In addition to my district level responsibilities, I work closely with two schools. One of them is a traditionally poor (think as bad as it gets) performing school, two classrooms per grade level. Over the past two years, we have been focused on moving towards effective workshop instruction. This year we have added a pacing guide which helps establish a lens of study for the workshop (intro to workshop; exploring story; poetry and performance; nonfiction; author study, etc.). What I want to say is, that working with children who have 'failed' year after year to perform at anything close to anyone;s conception of proficiency, we are seeing significant changes in classroom climate, student AND teacher attitude and student performance. This year the measurable improvements in performance are clear--though we can only hope that they will be upheld through standardized testing. This is just a tiny, little microcosm of a school, but one with every imaginable card stacked against it. Yet, workshop is changing things!! My rallying point with them has been 'We are unified in our goals. We are working closely together. You have more coaching support (by virtue of staff size) than any other school in the district. We can make a change.' We just updated the assessment wall and I brought out photos of the wall last year, with just a handful of child attaining advanced or proficient standards by the end of the school year. Our mid-year data (two sources--DRA and a statewide computer test) are showing that at mid=year we have DOUBLED our numbers of proficient and advanced kids. We have moved kids from below basic to basic and we have far more 'true' below basics (kids knocking on the door of a level change). We did this with this central guiding belief: The goal of literacy education is addiction: if we can genuinely draw children into Frank Smith's club through rich, meaningful units, the shift in performance and skill levels will come. An educational field of dreams. Is it a perfect world? Absolutely not, but it is making a difference.
Kristin, I am so sorry that the children of your educational community are being drawn away from workshop education. Every once in a while I am reminded that being at the very bottom may actually provide us more freedom than being at the very top. When the populations are low, that 10% mark for safe harbor is easier to strive for. We really have only to shift about 6 kids in this building to make safe harbor. I am praying that the big ugly, coming up in April, will uphold the performance shift we see in the classrooms. Lori Jackson District Literacy Coach and Mentor Todd County School District Box 87 Mission SD 5755 ----- Original message ----- From: Kristin Mitchell <[email protected]> To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, February 14, 2009 9:35 AM Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Departmentalization, boxes and reading comprehension. > "And we are all doing what is the very best for the children because as you > know, âresearchâ tells us!!!" > > I loved your response! My school is very slowly moving towards more programs > and it's scaring the bejeezus out of me! I'm the only one with a background > in Title I schools and for some reason that means I'm the only one with > experience with true workshops (any subject area). It's all I can do to show > up anymore. I'm totally alone in my philosophies this year. I thought my > instructional coach was, but she's on the writing program bandwagon right > now...and mainly because we are a high performing school and in order to keep > our accredidation we have to IMPROVE. How do you improve advanced scores? > Anyway, not my point. > > Your post reminded me of the article I just read in the Dec/Jan Reading > Teacher mag. > (http://www.reading.org/Publish.aspx?page=/publications/journals/rt/v62/i4/abstracts/rt-62-4-garan.html&mode=redirect) > It's about SSR and the benefits, sort of...what I really got out of it was > that the "research" that the US policy makers use to make policy has to be > based on "medical research" with strict control groups...which, you can't > really ever have in a classroom setting. So things like letting kids just > READ at school may never be supported because there is not true quantitative > research that supports it. > > I found it very frustrating! But happy that my principal leaves me > alone...at least for now. We'll see when "my" scores come back this summer. > > Kristin Mitchell/4th/CO > "Be the change you want to see in the world" > -Ghandi > > > > _______________________________________________ > Mosaic mailing list > [email protected] > To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to > http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. > > Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive. > > _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
