newly minted teachers and veterans alike. It provided the opportunity to focus on one component of literacy per training session, after which teachers were able to immediately use the strategies in their classrooms. During recertification, the school re-structured the instructional day to include a two-hour reading block in the morning and a two-hour math block in the afternoon. Other subjects, including science and social studies, are covered during reading time using primary texts—or given their own time in between the reading and math blocks. The leadership team then added an intervention program for struggling readers during the twohour reading block. “We have a school full of at-risk students,” says Jensen. “We will always need an intervention program.” By looking closely at student data, the faculty created flexible small groups based on ability and level of need. Lincoln has two intervention teachers, one for upper grades and one for lower grades. They are parttime, contract employees and are a vital part of the faculty. Clark and Saseen also work with intervention groups so that more students get the instruction they need. Monday through Thursday, the intervention teachers pull one to three students at a time during the reading block and work with them for 30 minutes. In a typical day of instruction, struggling readers get three doses of reading: whole group instruction, small group instruction, and 30 minutes of intervention. “This method has been key to our success,” says Plier. “Everyone who is able to lead an inter- vention group does one, so that those children get triple-dosed every day. We also have several groups of highachievers who participate in 30 minutes of enrichment during the reading block. All students at every level get what they need to make progress.” The intervention groups change frequently based on student need and indicators of mastery. “Every time a formative assessment is given, it’s looked at very carefully by everyone who touches that student,” notes Jensen. “Our teachers know these students backward and forward.” This intimate knowledge comes from spending a lot of time digging into student achievement data. “Official” data meetings are monthly, but the faculty and Jensen meet every Wednesday afternoon to discuss student progress and challenges. The entire faculty reviews every student together so all teachers can have input into how to tailor instruction. “We monitor progress constantly,” says Plier. “That is one of the biggest changes we’ve made in the last three years. Prior to that, it was once a month and only the lowest kids. But now we progress-monitor every child, every week.” “We keep data folders on every child,” explains Yvonne Henry. “We don’t wait until three months go by to see what can we do to help the child. We’re constantly looking at data to see what we can do right now. We’re constantly changing reading groups to meet the needs and learning styles of the students.” “When we determine our reading groups, we look at all the data and divide students into high, middle and low groups,” continues Henry. “My teaching partner and I do this together. We keep our high groups, so I teach mine and she teaches hers, and then we share the low groups. I’ll have mine for awhile and then send them to her. “So they are getting two interventions in a day,” she explains. “With the real strugglers, I may send them down to first grade a few days a week to get help on their level. Then of course we send our high readers to the 3rd grade teachers if they need instruction on that level.” Pushing the necessity for collaboration Another change initiated by Jensen was a more collaborative approach to teaching. The data meetings and the ARI training helped begin the process, but Jensen also introduced book studies, starting with Rick DuFour’s Learning by Doing and Whatever It Takes. Now, according to 5th grade teacher Joy Downing, “collaboration is like breathing. It’s just what we do. We all work together as a team to meet the needs of the students.” “We work so closely together,” offers Nicole Gross, the high-energy kindergarten teacher. “We know each other’s curriculum, we know each other’s pacing guide. I’m able to use what they’re doing in the upper grades and break it down to my students’ level. We’re exposed to students in all grades. We can pick up any grade level lesson plans and know what’s missing. We’re that familiar with what’s going on in other classrooms.” “For example,” says 4th grade teacher Rebecca Reed, “I can ask the third grade teachers what strategies they used for specific kids that I’m having difficulty reaching. Because we know our students and each other so well, we’re able to do that. And (late) in the year, when we’ve covered all 4th grade objectives, we can start working on new concepts to get ready for 5th grade. We work closely with the 5th grade teachers so that we teach the objective the way they teach the objectives, so the students are really prepared for the next level.” “Every teacher in this school knows every student in this school,” says Gross. “And we know all the parents, too. We’re one big family. The personal relationships we’ve developed really make things go smoothly.” “We work hard to involve the parents,” she says. “We have monthly parent parties. We bring them in to talk about assessments and what to expect. Grade-levels send out parent newsletters, involve them on field trips, ask them to come have lunch with the class, play games, possibly read to the class. Come as you are, we just want you up here.” Read Well hits the mark Four years ago, the ARI invested additional funding in high poverty schools that enabled Lincoln to purchase a structured reading program and provide professional development to support its implementation. Lincoln chose the Read Well curriculum for grades K–1 and their second grade intervention groups. With the addition of the program of guided reading instruction, student achievement really started soaring. The faculty adjusted quickly to the program and continues to be astonished at the success of their students. Continued on page 15. Fall 2008 13 Lincoln’s Powerful Community Partnership Intertwined with the changes in instruction and culture at Lincoln Elementary School is the important work of the Lincoln Village Ministry, a coalition of 14 area churches. Coordinator Mark Stearns, ministries director for Southwood Presbyterian Church, started out simply trying to help the school maintain its computers. Now, he and ministry volunteers serve as tutors, chauffeurs, counselors, homebuilders and cheerleaders. “Looking at the whole child is a big part of what we do here,” says Lincoln principal Christy Jensen. “In order for teachers to be able to teach and the child to learn, you have to meet basic needs. “Lincoln Village Ministry has helped us address our students’ fundamental needs: medical, clothing, food, dental, vision, and more. If there is a need, they will find a professional who will willingly give the services for free.” The ministry’s organized efforts in the school began with a tutoring program. More than 80 volunteers are assigned to Lincoln’s students, with the ultimate goal of matching every student with a tutor. Tutors work with students before school, at lunch, and after school so that the instructional day is not interrupted. They focus on whatever challenges the teachers identify – math, writing, reading or other subjects. Most importantly, they develop close relationships with the students, encouraging them and supporting them in their work. “Once the volunteers get started with our children, they want to stay with them until the students leave Lincoln,” says curriculum specialist Melinda Clark. “Some volunteers even go on with their students to middle school. Some take them on vacation with them. In fact, one volunteer, who is originally from Iceland, just took his student and the student’s family on a trip to visit Iceland.” As ministry volunteers learned more about the needs of Lincoln’s students, they realized they needed to expand their services to the entire community. The Ministry formed the Lincoln Village Preservation Corporation and purchased 35 housing units around the school. Volunteers are renovating the units and working with residents, many of whom have children at Lincoln Elementary, to find employment, counseling and legal services and anything else they need to attain a better quality of life. The ministry also established a food bank, counseling center and clothing closet in the neighborhood. Their efforts are enhanced by the Health Education for All Local Schools (HEALS) Clinic at Lincoln Elementary, where a staff of nurses, nurse practitioners and a pediatrician tend to the medical needs of the students and community. “The fact that the Ministries staff is helping our children find proper clothing, cool and heat their homes, put food on the table…that has helped so much, because we don’t have to ask DHR to get involved in our children’s families,” says Nicole Gross, the kindergarten teacher at Lincoln. “The volunteers even help with transportation to make sure that students get to school, because if they miss those first few hours of instruction, they might as well not come at all. Our early reading block sets the tone for the whole day and covers every aspect of the curriculum. At 8:15, someone from Lincoln Village Ministry is here checking to see who’s absent. They’ll go house to house to pick up the kids that aren’t at school and get them here for that reading block.” “If Lincoln Village Ministry wasn’t involved here, we would feel the pressure of having to meet the basic needs of our students. They are like a buffer between the school and the community,” says Joy Downing, who teaches 5th grade. “I taught in Title I schools in Georgia and it was difficult. It’s hard to reach them academically when you’re concentrating on reaching them emotionally. Here, the ministry volunteers work with our children, encourage them, show them love. As a result, our children feel good about themselves. They want to succeed and they know they can.“ Lincoln Village Ministry has grown over the years to include 14 local churches representing many different denominations. Their focus remains to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the Lincoln Mill Village community. In the eyes of the faculty at Lincoln Elementary School, the ministry deserves a good deal of credit for the academic progress made during the last six years. “I believe that LVM was a godsend to us and to this community,” says Jensen. “Our success would not have happened without lots and lots of support and compassion for these children.” For more information and moving video interviews of those involved with Lincoln Village Ministry, visit www.lincolnvillageministry.com. ❖ 14 Working To ward E xcellence TEACHING AND LEARNING Continued from page 13. “I love Read Well. I do,” says McGowan, who teaches 1st grade. “Now, the first year, we had to be so pure with it, and we couldn’t use any outside sources or any other books— and that was a little stifling. But you have to have that purity to learn the program. Since then, we’ve learned to incorporate things from other programs, other sources. Sometimes, it can be a little boring, especially when you teach the same story over and over, but for our children, that’s what they need. They’re learning. They’re being successful with this. “Read Well does require you to give up some of your creativity,” she continues, “but late in the year, when you see those children being able to read at grade level, there’s nothing like it. Years ago, we’d get to the end of the year and I rarely saw my students read at grade level. I’m not saying everyone is on grade level now—there will always be strugglers—but everyone is making a lot of progress. I have one student who has an IQ of 64. He is enjoying reading and loves it. He feels successful. And that is worth everything. It’s worth giving up a little creativity. We’re here for them, not for what pleases us.” “Before we went through the ARI training, and before we started Read Well, we relied on our teacher prep backgrounds and did a whole lot of whole group instruction,” recalls Gross. “You can get through an entire lesson in whole group instruction and not know that several of your students don’t understand the lesson. Now, our teaching is intentional and individualized. It has made me a better teacher and I’m producing better students who can read and write on grade level.” Yvonne Henry says that with “the combination of Mrs. Jensen’s leadership and the scripted reading program, I can see a big difference in my teaching and in my students’ learning.” Her students in 2007-08 were entering their third year of the Read Well curriculum. “They are comfortable with it, and they are highly successful because of the continuity of the program. I have 18 students and I’m estimating that around 14 of them will be in the 70th or 80th percentile when we get our SAT 10 scores back. And that’s a huge improvement, because several years ago, our students were scoring in the 20th or 30th percentiles.” Success breeds more success Armed with data, the literacy strategies of ARI, the Read Well curriculum, and unwavering support from each other, the teachers at Lincoln Elementary are confident they can help every child be a successful learner. “You just have to find a way to reach them,” says Reed. “You might not be able to reach every child through the introductory group lesson. You might have to spend time with them one-on-one to find out what they’re interested in and how to hook them before you can get them to learn. But they will get there if you do what you need to do. “For example, a lot of my students struggle to memorize poems or passages, but they can sing any song they hear on the radio. So in 4th grade, we use a lot of music and dance. We do multiplication to music. They learn so much better when we do that. Whatever we need to do get their attention and help them learn.” This philosophy of doing whatever it takes has produced countless success stories. Joy Downing recalls the year she had “a 5th grade student who was already six feet tall and was a year older than all the other students. He had an IEP. He was a bit of a behavior problem and struggled. “We spent a lot of time in small group instruction. I had to let him know I meant business and that I expected him to learn. I wasn’t going to let him not do his work and not try hard. He’s graduating from high school this year and is one of the star basketball players. He’s proof that with time, patience, care, and not accepting any excuses, you can reach any student.” In kindergarten, Gross has learned that “sometimes you just have to think out of the box and really get to know the students to figure out how to help them be successful. I had one student who didn’t speak in class for the first three months of school. I talked with the mother, who assured me that she spoke lots at home. And I could hear her in PE talking to the other students. She just wouldn’t speak in the classroom. “From talking to her mom, I found out that her favorite treat was pizza. So one day, I brought pizza for lunch and said, ‘I just have too many pieces to eat myself. I wonder who might like some?’ And she said in a very soft voice, ‘I like pizza.’ And that’s all it took to finally break the ice. Now she won’t be quiet! So just by doing a little background research on your students, you can find out how to help them.” No rest for the committed Despite their success, the Lincoln faculty still faces many challenges: the mobility of the students, the possibility that the school will be consolidated to save the district money, and the ever-present fact that so many of their young clients come from generational poverty that only a good education and strong relationships can break. There is a sense of urgency that the teachers and their leadership team can’t deny. “There is no resting here,” says Gross. “Mrs. Jensen and the leadership team have very high expectations for every teacher and every student in this building. There are no excuses. We’re constantly improving and finding new ways to reach our students. We feed off each other and teach each other. “It’s a challenge to stay abreast of new technology and new research-based strategies that will help our students. There is no time to rest, you have to be constantly improving, reading, going to training, learning how to be a better teacher so we can reach each child in the building.” ❖ After this story was reported and written, the Huntsville City school board signaled plans to build a new school in the Lincoln community, which will consolidate Lincoln Elementary with other school populations to increase size and improve facilities. In the interim, the school will continue “as is.” Principal Christy Jensen has accepted a new role as a Regional Partner for the Alabama Reading Initiative. Robert Wayne Jensen (her husband) will become Lincoln’s new principal this fall. Fall 2008 15 ONTHE WE B Just What Is a Professional Learning Community? This Educational Leadership article by Rick DuFour, first published in 2004, continues to be one of the most concise and on-point descriptions of an authentic, school-based PLC. DuFour discusses three Big Ideas that define effective teacher learning communities: (1) ensuring all students learn; (2) building a culture of collaboration; and (3) always focusing on results. Three crucial questions drive the work of PLC’s, DuFour says. What do we want each student to learn? How will we know when each student has learned it? How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning? “The answer to the third question,” he says, “separates learning communities from traditional schools.” http://snipr.com/DuFourPLCs Seven Secrets of Student Learning This 2007 practice guide from the federal National Center for Education Research distills seven research-based instructional strategies teachers can use to improve student learning. The guide offers “some of the most important concrete and applicable principles to emerge from research on learning and memory.” They are relevant to all content areas and address two aspects of learning often overlooked in classroom instruction: metacognition (students’ ability to gauge what they know and do not know), and deep-level questioning (in which students pose and explore “why” questions that build lasting understanding). The guide would make a good study-group activity for schools serious about teaching strategically and raising student comprehension levels. http://snipr.com/seven-secrets Teaching Together A Great Tool to Connect With Parents A Georgia teacher had this to say about this “Million Words” parent activity featured at the Education World website: “My team and I used the writing assignment last fall. Our parents really sent us valuable and priceless information about their children. We referred to the papers throughout the year in conferences and student meetings, but the best was when we gave them back to the students on the last day of school. They laughed, smiled, and a few girls needed a tissue to wipe their eyes. The assignment was a brillant idea!” The Education World article provides all the detail you need to try out this parent communication tool in your school (including a few cautions). http://snipr.com/millionwords The Chalk Talk Strategy You may have spotted a passing reference to “Chalk Talks” at the beginning of our story about Boaz Middle School (p. 7). Chalk Talks are a quiet way to generate ideas, develop projects, check on learning, solve problems, or reflect. It’s done completely in silence and allows students to interact visibly and directly with ideas and silently with each other. This detailed description from the League of Professional Schools (PDF file) says the technique “encourages thoughtful contemplation, generates questions and ideas, and gives students a change of pace.” It can also be used in PLC settings and “has been known to solve vexing problems, surprise everyone with how much is collectively known about something, get an entire project planned, or give a committee everything it needs to know with no verbal sparring.” http://www.coe.uga.edu/lps/chalktalk.pdf Find links to other resources on this topic at: www.bestpracticescenter.org Working Toward EXCELLENCE A+ Education Foundation P. O. Box 4433 Montgomery, AL 36103 NON-PROFIT THE JOURNAL OF THE ALABAMA BEST PRACTICES CENTER U.S. POSTAGE PA I D BIRMINGHAM, AL PERMIT NO. 2827 If your school is doing whatever it takes to accelerate the learning of every student, let us know! We’d like to feature you in an upcoming issue. Email us at: BPC@aplusala.org w w w. b e s t p r a c t i c e s c e n t e r. o r g