Fuller Middle School A Commonwealth Compass Exemplary School

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Fuller Middle SchoolA Commonwealth Compass
Exemplary School

• Getting Equipped for the Journey
• Retooling Our School For Success

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Its easy to feel lost in it all.

• Frameworks
• District level demands
• MCAS scores
• School practices and established culture
• Student apathy and fear
• Student drop outs
• Reading problems
• No common mission
• Lack of prior knowledge among student population

• Parent rejection and concern
• State benchmarks for success
• Lots of fad learning packages
• Controversy over value of MCAS
• Transient student population
• Cultural differences in student, parent, and
  teaching body
• High rate of teacher and administrator turn over

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Beginning the journey.

• We were given the coordinates, but not told the
  road to take
• to get there.
• Coordinates that guided Fuller to improvement
• State Curriculum Frameworks
• District/School Mandates
• MCAS Benchmarks established for individual schools

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Planning Our Route

• Checked Our Coordinates
• Communicated and Coordinated
• Lay out district, state, school musts in
  terms of alignment
• State Subject Area frameworks and MCAS
  benchmarks
• District Created a middle-level task force
  to guide instructional decision-making that
  had bite
• School School departments coordinated
  instruction via curriculum mapping and
  frameworks
• Community Demanded consistency and
  quality of programming for
  students
• SO Our School Council goals were set in
  response to scores, state demands, and community
  requests.

We needed direction to find our destination
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Publishing Our Itinerary

• Publishing the Schools 3 Improvement Goals
  (Coordinates)
• After planning, we stated goals and direction
  everywhere so everyone in the school community
  knew the direction in which we were headed
• Parent Press Newsletter Local Papers
• Increased Parent Meetings Website
• Annual report PTO School Council Meetings

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Choosing Key Navigators

• A Dynamic Language Arts Department Head/Veteran
  Teacher
• Key Teachers and Guidance Staff with
  communication and technology knowledge relative
  to effectively networking with families
• 2 Literacy Specialists
• Supportive Principal

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Complementary Goals Key Supports for Reform

• Setting 5 school council goals, accompanied by
  concrete benchmarks and activities was
  manageable, reasonable and achievable by end of
  3-yr cycle.
• Each of these 3 goals in particular supported and
  related to the others to provide maximum
  improvement in the overall school community
  climate, in the student success rate and in staff
  collegiality

Reading/Writing Goal
Study Skills Goal
Communication Goal
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Finding a Road In Which Goals First? The Study
Skills Goal

• Why begin with a study skills goal when we wanted
  to improve writing?
• -- All teachers could own it
• -- All teachers were doing some form of teaching
  it on own
• -- Writing and reading achievement and other and
  progress relative to various areas of MCAS
  achievement could grow out of it
• -- All teachers could be equal experts in it
  study skill acquisition is no ones specific
  subject area
• --had a reflection component built in that
  demanded every teacher do writing with students,
  thus driving the need for writing training for
  all teachers.

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Finding a Road In Which Goals First?The
Communication Goal

• Goal Strengthen the partnership between parents
  and the Fuller Middle School
• Building Infrastructure / Technology
• Face to Face Meetings
• Reaching to the Home...
• Publications
• Working Together
• Recognition

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What These Roads Did For MORALE

• Study Skills Staff
• Communication Families
• People were invested
• Everyone had a stake and a role to play
• No one could dispute the importance of focus on
  study skills and communication
• Many teachers were already teaching study skills
  and were communicating regularly with parents
• Our job became aligning and systematizing our
  work
• AND THIS WORK PRIMED US FOR FURTHER REFORM IN
  READING AND WRITING INSTRUCTION!

• These roads toward our ultimate goal of
  improving our successes in writing were like
  taking a more scenic route rather than a detour
  toward productive, tough reform for most Fuller
  community members.

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Taking Inventory Frequent Pit-stops

• With morale primed (and confidence, buy-in, and
  clear coordinates to guide us), we could stop and
  reflect to take inventory regarding our readiness
  to attempt to work on our writing and reading
  goals
• Reflective Questioning
• What isnt covered by the Study Skills Program?
• Which departments need additional writing and
  reading training?
• What does each department bring to the trip of
  writing and reading improvement for students?
• Do the new teachers were hiring have the
  training/expertise were looking for?
• Who is ready to train and who needs training?
• Are our ESL/Bilingual and SPED classes sharing
  our curriculum? Processes? Common language for
  improvement?
• What do departments need to get training and
  provide materials?
• What does every teacher need to know vs. what
  does a language arts teacher need to know in
  terms of teaching writing and reading
  successfully?

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Our internal inventory led us to.

• Develop our teaching travel packs for the year
• It was packed for us (driven by study skills,
  writing and reading goals)
• But we all carried one (everyone was responsible
  for creating better writers and readers)
• Some people needed more training and support in
  order to use the tools of the backpack
• Everyone could comfortably carry it throughout
  the year (it didnt restrict anyones regular
  classroom movements/instruction)

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In Our Backpacks

• Maps
• MCAS benchmarks
• School goals
• Tools
• Study skills handbook
• Writing Reading training when needed
• Departmental support
• PTO mini-grant
• Grants given by principal
• Middle School Team Structures put in place by our
  school district
• A developing ethic of alignment, sharing,
  systematizing.

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A Never-Ending Cycle of Improvement
Ongoing Process While we were learning,
tweaking, revising, and taking inventory, we had
to keep checking our progress against our end
destination. We also had to keep reminding
ourselves of the importance of the
tripredefining our travel style and partners
along the way.
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Connection-Making How We Met New Travel Partners

• Parent Partnerships
• Fuller Family Nights
• Parents in classrooms
• Increased attendance at Parent Nights
• Increased volunteerism
• Parent grant writers
• Donations from parents/parents businesses
• Fundraising
• More Bilingual/ESL parent attendance at
  school-sponsored events
• Business Partnerships
• Wellesley College, Northeastern University, Mass
  Bay Community College, Bank North, TJX, Borders
  Books, Framingham Coalition Against Drugs and
  Alcohol, Framingham Union Hospital, Mobil Gas
• Community Partnerships
• Adult Evening ESL/Bilingual Classes
• Veterans Groups Senior Center

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Rest-Stops Use them when you can!

• Summer workshops
• Term by term departmental, school, and
  district-wide curriculum mapping sessions to
  align with framework and district goals
• Professional days
• Portfolio reflections with students
• Team meetings LASW (Looking At Student Work
  Sessions)

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Travel Tips Avoiding Potential Potholes

• Know your populations challenges
• Know your resources
• Get a big picture
• Align resources to serve multiple purposes
• Principal must map the big picture, control
  resources and overall vision
• Principal must reject district/state practices
  that hinder school goals
• Teachers and parents must find a way to
  comfortably buy in to initiatives
• Thus, programs must offer multiple avenues in to
  support it (not my way or the highway kind of
  reform)
• One person/set of people cannot carry the burden
  of any part of initiative
• Programs and practices must be internally
  self-sustaining
• Parents must understand school reform work early
  and be partners often
• Look to copy effective structuresdont reinvent
  the wheel!
• (were copying ourselves now relative to a
  reading and math initiative)
• The cycle of taking inventory is endlessdont
  expect an end point

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Where Is Fuller Going Now?

• Repeating the cycle relative to
• --math initiative
• --reading initiative
• --re-starting writing initiative
• Creating systems of assessment and data
  collection
• Using data collection and analysis to drive
  results
• Teacher turnover requires new trainings/re-trainin
  gs
• Enlisting more people to carry the burden of
  reform
• Energy and teacher empowerment higher than ever
• Teacher professional development council formed
• Trainings more advanced Writing Handbook created
• Scores continuing to rise
• Family satisfaction with Fullers performance at
  all-time feel good high

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Reaching Our Destination The Journey Has Just
Begun

• For improvement cycle (1997-2002) scores have
  consistently risen
• Increasing number of students (including those in
  ESL/Bilingual and SPED classes) moved from
  Warning toward Proficient category
• Faculty is committed to total school reform
• Resources in school and district are regularly
  channeled for use to achieve goals
• Systems of regular improvement and mechanisms to
  drive future improvement are in place or
  constantly developing
• Tools previously used in reforms are being
  adapted to fit the school as it runs
  todayevolution of our work