Edutopia - August/September 2008 - (Page 26)

Words and Numbers: Teachers Ron Brown, Marilyn Burt, and Anabel Rodriguez (above, left) ponder ways to address academic English in a math class. educators, make it to the classroom quickly. With a focus on individuals, the district can send a handful of teachers, or even one, to Rick Stiggins’s Assessment for Learning Institute or Ruby K. Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty training. The approach costs less than sending every teacher in the district, and the professional-development gains are greater. “I can’t even tell you how many days I’ve spent this year just in workshops with teachers,” Burt says, laughing. “A lot!” In addition to scheduled staff-development days and afternoons, she adds, “we give workshops after school, during prep periods, during lunch—any avenue we can ⇒nd.” Many of these workshops and trainings target ELL students. Although the district has a variety of programs in place—Englishlanguage-development classes, structured English-immersion classes, and bilingual classes—ELL students attend classes not speci⇒cally designed for them. Though roughly 30 percent of students are classi⇒ed as ELL, district surveys reveal that nearly 70 percent of students speak a language other than English at home. It became clear that in order to serve all students, the teachers needed to reguGET SMART larly employ instructional strategies and Get the lowdown on improved teacher development with the rich resources at conceptual frameworks that prioritize edutopia.org/teacher-development academic-language acquisition. A workshop created by Marilyn Burt, for instance—called Language Is Power and based on the work of such educational theorists as Kate Kinsella, María Montaño-Harmon, and Ruby K. Payne—is now not only offered to all teachers as professional-development training but also is part of the ninth- and tenth-grade curriculum. Teachers go through the workshop and then discuss the concepts with their students, concepts that include public and private voice, language registers, and discourse patterns. “It’s nice to get a view of the big picture, because we’re all focused on the math,” says Mike Becker, a math teacher at Southwest High School. Through training with resource staff, his department now knows that “academic vocabulary is something you stress in a math class. If a kid can’t understand the question, that automatically means they can’t solve the problem, whether or not he or she is mentally capable of doing it.” Prior to the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP) process, says Burt, “English learners were never our focus. Now, we’ve really put them front and center.” Test Drive Every other Wednesday, students leave campus at noon, and groups of teachers of the same subject meet together for two hours of structured collaboration. Before the II/USP process, “we had some collaboration time, but it wasn’t focused collaboration time,” says Central Union High School principal Emma Jones. “This is focused.” In addition to the bene⇒ts of mutual support and the free exchange of lesson plans and activity ideas, structured collaborations help align district goals and develop a common vocabulary of best practices. The topic at hand is common assessments. CUHSD teachers are working with district administrators and each other to formulate fair, accurate, streamlined, and comprehensive assessments. Teachers discuss how they construct a test and what it should include and collaboratively delineate the speci⇒c standards they want their students to meet. “Traditionally, assessment was something that teachers did individually,” says Southwest High School principal Danette Morrell. “They did it in their own classrooms, they wrote their own tests, and it was as varied as ice cream selections.” Now, CUHSD assessments are as targeted as classroom instruction is, and teachers, knowing what’s expected of them, are coming up with these assessments together. “If something can come from the teachers up, there’s a lot of buy-in for that,” says Martha Hoopes, an English teacher at Central Union High School. The focus on targets and goals, many teachers report, has been a boon for both them and their students. “It seems to me we didn’t used to say, ‘This is what you’re supposed to know when you leave this class today,’” says Darcel Putnam, special education teacher at Central Union. “Now that’s explicit.” “It’s more targeted instruction, more targeted assessment,” adds Tricia Petter, “so the reteaching that’s able to be done is more strategic. That is what has helped us get where we are. We know in great detail what the students need help with.” 26 EDUTOPIA AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2008 http://edutopia.org/teacher-development

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - August/September 2008

Edutopia Contents Up Front Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design: Building on Disaster What's Next Full-Service Schools In the Trenches Moral Aptitude Serious Gaming Behaveyourself.com Media Is the Message The Way of the Wiki A Match Made in Cyberspace Hail to the New Chief Rise of the Robots Disrupting Class As Others See Us Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Moby

Edutopia - August/September 2008

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