Hackberry 2018-2019
Hackberry's Foundation
Our Mission:
LOVE-SERVE-CARE
Our campus motto is, “Love, Serve, and Care.” Each of these individual words, when put to action, are powerful and could have a positive impact, but when combined together, have the power to change the culture in any school! The idea for this motto originated from a book, The Carpenter, by Jon Gordon. We at Hackberry measure everything we do with the “love, serve, care” motto.
Loving everything we do and every situation we find ourselves in may seem like an unattainable goal, but I believe it’s all about the attitude we choose to have. As leaders, we must learn to love every aspect of our job, even the struggles and challenges we face, because they inevitably will make us stronger. We must learn to love negative people because they make us more positive and allow us the opportunity to change their negative viewpoints onto positive ones.
Serving is the ultimate sign of leadership and character. The person with a servants’ heart is an ultimate leader, the kind we should all strive to be.
Caring about the work you do and the people you do it with may seem like a over simplified objective, but one that when done well will completely transform any culture. By creating a school that cares about each other; administration, teachers, students, and parents, you are potentially changing lives! We as humans naturally gravitate towards people that make us feel cared for; imagine a school that every student feels important because their teachers take the time to really get to know them, every parent feels like they matter because the administration always had a kind word, and every teacher feels valued because they are supported by fellow teachers and leadership alike. Caring for those around you takes little effort, but has enormous rewards.
“Love, Serve, Care” keeps us focused on the simple yet profound and often overlooked common courtesy’s in life and education. There is no finish line with this objective, we will never reach a point that we have mastered all of these qualities, rather my hope is that each individual at Hackberry will continue to grow in each of these practices and will be better educators and people because of it.
Culture Trumps Strategy!
Collaborative Culture - Culture Trumps Strategy Every Time
Key ideas behind building a collaborative culture are...
- No one person is responsible for the designing, planning, or the success of every student. We can and will learn more from each other as we begin to discuss our students success based on our own best practices.
- Be truthful, be vulnerable, and be open at all times ~ this allows all ideas to be shared and considered by our team.
- We is always more powerful than Me.
- Collaboration will decrease the amount of time individuals spend outside of the instructional day as we share our knowledge, expertise, and leadership with those on our team.
Everything we are trying to accomplish towards student success will be determined by our ability to create a collaborative professional culture. This culture will ensure the success of the initiatives described below in more detail.
PLC ~ Professional Learning Community
- Focus on Learning
- Collaborative Culture and Collective Responsibility
- Results Orientation
Process - Meeting weekly at grade level for PLC and Planning
- What do we want the students to learn? - Power Standards
- How will we know if they learned it? - Teacher Designed Common Formative Assessments
- How will we respond if they don't learn it? - Interventions/LE3 TIme/Small Group Instruction Time/Tutors/Interventionist/SPED
- How will we respond if they do learn it? - Enrichment/ LE3/ Small Group Instruction Time
Although we have created a structure to conduct PLC's on a weekly basis, this should not be confused with an authentic a PLC Culture. For a PLC Culture to have value, it must be pervasive and ongoing throughout the school day with a radical desire to improve the learning of all students.
All means All, Student by Student, Skill by Skill
Planning Through Backwards design
- Always start with a discussion of the Power Standards as decided in our PLC process.
- Review and discuss the assessment that was built in our PLC process.
- Review and discuss the learning target created in our PLC process.
- Design the activities to support the Workshop Model described below and a Gradual Release Mindset.
This linear structure ensures that the most critical discussion about the TEK, where we start, and the assessment, where we finish, are given the highest priorities. As you design the learning target and activities, be sure to consider which quadrant your lesson is residing in.
- Quad A - Ok to begin in A, but don't plan on staying there.
- Quad B is determined by how well the lesson moves across multiple contents and the relevance it has to authentic engagement.
- Quad C is determined around the rigor of the TEK and the lesson being learned by students.
- Quad D moments are the ultimate goal, but no classroom can live there at all times.
Rigor Relevance Framework
Learning Target
Gradual Release Mindset
All About Relationships
Positive relationships truly have the ability and the power to unleash untapped potential in our students. While many teachers may not think they have the time to spend building relationships, I suggest that we don't have the time not to. Relationships and instruction are not an either–or proposition, but are rather an incredible combination. Research tells us this combination will increase engagement, motivation, test scores, and grade point averages while decreasing absenteeism, dropout rates, and discipline issues.
Begin to unleash the power of positive relationships in your classroom.