Application - Hillview Middle School
Transcription
Application - Hillview Middle School
California Department of Education 2015 California Gold Ribbon Schools Program Middle and High School Application: Part B Hillview Middle School Model Program Summary 1. Name of Model Program: Future of Learning Initiative 2. How long has this Model Program been in place? Less than 2 years 2-4 years 5-8 years 3. What is the Target Area? (Choose at least one area.) Target Areas: Career Technical Education Chronic Absenteeism and Dropout Prevention Civic Education Awareness Closing the Achievement Gap Education Supports Nutrition and Physical Activity/Education Parent and Community Involvement Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Use of Technology Visual and Performing Arts 4. What are the target populations? (Check all that apply.) Race/Ethnicity Subgroups: American Indian or Alaskan Native Asian Black or African American Filipino Hispanic or Latino (Continued on next page) 8+ years California Department of Education 2015 Gold Ribbon Schools Application: Part B Hillview Middle School Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander White Two or More Races Other Student Groups: Socioeconomically Disadvantaged English Learners Students with Disabilities At-Risk Students (Academic, Social, Emotional, Behavioral, or Health) English-Language Arts – Students Not Yet Proficient English-Language Arts – Advanced Learners Mathematics – Students Not Yet Proficient Mathematics – Advanced Learners Other Core Subject Areas – Students Not Yet Proficient Other Core Subject Areas – Advanced Learners Other (specify) 5. What strategies are used to implement the Model Program? (Check all that apply.) Strategies: School Climate Small Learning Communities Parent Involvement Data-Driven Decision Making Health Support Social/Emotional/Behavioral Support Professional Development Other (specify) 6. Is this model program initiated by your district and implemented district-wide? Brief answer: The Future of Learning Initiative has spurred the development of school climate reform efforts, Response to Intervention and Instruction, 1:1 iPad use to enhance teaching and learning, and design thinking as a tool to address complex challenges. California Department of Education 2015 Gold Ribbon Schools Application: Part B Hillview Middle School Model Program Narrative 1. Description of the Model Hillview's "Future of Learning Initiative" is a comprehensive, multi-pronged model that meets students' needs on many levels. Our goal is to define what learning will look like in five years and become that school right now. We recognize that in order for all students to be successful, Hillview must have a school climate where all students feel safe and supported, a well-planned Common Core-aligned curriculum that prepares students for college and career readiness, and the tools needed for both students and teachers to realize our lofty goals for success. When Hillview cut the ribbon on its state-of-the-art campus in the fall of 2012, we aspired to improve our eduational program to match our gleaming new facility. While we had enjoyed a long record of student success, we also realized that we were more of a "one size fits all" school, and that some of our students were not thriving in our environment. We served the needs of our proficient and advanced students, sending them off to high school prepared to excel, and yet we were not closing the achievement gap for our under-performing and traditionally under-represented students. Not only were we not addressing the academic needs of this population as well as we could, they were also more likely to receive serious disciplinary consequences. The Future of Learning Initiative promised to address these inequities. First among our reform efforts was the development of a robust Response to Intervention and Instruction (RTI2) program, with Tier 2 and 3 interventions for both academic and social/emotional supports. Using dignostic tools such as the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI) and Scholastic Phonics Inventory (SPI) in English, and the Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Project (MDTP) in math, we now know even before the school year begins whether our students are below, at, or above grade level. Students who are two or more years below grade level in either ELA or math receive support in two-period Acceleration classes, using the feedback of such programs as System 44 (phonics program), Read 180, or Math 180 to set goals and move toward mainstream courses. Students one year below grade level receive one additional period of support in Math Plus or Writing Plus. Our goal is to have all students at grade level in both English and math by the time they graduate from 8th grade. Academic interventions are only one way we support students. We also have implemented programs that address the social and emotional experience of our students. “Thrive” is a Tier 2 strategic intervention that creates a strong bond between a group of students and a teacher. In this elective program, students spend three days a week in same gender groups engaged in curricula designed to surface and address their social and emotional needs. The relationship between student and teacher is strong, and this connection motivates students to apply themselves with more effort in their studies. The remaining two days are spent on homework support. “PIVOT,” a Tier 3 intensive intervention, is reserved for those 12 students in our school who most struggle with behavioral challenges. Our school psychologist, behavior coach, and wellness coordinator work with the students and their families to develop two clear, achievable goals, and the attainment of these goals is monitored daily by all teachers. As PIVOT students maintain a certain level of goal achievement and do so consistently, they earn rewards and privileges that gradually reinforce appropriate behavior that supports academic success. We next addressed our responses to student misbehavior. In the 2011-12 school year, we analyzed our discipline data and noted with alarm that our traditionally under-represented students (students of color, students from a lower socio-economic status, and students with California Department of Education 2015 Gold Ribbon Schools Application: Part B disabilities) were more likely to receive more serious consequences than white, Asian, affluent, and mainstream students. In 2012-13, we put in place strategic interventions such as Thrive to counter this trend, and in 2013-14, we piloted a Restorative Justice program, which has now become standard practice. While the results of this last program are discussed in more detail in section 3, we have seen our number of suspensions dropped precipitously. In the heart of Silicon Valley, Hillview had begun to explore the power of tablet technology to improve student learning outcomes, recognizing that mobile learning devices and cloudbased computing was where learning was going. We had started with a 1:1 iPad pilot program in a single 8th grade academy (small learning community), and in 2012 -13 expanded this to the entire 8th grade. Facing some challenges with providing iPad professional development to only a third of the school, we made the bold move in 2013-14 to expand the program schoolwide. This allowed us to bring all our staff along in utilizing this technology and creating together our iPad "power tools" and instructional strategies. In 2014-15, we added our "Digital Drivers License" (DDL) program to better support our students to become efficient, productive, and responsible users of technology. DDL also features a parent education component, in which we message the same lessons our students receive to our parents, thus assisting them in parenting their much more technology-proficient "digital native" children. A positive school environment and a focus on technology will not alone yield mastery of Common Core standards. With the transition to Common Core, we understood that we had to quickly shift gears to prepare our students to demonstrate proficiency on the new assessments. To that end, we engaged our English and math departments in creating Common Core-aligned pacing guides, curriculum maps, and benchmark assessments. Parent education is yet another key component in a successful school. The school of the future has an obligation to keep its parents up to date on topics that concen their children. Hillview's Parent Education Series, begun in the fall of 2013, has brought many well-known experts to present engaging and interactive evening events. Authors, researchers, and filmmakers such as Leonard Sax (Yes! Gender Matters), Devin Prouty ("Sleepy Students"), Lisa Solomon (Moments of Impact), Jennifer Siebel Newsom (The Mask We Live In), Lenore Skenazy ("Free Range Kids"), Ralph King (Extreme by Design), and Christine Carter (Raising Happiness) have presented to our entire district community on important educational and parenting trends. Our College Bound program reaches out to parents of our students who are more liklely not to attend college, due to parent education level, socio-economic status, or ethnicity. College Bound events often coincide with Parent Education Series evening. Parents also participate in our Character Education program, receiving training from our counselors and delivering lessons in the classroom to our 7th and 8th graders. Hillview also believes the school of the future furnishes its students with unique and memorable learning experiences that transcend the four walls of the classroom. To this end, our Mini-Course program gives students a 1-week in-depth exploration of a subject that they are passionate about. Debuting in the spring of 2014, Mini-Course week featured 42 compelling courses that sent our students all over the Bay Area to pursue topics that appealed to them, such as coding, veterinary medicine, fashion design, and documentary filmmaking. 2. Implementation & Monitoring of the Model One of Hillview's most powerful strategies in implementing and monitoring the Future of Learning is design thinking. Partnering with Stanford's renowned d.school, we have adopted the methodology of design-based principles to solve some of our biggest challenges. When our Design Team gathered in the fall of 2012, we asked ourselves, "What kind of bell and master schedule will more accurately reflect the needs of our students, the desires of staff, and California Department of Education 2015 Gold Ribbon Schools Application: Part B the hopes of our parents?" We shadowed, interviewed, and engaged students, parents, and staff to surface the desires of all our stakeholders, and from this process came a number of innovations, including a modified block schedule to allow students more opportunity to engage in deep Common Core tasks, a richer offering of elective courses, a two-period Humanities Core period to assist our 6th grade students in their transition to middle school, and the aforementioned Mini-Course program. Design thinking is not only a tool for ideating, but the iterative nature of design forces one to revisit the results and assess their quality. Our design team reconvened in the fall of 2014 after one year of the new schedule and re-empathized with our stakeholders; this collaboration yielded more improvements to our master schedule and bell schedule. So impressed were we with the promise of design thinking as a tool that we engaged many of our staff in Stanford d.school-run training so that our students, too, could appreciate the power of this process. The Future of Learning also owes much to our hard-working staff who take advantage of deliberately created collaboration times and participate on the teams that serve as the catalysts for change in our school. Not only does our master schedule afford teachers at a particular grade level and subject area a common prep time, but also our early release bell schedule carves out 2 different kinds of collaboration. On Wednesdays, our staff has “Academy Collaboration." During this time, teachers who work together in the 9 academies, or small learning communities (SLC's), meet to discuss their students. Using a Google docs template, the team records its curricular highlights, poses questions for administration, and, most importantly, shares students of concern, whether that concern be academic or social/ emotional. The school leadership team, including the principal, associate principal, vice principal, school psychologist, and counselors, review academy notes, lending advice, sharing resources, or otherwise collaborating to ensure each student gets the support he/she needs. On Thursdays, staff enjoys "PLC Collaboration," working together in their grade level and subject area teams to perform the heavy lift of Common Core curriculum and assessment creation. Staff members also help monitor the Future of Learning by virtue of their teacher leadership on any number of school teams that "own" the implementation and monitoring of various programs. The Asset Team (which takes its name from the 40 developmental assets celebrated by the Search Institute and publicized by Project Cornerstone) has been instrumental in creating opportunities for service in our school and local communities; developing character education materials; recognizing students for their chacter, collaboration, and commitment to learning; publicizing the successes of our pyramid of interventions; and brainstorming ways to get students more involved and engaged in activities such as clubs, intramurals, Associated Student Body-run events, and the W.E.B. (Where Everybody Belongs) program, where 8th graders serve as mentors to a group of 6th graders over the school year. The RTI team meets weekly to discuss the students it serves, monitoring progress and marshaling the resources to ensure both academic success and social-emotional well being. The Technology Team keeps its finger on the pulse of the 1:1 iPad program, identifying challenges, planning professional development, and discussing the adoption of new tools. Finally, while our Curriculum Committee offers a venue to implement the transition to Common Core, our Academy Council facilitates the smooth running of our day-to-day operations. The implentation of our 1:1 iPad program required us to surmount the monumental logistical challenges of managing nearly 900 devices, protecting student privacy, and deploying suites of apps. In addition, we had to provide timely professional development to ensure our teachers were prepared to optimize the iPad's potential. We sought out thought leaders in education technology to help create the framework of our program, identifying the skills we think the iPad can help develop, as well as adopting the so-called "SAMR" California Department of Education 2015 Gold Ribbon Schools Application: Part B framework, which encourages practitioners to move from a beginning stage of "substitution," where technology merely acts as a substitute for a paper and pencil task, all the way up to "redefinition," where technology allows for the creation of tasks that were previously impossible. We sent teams of teachers to Ed Tech Teacher's iPad summits in Boston and San Diego; we hosted a "Learning Reimagined" conference for our entire district, as well as other local districts; and we used staff development days to offer "home-grown" sessions by our own teachers to showcase impactful instructional and learning tools like Edmodo, formative assessment apps, and collaboration platforms. 3. Results of the Model Our RTI2 program began with Tier 2 interventions in 2012-13 and added Tier 3 interventions in 2013-14. Since its implementation, we have successfully “graduated” many students, accelerating them toward grade level. This year alone, 7 students have moved up, either from System 44 to Read 180, or from Read 180 to mainstream Language Arts courses. Our suspensions have dropped dramatically, down from 114 incidents in 2011-12, to 83 incidents in 2012-13, and finally to only 10 in 2013-14. We successfully diverted 14 suspensions, and only three suspensions affected students of color, students with disabilities, or low-SES students. That 30% rate was down from over a 75% rate in 2011-12. We have established baseline data with recent administrations of the Search Institute “Me and My World” and “Attitudes and Behaviors” surveys, as well as the California Healthy Kids Survey. Our 1:1 iPad program continues to improve. We have surveyed both parents and students about their experiences with the device. Students overwhelmingly report that the iPad helps them learn and stay organized. Parents have asked for, and are now receiveing, more education about how to help students develop healthy habits around technology use. With the support of our district tech department, we have identified the need for a more powerful mobile device management (MDM) system, and will soon be transitioning to one of the best MDM’s out there. Our professinal development continues to expand; our teachers are becoming expert practicioners and there is not a PLC on campus that does not have at least one technology maven ready, willing, and able to share best practices with his or her teammates. Our transition to Common Core is progressing rapidly. In English and Math, pacing guides and curriculum maps have already been created, and benchmark assessments are in place and are being administered each trimester. ELA is adding a reading and language assessment to supplement the already-created writing assessment. In addition, we are working to enter these scores in the district’s new data warehouse, Illuminate, so that student achievement profiles are easily accessible and growth can be monitored. Our Parent Education Series continues to be well-attended, and we have also instituted an annual outreach to the families of our Tinsley Transfer Program students, scheduling a special parent-teacher conference event in East Palo Alto or East Menlo Park that lets these families know that we will meet them more than half-way in serving the needs of their children. The Mini-Course Program, a huge undertaking in 2013-14, returns this year with over 40 fantastic opportunities for student exploration and enrichment, and is scheduled to take place the week prior to our spring break. The main changes in the program were implemented due to our staff’s feedback, and they are committed to delivering an even more amazing experience in the program’s second year. Finally, design thinking is clearly established as the method by which we address school and district conundrums. This year we are leveraging it on a school level to redesign our outdated and uninspiring vision and mission statements, and on a district level to more fully define our World Language program and our teacher evaluation system.