The ARC

Last Spring a dream came true for many of us that have been at Chets Creek for a long time. "The ARC" is located in the midst of a 1000 trailer park community in our attendance zone. Because there are so many families in such a small concentrated area it was a natural place for us to target. Working with the leadership of the community, our School Leadership Team worked to bring two hours of tutoring every day to the children in our school who live in that community. With leadership from our Media Specialist, KK Cherney and our Interventionist, Liz Duncan (both have been "Chets Creek Teachers of the Year" and are Nationally Board Certified), we have two small rooms in an office building that our teachers have transformed into an oasis. The leadership at the community donated five computers and our county donated another five. Teachers volunteer their time! I am fortunate to be able to go on Tuesdays for two hours. On that day I am joined by three other first grade teachers, Rebecca Roberts, Toni Chant and Maria Mallon and we serve about 15 first graders from the community. Many of them are second language students so we are lucky to have Toni who is fluent in Spanish to greet the parents and talk with them about whatever school problems that they might have. Since we have common first grade homework it is easy for us to work on the homework when children bring it in. We work on spelling words and sight words and have the children practice reading the comprehension passage that they will be tested on at the end of the week.

All of the children can spend some time on either a reading or math computer program. Often the children do not want to leave and a parent will sit down with a child and watch or help him on the computer past the hour tutoring. I have five students from my class who attend regularly. They are not all at-risk students. I am able to individualize what I do with them depending on their needs. I give them extra behavior points the next day for coming. Now other children in the classroom who do not live in the area are asking where the ARC is and how they can get to come!

 

This really is a labor of love for the teachers at our school. Our first grade colleagues who have young children, family responsibilities or classes, who are not able to volunteer, donate books and activities and more than that - encourage the children from their class to come spend time with us. They are supportive and appreciative of those of us who go to represent our grade level. This is simply a win-win all the way around!

Computer Math

While I don't think that computer programs - no matter how sophisticated - will ever take the place of a good teacher, I do believe that are some computer programs that can reinforce what we are doing in the classroom can make a difference with some students. I have seven computers in my classroom and most days at least five of the computers work! Some are really slow but some were new this year and work at a medium speed. Of course in order to login on a computer a kindergarten student has to remember or copy a ridiculous string of unrelated numbers and letters as their username and password. It's hard, especially for kinders and first graders, to recognize numbers from letters. Is it the number 1 or a a lowercase letter l? Is it a number 0 or an uppercase letter O? You do have to spend some time teaching the children when to use a shift key because some of the letters are uppercase and some are lowercase. If the child can login without your help (and that's a really big IF), it takes about 10 minutes! What usually happens is that they spend 10 minutes trying to get in and then get frustrated and come get you for help anyway! The good thing is that once a child learns his login, he uses the same login for his entire school experience. Right now, however, the login system only makes sense to someone that's not in the classroom using it!

With that said, our county has invested quite a bit of money on site licenses for a few sophisticated, comprehensive computer programs. We've had the programs all year and while we've had some overview of the programs, we've had very little time to actually enroll our students in the programs and figure out how to use them. What we have needed is time! Today - finally - we used one of our Early Release days to sign up for one of the programs. I was thrilled to have the time to enroll all of my students in a math program that I think can support both my three at-risk math students and also my four students who mastered the Math Diagnostic at the mid-term. It will give me a type of differentiation that I don't presently have. The computer program can be used during class, although that time is so precious, but it can also be used at home, during Extended Day, before and after school. I can't wait to get started. I just assign all my students to first grade and the program actually gets to know the student and continues to move the students up and down in the different Math strands as the student responds. I can then print out a progress report each week to see how the students are doing. The program seems especially easy to use and does count as a RtI researched intervention!

Tomorrow I have a half day to do the same thing with Destination Success, a program that I am hoping will do the same thing for Reading that Number World is doing for Math. Will let you know how it goes!

Update: While these programs were implemented, real success was never realized mostly because of a lack of time and a lack of professional development.

Queen Cara

I had the absolute honor of being invited to join a former student at our professional development center this morning to speak about the amazing story of how she became the Homecoming Queen at Fletcher High School this year. I wrote about Cara last fall after she was crowned. This morning I joined Cara and her mother to speak to teachers. Both Melanie and I had the same message, just packaged in different ways. The message to teachers was simple - Keep an open mind. Don't pigeon hole kids because of some label they might carry or because of the color of their skin or their socioeconomic class or what someone else may tell you about them. Believe in the possibilities!

Melanie knew that Cara would be born with Downs Syndrome while she was carrying her. As soon as she found out she tried to read everything that she could. She quickly put down the reading material because it was just so depressing. She decided that she would simply try to give Cara every opportunity she could to become the person that she was meant to be.

I was not invited to be with Cara and her mom this morning because I was THE teacher that made a difference in Cara's life. I simply represented a long line of teachers who had touched Cara's life - some with a caring, positive influence, and I'm sure some with a challenging influence! I remember my time with Cara as having many bumps in the road! But what Cara had on her side was a family that believed in her. Melanie surely is the hero in this story because her ability to advocate for Cara in the most persevering and yet realist way, opened doors at every turn. Melanie said her hope for Cara when she entered high school was simply for her to have a single friend that she could sit with at lunch! Imagine her surprise and delight as Cara was named Homecoming Queen. There wasn't a dry eye in the stadium that night.

Cara is going on to UNF next year in a special program. She is happy. Her face shines and she is a testament to what can be done when people just believe. Melanie told me that God has been whispering in her ear that He is not finished with Cara yet, so this may just be the first chapter in the amazing journey ahead. What I have come to realize is that Cara did not change because she was in my class. The truth is that I am the one that was changed forever because her life touched my mine! I am proud and honored to have been one of Cara's teachers and I can't wait to see what the rest of her life has to hold!

Interventions that work

For ten years we have offered a safety net to our Kindergarten and first grade students who perform in our lowest 20% on each grade level. The safety net is offered for 30 minutes daily and is taught by one of our paraprofessionals. We have invested in professional development over the years and have sent our paras to training that is only offered to teachers. We were very fortunate to have a teacher that had been a Reading Mastery Master Teacher before coming to us and had received advance training, come to our school as one of our Kindergarten, First Grade looping teachers. In years when we couldn't find outside training she always graciously offered to train and support our paras and has been their "go to" person when they had questions. The paras meet in every crook and cranny in the building including the hallway and closets! Since Reading Mastery is such a very scripted program, some people are surprised that we would use it at Chets Creek but it provides intensive lessons in phonemic awareness and phonics and that is what most of our youngest learners who are at-risk need.

We've never kept really good records on the success of this safety net program, but teachers anecdotal information is convincing. They can't wait for it to get started each year and often credit the para's work with students as a key to a child's success. However, as we get deeper into the RtI model, I am sure that will change. Keeping specific data will be our next step and proving that this really works with the numbers. We will also get better at matching the right kids with the right intervention. For now, the program simply provides extra support for our neediest students. My hat's off to our para group that cares more than they have to and works harder than we could hope for!

The Chets Creek Academic Resource Center

Sometimes dreams come true and today was one of those days. Today we opened the Chets Creek Academic Resource Center at Portside. Portside is a 1000 mobile home community in our attendance zone. With over 1200 students at Chets Creek, about 250-300 of our students come from that community. While some of our most gifted students live there, so do a large percentage of our at-risk students and our families on free and reduced lunch. We have long talked about targeting this underserved community for some type of academic intervention. However, we are not a Title 1 school and while we have a substantial at-risk population, as many students as many small schools, we don't qualify for the type of money that would allow us to pay tutors outside of the school day.

Regardless of that reality, earlier this year our Leadership Team went to Portside to meet with their Management group to compare our visions of what could be done. The first project happened at Christmas time as our faculty poured out their love for the families in the community. We spent a "service Saturday" giving out gently used clothes, groceries, blankets and toys, playing games and making holiday ornaments with the kids in the community as they visited with Santa, and pressure washing and stapling plastic inside homes before winter cold leaked in. It was a great day, but the outpouring by the faculty just made us want to do more so... Liz Duncan , our Behaviorist who deals with discipline and KK Cherney, our Energizer Bunny who is is also our Media Specialist continued conversation with the Portside leadership. The Portside leadership, the Management Group ARC, knew that if they could offer academic support to their families that they would be giving their families more reason to stay. We knew if we could offer academic support, we might reduce the mobility in our school and raise the test scores of our children. But the commitment of both groups was so much more than that surface level of "what can this do for us." It has been obvious from the beginning that this is about making a real difference. As Liz and KK continued to work with ARC, they worked out a location within the community and ARC agreed to refurbish several rooms in a building for our use. They painted and carpeted two rooms while the Chets Creek artists got together to frame children's art work from the community and our art teachers painted a beautiful mural of a beach scene where we could hold story times. Book companies came through with bookcases and a load of new books for check out. ARC donated computers and their upkeep! We still have no money, but look what you can do with a load of care instead! The Chets Creek faculty has offered to man the Center throughout the Summer to offer academic support. We know that our students that do not read over the summer come back to school and have taken a step backwards - but not this year. This summer all of our children will read. I can only imagine the difference it will make! I don't know if all schools have a Liz or KK on their faculty or if they have Leadership that will set them free to dream and make their dreams come true, but I feel so fortunate to work in a place where people care so much. And don't tell me that businesses are all about money! ARC has given much and today book companies provided give aways to the children while Chick-fil-A provided food for the kids and Starbucks provided for the adults. Over 200 people showed up for the official ribbon cutting, -many of them Management officials from the parent ARC who flew in from all over the country, many of the faculty from Chets but mostly families from the community. Also there were our long time volunteers from Landstar who are interested in going to the community during their lunch times this summer to tutor children! Isn't it just amazing?!!

RtI and Interventions

We have been doing a school wide book study for the past three Early Release days on Richard Allington's What Really Matters in Response to Intervention. We are broken into about 12 small groups of 6-8 teachers. The groups are vertical with hopes of having many different views within each group. Each group has a facilitator. Nina Thomas, one of the facilitators established a wiki where each group could post some of their thoughts. Yesterday after our last book talk, the groups met together to share with each other 3-5 of the things that they thought should be considerations for next year. I am so proud of the thinking that has been going on in our building - the professional conversation in the hallways. I'm glad to be at a school where a Principal is not threatened by such a process but opens the doors for free thinking and creative solutions. While many schools are attending in-services to try to figure out how to get their faculties to "buy-in" to RtI, our school "bought in" a long time ago. We have had our own "intervention team" since the school was established, long before it was mandated. Although the paperwork is different now, the intent - of making a difference for our struggling readers - has always been the same. The law has made it all more complex and difficult to grasp but at the heart is the hope that we can provide the best possible reading program in our Workshop model to reach the most students and then provide specific intensive interventions for any that we miss. We are in solution mode at the Creek! As facilitators shared today there was a lot of thinking "outside of the box" such as

• trying to get a late bus to run to our community of most at-risk students so that we can tutor them after school
• taking all of the Science and Social Studies books in the building and reallocating them so that every grade level has books for EVERY reader on their level on the content topics that are covered on their grade level
• a request for Math/Science teachers to learn non-fiction reading strategies while the Reading teachers requested the Science topics so that they can incorporate that content into their informational writing
• a resource in addition to Music, Art and PE that would include Readers Theatre and Drama that could reinforce fluency

The list goes on and on with creative ideas and solutions. Next Wednesday the Admin Leadership Team will take that list that has been added to the wiki and go through every single suggestion. Many of the suggestions don't cost a dime! They just mean reallocating people or resources. Many of the ideas really ARE possible.

I guess this is what I love most about Chets Creek. We ARE going to make a difference. Thank you Richard Allington for pushing our thinking and for giving us, in a short and sweet summary, the best research has to offer us right now. We plan to use that knowledge to teach more and more children to read - just watch!

Where's the money?

Chets Creek is an "A" school with about 20% minority and about 20% free and reduced lunch. Sounds like a perfect little suburban yuppie school, doesn't it? And I guess it is... until you drill down to the student level. Who are those 20% of children who live in poverty, many of whom are also minority? Many of them are the same students who show up on our at-risk list of about 300 kids. Sure we have about 1200 kids so to have 300 at-risk isn't so bad, until you drill down to see who they are. In so many cases they are those same children living in poverty and in our case most come from the same little community. Each one of those children has a face - and a story.

Chets Creek is the type of school that has real heart - teachers who are willing to do whatever it takes. They often tutor before and after school or during their planning and lunch times. The go the extra mile but that still isn't enough. We know that we need to get inside this community and offer tutoring. More than that we need to form relationships that give hope to our at-risk children. They need to know that there is someone who cares. Their parents need to know that there is someone they can trust. These families don't usually come to us. We will have to go to them.

So let's offer tutoring and a way to check out books right there in their community center. The community center would be willing to offer a space, computers, clean up and other minimal services. We would just have to man the space. We have plenty of teachers who would be willing to offer their time - most of them would do it because they think it is the right thing to do - but we do need at least one paid person that we could depend on to be there and to oversee the program. Such a little bit of money for such a big pay off!

Let's do it! Oh, wait... You would think that with 300 kids effected, enough to be a small school, that the funding would be available easily... but it's not. Chets Creek, because it has less than 20% free and reduced lunch doesn't qualify for school-community type funds. That is saved for communities with 100% free and reduced lunch - although the total number of kids effected might be similar. I guess just being poor isn't enough - it depends in which part of town you live... Extended Day monies can't be used for this type of project because it's off the school grounds. It just shouldn't be this hard to do the right thing... Frustrating... Anybody know of any money sources for a good project?

At-risk Discussions

Today the principal met with each grade level during their traditional Teacher Meeting time. She asked each teacher in turn about the children in her Progress Monitoring notebook that were"at-risk." She has a notebook for each grade level. She looked at each child's Diagnostic scores, she wanted to know if a PMP (Progress Monitoring Plan signed by the parent) had been written, if a retention note had been sent, if the child had ever been retained, if the child had been referred to the  Intervention Team and what the teacher was doing to make sure that the child would be as successful as possible. The Guidance Counselor also attended the meetings all day making notes of children who need to be seen because they are going through a hard time or whose parents need a call or families who may need help with repeat head lice causing repeated absences or children who just need motivation or maybe a mentor. Next week teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, office staff and custodians will be asked to step up and "mentor" one of these identified children.

In kindergarten we discussed about 30 children, noting that many of them were siblings of those identified earlier in the day. What sets these discussions apart is that teachers bring their data. They know their children and can quickly list the interventions - Reading Mastery with Julie, a parent volunteer coming in to drill letters and sounds, multiple parent conferences, small group or one-to-one work, Target interventions - that they are using to make a difference. You cannot hide in these meetings because you are held accountable, but the conversation is also not threatening. The other thing you feel in these meetings is that teachers really care about children. You don't hear sarcasm and snide remarks. The teachers don't spend time blaming parents or making excuses. They are reflective. They ask questions. They ask for help when they need it... and I hope they leave with a more cohesive plan of action. That, after all, is what this day is all about!

The Data

As the first half of the first nine weeks comes to a close, it is time to take a look at the data and make decisions that will drive instruction. Data at this time of year includes teacher generated testing that mirrors the state mandated FCAT in 3rd-5th grades. In 2nd grade, the bridge year, we look at the DIBELS and also an FCAT-type assessment administered to each student. In K-1, data includes  teacher designed testing. Analyzing the data begins at the Leadership table. The Leadership Team (as seen above) drills down to each individual student as they make decisions on how to help each struggler. As always most of the students in grades 1-5 that are at-risk are students who are new to Chets Creek!

At a teacher meeting the grade level looks at its own data, each teacher comparing her class against the other classes on the grade level and the previous year's data at this same time of year. Below is an example of a profile sheet (except teacher's names are on our summaries). It is always interesting to hear kindergarten teachers as they analyze why certain classes begin with more at-risk students and others with less. Because most of these teachers have done this for many years now, they know their own profiles and their own strengths and weaknesses. They often identify areas that they will need to work on to pull their particular group up to grade level. Conversation also surrounds those students who top our data and how we are going to meet their unique needs. We drill down again to the individual student level so that teachers leave these meetings with a plan for each individual child. Conversation from this meeting drives the demonstration lessons that will be planned in the upcoming professional development. Data is the cornerstone of our work.