Principal's Message 4/27/2009

PRIORITIZING

Folks, when I think about moving forward with the student success plans, I think about the best practices I gathered from schools who have found a way to turn a struggling environment into a place that provides the best education for its students. Some people have talked about other areas the school needs to put its attention toward. I have listened to these individuals who have brought up very good points into how the school can improve. The fact of the matter is, we need the structures in place to address these individual concerns. The student success plans are the unlimited mechanism that can change the instructional output far beyond our expectations. It provides individual reflection, communication with all available constituents, and guarantees progression of every student in our school.

INDIVIDUAL REFLECTION

What do we have in place right now to determine what we are doing is helping or hurting our students? Right now, the only departments who can vouch for a system are ELA and Math. Unfortunately, we have to wait until the scores are released to determine if what we were doing from September to the test even helped the child. Student Success Plans give us immediate feedback and communicates whether or not our instruction was beneficial to a targeted group of students or even the whole class. Can you think of a better way to reflect on your own individual classroom?

COMMUNICATION EXPANSION

When the student success plans are fully set up, you will have a focus area for every one of your students. You will be able to share those particular skills you are working on. They could actually be very similar to the skills identified in the other subject areas. This way, you can work with your colleagues to help your students improve in the areas you selected to be the main concentration. Let’s take it even further. With the plan that can easily be shared with others, you can partner with the student to address those areas. By reiterating the days when the student needs to concentrate even more, or providing recommendations on how they can improve in the selected skills, or even using the progression in the particular skills to determine a grade.

In addition, you could even share the plans with the parents of the students. Instead of identifying behavior problems or talking about incomplete assignments, we can discuss in more detail what skills need to improve with their child. We could even have the parent work with particular skills at home since the material will not need to be supported by textbooks or a vast knowledge of the subject area and could be easily learned by the parent and supported outside of school.

Finally, when it comes to communication, we do not have any forms of it with our Community Based Organizations or our after-school programs. We are in the process of setting up a referral system for us to send students into programs after school hours so their identified skills can be supported beyond our regular school day. With the lack of communication right now, we have students who claim they do not get homework and the after-school programs have no way of verifying the validity of these statements during their designated hours. What about if we gave them skills to work on with the students that did not need homework assignments to reinforce? What about if all they needed was an independent reading book or random materials from the subject area to work on a particular skill? This way, the after-school programs can supplement materials to address the skills you shared with them to work on with your students.

Have a student who needs AIS? How do you know? What are you going to show the parent that proves that point? How about a student success plan with tracking of assessments which have proven regardless of the strategy, the student needs more support?

GUARANTEED PROGRESSION OF OUR STUDENTS

Did I get your attention with this one? I do not believe failure will be possible when we are concentrating on a particular area of skills with our students. I also don’t think failure can happen if we are strengthening our partnership with the students, parents, and after-school programs. I definitely don’t think a child will stay at the same level if we have a clear indication when AIS, ELL, or Special Education services are needed. Struggling with teaching a particular skill? How about professional development? What about if the counselors, social workers, office staff, and others were able to remind the students what they need to work on? The days of isolating our classrooms and storing in our heads what a child needs to do to be successful are over. Its time to open our doors to all the constituents in our community and its time to prove what we are doing in our school is working. If it is not working, then we will find another way so it does. It’s in our DNA to do so. We just need the clear signs to make those decisions. Student success plans are the way to do this. I’m guaranteeing you, the staff and community members of J13, students will progress. No other initiative can do that.


ATTENDANCE FOR THE WEEK

Monday: 86%
Tuesday: 90%
Wednesday: 91%
Thursday: 91%
Friday: 88%

STAFF BIRTHDAYS

Emmanuel Okon April 1st
Jackie Brown April 27th
Rachel Levene May 1st
Danita Scott May 2nd
David Deatherage May 2nd
Leslie Tatum May 12th
John Ciano May 19th
Cassandra Williams May 21st
Zoe Markoupulus May 28th

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world — that is the myth of the atomic age — as in being able to remake ourselves.” --Mahatma Gandhi