Alt Ed Week January 9, 2012

Wishing you a happy Monday as we begin the first full week of the new calendar year. Thank you all for participating in our Friday PCT on Tier II PBIS, and in general getting last week off to a wonderful beginning. The break is now behind us as we move forward to the end of a semester and spring around the corner.

Bravo Zulu!

A quick Bravo Zulu goes Bruce Dearborn and his team at HIPP, Nancy Carroll and David Hunziker who continue outstanding work keeping our district students engaged in school while serving suspensions and expulsions. Moreover they have worked closely with students over the break to ensure they are preparing for re-entry back into district schools. HIPP reports 26 students actively worked over the break to complete their studies and we will be transitioning nearly 70 back into their home schools at the semester. Bravo Zulu! That is a lot of kids who are on the brink of dropping out but choosing to stay engaged with their school and learning. (Potentially 70 students we may have lost this year.)Thank you Bruce, Dave and Nancy for your wonderful work with the hardest kids to keep engaged with school. Bravo Zulu for a job well done at HIPP this semester.

Instructional Note: The Big Idea
Be prepared for me to ask you about the Big Idea of the current unit you are instructing. Last Friday I spent the morning at Cascade Middle School visiting science classrooms with some colleagues. As we are across the district, we were looking for teaching point and how it is being communicated by the teacher to students. I saw five classrooms, and five dutiful teachers with learning targets and various objectives posted before their students.

As you know, posting the Teaching Point for the day is only a start to a well planned messaging campaign to our students about what the purpose of their daily learning is. When we talk about communicating teaching point and purpose we are doing something more, much more, than posting the learning goal of the class each day.

In each class I visited some kids got it and others didn’t. When I asked them what they are learning, I got responses from “I don’t know, ask Ms. Kramer.” To a fully articulated statement on why it is important we understand balance and how it affects friction. “We are learning to measure the balance of an object because that has an effect on how it moves.” The student said. Sure enough the posted learning target on the white board read ”Today we will learn how the balance of an object affects its motion.”

Cascade Collaborators!

I was most impressed in one class where students where working in small collaborative groups designing posters for presentations about the implications (good or bad) of the introduction of a new fish species into an ecological environment. Virtually every student, and table group, I spoke with could fully explain what it was they were learning on that day in that class.

More amazingly when I asked these students “Why is that important? You’re talking about fish in Africa. Who cares?” the immediate response in a myriad of ways came back to a statement about ecological trade-offs and how they could impact us in the PNW. I was impressed that each student was connecting what they were learning about the Nile perch to their home. The last student said, “We care because THAT is what we are really learning…” and she pointed to a posting high on the classroom wall that read: “The Big Idea -> What would the impact be on Northwest ecology?”

She pointed to this!

Ah, I got it. The teacher had set context for the daily learning lessons. Brilliant. Students were engaged with the daily lesson because it was connected to a larger idea. The learning goal for the day wasn’t enough. They had bought into a larger notion the teacher had previously laid out (Ecological Impacts where you live). Every lesson thereafter, such as resource tradeoffs of the introduction of the Nile perch into Lake Victoria, made sense to them. It was thoughtful, connected and relevant to the students…and they could happily talk about what they were learning.

Well played by the teacher. It got me wondering if in our units, we are teaching to a bigger idea, beyond the daily learning target. In your daily lesson planning, is there an even broader teaching point and purpose you are communicating to your students?

I’ll be asking at mid-year meetings before your next observation.

The Week Ahead…
The big chunks this week include the Math EOC on Wednesday, and our monthly staff meetings at each site. On Math EOC: these are make-ups for students who did not pass last spring. Wednesday is an early opportunity for them to take the test again to demonstrate proficiency, and graduate. At New Start, only, we will have a late arrival schedule for students who do not need, or have already passed the Math EOC. Of course this is a full working day for staff, we’ll need your help monitoring students and help for test administration. Thank you, Andrea, Ann, Casey, and George for your help coordinating this test.

Friday PCT, January 13
This Friday’s PCT is a district Job Alike Day. Please let me know your collaborative intentsion with your district colleges!

My Schedule:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
NS/ CH / NS / ERAC	New Start / ERAC	New Start / ERAC	CHOICE	New Start/ CHOICE
Jan 9	Jan 10	Jan 11	Jan 12	Jan 13
M/Mica Weekly Office Meeting M/Parent at CHOICE Weekly M/Andrea District PBIS Meeting	NS Planning Time Student Re-Entry Meeting AP Meeting District Principal Meeting	Math EOC at New Start Staff Meetings Prep New Start Staff Meeting School Board Meeting	District ALE Project CHOICE Staff Meeting	New Start PBIS Meeting HEA Update w/Katy M/Kati Math Benchmarks Training Principal Assoc meeting

I am looking forward to our staff meetings this week, and very happy things seem off to a great start this year. Have a wonderful week! - Mike