OSP Connected
May, 2019-Office for School Performance-Volume 29
Message from Dayle
“We all mouth the mantra "All children can learn." I would modify the chant to "All children do learn." It’s just that some of them learn that we expect them to be successful, and some learn from us that they are dumb. Whatever we believe, they learn.”
From, "Multiplication Is for White People": Raising Expectations for Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit
I am a reader. And for those of you who also are readers you know that when a certain theme or pattern emerges you notice. You begin to feel simultaneously excited and annoyed. The quote above is from Lisa Delpit’s most recent book. It’s a good read. (If you want it for summer I’ll buy it for you!)
But bigger than the book is the finding- yet again- that belief matters. I started talking about it when John Hattie discovered out that of the over 130 attributes of school (size, financing, class size etc) that the thing most correlated to student learning is belief. If students believe they can, there is over an 0.8 correlation that they will. (Remember 0 is random and 1 is certain).
Carol Dweck talked about belief with growth mindsets and we heard about it when “grit” got popular. Now we hear it from Lisa too.
Belief. Easy. So it seems.
Now, if you are like me, you may say “I do believe in my students!” But do you? How would they know?
When we asked students about whether or not teachers believed in them they shared how they knew: if they answered their questions, if they spent time helping them, if they smiled and greeted them, if they gave them challenging things to do, if they expected them to do the work, if they respected them, how their face looked as they interacted and finally if they heard their teachers say so.
I learned from these students that it’s not so much what we are saying but how we are interacting with them in class that transfers that belief!
We are in the home stretch of the year. A lot awaits at the finish line. We may be tempted to start the countdown because we are tired or because we see students struggling and are void of ideas. It’s important to remember though that whether it’s six weeks or four days your belief in someone may spark a new fire that wasn’t there before. There is always a new opportunity to change daily. Don’t let the days pass without planting a seed of belief in another. Let your students and colleagues know you believe they can finish strong and excel. And, that belief continues into the future!
HSD Focus 2018-2019
INSTRUCTION: Language with a Clear Purpose
As we near the end of the school year, now is a great time for reflection, refinement, and ultimately, setting goals for next year. With a continued focus on Language and Rigor this school year, are your students able to identify the purpose of the lesson, the language expectations, and the success criteria? What minor changes for improvement can you make over the last six weeks of school and what goals can you set for yourself and your students moving into next year?
The 5D+ Rubric for Instructional Growth and Teacher Evaluation provides clear criteria to help you self assess your instruction and students’ learning. Over the past school year, many of our school sites focused on improving language objectives and the language scaffolds/supports available to students. In the Purpose dimension of the 5D+ rubric under Proficient it states:
P1: Lessons are based on grade level standards. The daily learning target(s) align to the standard. Students can rephrase the learning target(s) in their own words.
P4: Teacher communicates the learning target(s) through verbal and visual strategies and checks for student understanding of the learning target(s).
P5: Success criteria are present and align to the learning target(s). With prompting from the teacher, students use the success criteria to communicate what they are learning.
In order to help you and your students meet these targets or to bump up to Distinguished on the rubric, visit the internal HSD site Language Central. Educators can find a multitude of resources to support language instruction. You can learn more about the ELP standards and modalities, forms and functions, including a language objective generator tool, and academic versus social registers of speech. Take some time this spring and summer to explore this site and determine how the resources can support language and rigor in your classroom.
BUILDING STRONG RELATIONSHIPS through Culturally Responsive Teaching: Trauma-Informed Practices Benefit All Students
As we know, trauma in childhood and adolescence can impact a person’s development, and these students often benefit from extra support in learning how to manage emotions in healthy ways. We also know that it is hard to know without a doubt which students have experienced trauma and which haven’t. The article “Trauma-Informed Practices Benefit All Students” by Alex Shevrin Venet provides clear examples of how to teach and model strategies that can be helpful to establish protective factors such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, and coping skills which are helpful whether students have experience trauma or not. As we continue to model and teach these strategies, more students will begin to access the support they need to be successful.
CAREER & COLLEGE READY: Family Resources
The vision of Career and College Pathways is for all students to be prepared for life after high school. To achieve our goal it is important that our students and families feel supported every step of the way. There is a new resource on our district website to help reach our goal. Each high school grade level 9-12 now have forecasting presentations and informational materials accessible in Spanish and English. Please share this resource with students and families that you work with. If there are any questions or would like a presentation delivered at your school email Brooke Nova: novab@hsd.k12.or.us
Summer Summit 2019
We are currently gathering recommendations for Summer Summit facilitators. If you would like to facilitate a session or would like to recommend someone please email Arcema Tovar for Elementary and Becky Kingsmith for Secondary.
Thursday, Aug 22, 2019, 01:30 AM
Century High School, Southeast Century Boulevard, Hillsboro, OR, USA
STATE ASSESSMENTS: Creating a Positive Testing Environment
DCA Corner
Each month we will highlight a dashboard, report, query or feature in DCA that you can use to make thoughtful, well-informed, data-driven decisions to better help students be successful.
This month, we will provide an overview of the various discipline reports available in DCA. The system provides a total of 8 discipline/behavior reports that allow users to query student behavior in a variety of ways. For the most part, the discipline portion of DCA was modeled after the SWIS application, which for some has been the software of choice when using PBIS in their schools as a strategy for working with student behavior. DCA delivers reports based what is known as the “SWIS Big 5” meaning being able to look at discipline data in the context of who, what, when, where, and how often. DCA discipline reports that are modeled after the kinds of reports available in SWIS include:
Referral by Violation Type
Violations by Location
Violations by Month
Violations by Race/Ethnicity
Violations by Time
Student Violation Count
An additional report named SpEd Discipline Summary by Year allows users to look at the distribution of discipline incidents for SpEd students compared to non-SpEd population. One more report named Staff Referral Counts by Violation and Action allows users to view all incident referrers and how many incidents they have reported for the selected school year.
Most of the discipline reports provide a combination of tabular data and data represented as charts.
The At Clicking on either the blue hyperlinks on the left side of the report or one of the bars on the chart will deliver details about each student referral in that category including who wrote the referral, the location, severity and the action taken with the student.
Each report can be configured to focus on certain student populations such as race/ethnicity, program affiliation (SpEd, EL, etc.), gender, plus the reports include the ability to specify a date range. And, as is the case throughout DCA, clicking on a student name will open the student’s profile, which contains the full academic record for that student.
To access the Discipline reports, navigate to DCA and then select Reports > Discipline/Behavior > and the discipline report of your choice.
If you have questions about these reports, DCA in general, and/or would like training in your building on using DCA, contact Tom Luba (lubat@hsd.k12.or.us.)
Health Standards Update
Coffee Conversations - Inclusive Partnerships (Episode # 7)
When general education and special education teachers work together, all students win! Hear how Lili and Mary tried new inclusive practices this year and found success for all students beyond what they expected.
Remember you can see all the Coffee Conversations in the Student Services online handbook. Please reach out with questions, comments, and ideas for future Coffee Conversation topics!