OSP Connected
December, 2018-Office for School Performance-Volume 24
Message from Dayle
I attempted to have a conversation with a young Latino boy last week about a misunderstanding and as I was talking about my concern- he quit talking. I asked a few questions and I was getting the silent treatment. After feeling myself move into the yellow zone I finally said, “I am feeling really disrespected right now. I wish we could talk this out.” His reply surprised me. “What are you talking about?” he asked. “ I’m not disrespecting you! I am not yelling, or cussing- I’m just sitting here…!”
Wow. We definitely had different perspectives of what respect looked like in that interchange.
Respect and disrespect is really in the eye of the beholder. Actions that show respect to you may not be important to me. Culture, power dynamics and gender all play a part. Allowances are also made for interactions based on relationships and an understanding of personal circumstances. Respect is fluid.
In our schools “defiance and disrespect” is one of our most common reasons for a referral. Our students of color are almost twice as likely to get a referral for defiance and disrespect than our white students, and boys receive referrals more often than girls.
Let’s solve this.
Talk to your students about what respects looks like, sounds like and feels like. Help them identify where your definition and theirs are the same or different. (They could also compare with peers).
Have them put in writing what they need from you to meet their definitions and expectations and what they will need to learn/do to meet yours.
Create some sentence frames you agree to use as a class when anyone gets in the yellow zone and post them largely on the wall for reference for you and students. These could include, “That feels disrespectful to me- can we talk later about that?” “I am going to take a break for a minute….” (and have a designated place to calm), or even, “I’m not trying to disrespect you….”
When issues come up, validate and teach. The young man I was talking to needed to be validated for his choices. He didn’t cuss and he didn’t yell. Thank you! And I also needed him to know that for me, I also wanted to talk through it. He was in the red zone and wasn’t ready. He needed a break but didn’t ask for it due to my positional power, gender and race. I shared that in interacting with me, it was okay to ask for a break at that time and offered the words to do it.
In analyzing the data most students get defiance and disrespect referrals for “refusing the directions of the teacher”. Why would they be refusing? Do they have the skills to do the assignment, solve the problem, communicate their needs, or preserve their need for respect in the situation?
Let’s solve this problem. You are all exceptional teachers and this is an issue we can teach to. It enables our students to have lifelong skills for problem solving and engaging in a multicultural world. It’s essential!
HSD Focus 2018-2019
INSTRUCTION: Empowering Students to Take Ownership of Their Education
“All behavior is purposeful” Watch how a high school teacher was able to reconnect a student with school in the video below. https://youtu.be/RXJGcqcJckA
This the story of DJ Batiste. At the age of four he was kicked out of Head Start. At the age of thirteen he was in Juvenile Detention and still leading a large violent gang in Mississippi. At the age of 17 he was introduced to Conscious Discipline. Now, he leads and teaches from a different point of view and in turn inspires hundreds around the country with the message of Connection instead of Correction.
BUILDING STRONG RELATIONSHIPS through Culturally Responsive Teaching: Empathy Interviews
CAREER & COLLEGE READY: CTE in Middle Schools
Thanks in part to a grant from Applied Materials, during January and February 2019, HSD Middle School students will have the opportunity to explore Career and Technical Education (CTE) in after school programs run by their feeder high schools. High school students involved in the CTE programs will be planning and running these programs under the supervision of the lead CTE teacher for each program. These CTE programs will give middle school students hands on opportunities to explore the career pathway options they have at the high school level as well as find out what areas of academics and career learning they are interested in.
Teaching and Learning 2.0
DCA Corner
Each month we will highlight a report, query or feature in DCA that you can use to make thoughtful, well-informed, data-driven decisions to better help students be successful. DCA is rich in student data, easy to use and a great resource to help you more holistically analyze the many factors contributing to a student’s successes and challenges.
For this month, we are highlighting the “SBAC by Teacher and Course with Growth Percentiles” report. This report may be found in DCA by navigating to Reports > State Assessment by Teacher > SBAC by Teacher and Course with Growth Percentiles. Before talking specifically about the report and what it delivers, let’s spend a minute on student growth percentiles (SGPs.) For those of you who may not know, SGPs are a normative measure of student growth. SGPs quantify the growth an individual student made in one year relative to all other students in Oregon with similar score history in state assessments. What do we mean by normative growth? We are referring to the amount of growth a child makes in comparison to his or her peers. For instance, when a child goes to the doctor’s office, his weight and height are measured. The doctor can tell us if the child’s growth in the last year is “typical”, that is: is he growing the same, less, or more than other children his age? Often this is expressed in percentile terms. The child’s height may be at the 35th percentile which means that the child is taller than 35 percent of other children his age and shorter than 65 percent of children his age. Normative growth is the basis for student growth percentiles. So, in terms of performance on the test, a student in the 80th percentile means that the child performed better than 80 percent of the children in his/her peer group. Hence, this student may require less instruction to achieve the next highest performance level on the test than students having lower SGPs. These indicators of growth can be a useful tool for teachers who may be differentiating instruction in their classrooms to address particular student needs.
In addition to SGPs, the report also shows overall, color-coded performance levels in math and ELA and will display performance levels on each of the claims under math and ELA by clicking the small + signs in the report. Here is a snapshot of what the report delivers:
Finally, since the report is run by teacher and classroom, it also calculates the median SGP for that classroom, which teachers can use as part of their SLGG planning.
If you have questions about DCA and/or would like training in your building on using DCA, contact Tom Luba (lubat@hsd.k12.or.us.)