Learning services ~ What’s next?

1. Learning services~What’s next? • Gulf Islands SD 64 • April 25, 2013 G17 to G200

2. Norms • What do we want our conversation to look like? • We can all play a role in keeping each other on task.... • Frank, Respectful, Constructive, Purposeful • Focus on the Focus - On Task - When everything is important... nothing is important • From Group of 17 to Group of 200! • Think about this as our “Social Contract.”... like a classroom

3. 1957 - A Tipping Point • The first year in Canada that more people worked in service and information industries that in agriculture and industry • 2013 - How are the needs different today from 1963?

4. Why Are we here ?

5. Our mission: to ensure high levels of learning for all students. • All children can learn (at a high level, essential standards)But...

6. Assumptions • All students don't learn in the same way. • All students don't learn at the same speed. • Some students lack prior skills and knowledge. • Some students lack proper behaviours. • Some students have a home life that is counter-productive to academic success. • No teacher has all the skills, knowledge and time to meet the needs of all students in class/assignment.

7. The Shift • My kids to Our kids - let’s provide a structure for students who may need interventions in his/her daily education • Build in time for team meetings - let’s empower the staff with tools necessary to help all children • Collectively build and agree upon essential learnings... Let’s practice and employ measurable interventions that increase student learning and achievement

8. Our Mission: To ensure high levels of learning for all students • Team meetings (built into our weekly schedules • Essential standards (created in teams) • Ongoing, Consistent, Formative Assessments

9. Remembering Why... • Collective process to provide every child with additional time and support to learn at high levels • Not put upon us... Built by us, for us!

10. Making Meaning • “Student engagement is an essential component of education. When students are engaged, they are inspired to be creative and collaborative, to develop goals and passions, and to become interested and invested in their own education.” • Farley Cannon, Maddee Nash & Lauren Utter, • GISS Students, 2012

11. How do we deal with change? • How we cope with or handle change is influenced by our mindset. • Do we bring a... Fixed Mindset Growth Mindset Flexible Mindset

12. The Art of Possibility • Life is composed as a story... it’s all invented • With new definitions, much more is possible than we often think Giving an ‘A’ Leading from Any Chair

13. Tier 3 Customized Tier 2 Targeted, Timely Additional Time, Intensity, Strategies Tier 1 Best, First Instruction with Universal Access All Students & Staff Prevention • School-wide Response to intervention (RTI) • Access for all students • Regular monitoring • Targeted high quality instruction • Regular teacher collaboration

14. Collaboration Network Focus on Learning Focus on Results Network of Inquiry & Professional Learning Communities • “Collaborative cultures, which by definition have close relationships, are indeed powerful, but unless they are focusing on the right things, they may end up being powerfully wrong.” • Fullan, Leading in a Culture of Change (1993)

15. Three Essential RtI Teams • Roles & Functions

16. Why? the Basic PRemise • All students can learn, and deserve to learn, what is essential so that they can progress to the next grade or level. • Most students will be able to learn more than the essentials, and some students will need extra support to just learn the essential outcomes.

17. Can you make this guarantee to the parents of your students? • “It does not matter which teacher your child has at our school; if your child needs extra time and support to learn at high levels, we guarantee he or she will receive it.”

18. Our Goal • “To create a systematic process that ensures every child receives the additional time and support needed to learn at high levels.”

19. What will Classroom Teachers Do? • Identify essential knowledge and skills that all students must master • Use effective proven strategies to help students learn • Develop common assessment tools • Track student progress on essential standards • Help all students learn the essentials and most students to learn additional concepts/skills

20. Collaborative Teacher Teams • Personal Learning Communities (PLC’s) • Meet with grade equivalent teachers, teachers with similar curriculum, or school and cross-school teams in small schools, to determine and develop essential standards and common assessments.... Use what already exists and modify it! • Meet with intervention staff and administration to discuss and formulate plans for supporting students needing extra support

21. Teachers commit to... • Working in collaborative teacher teams • Meeting weekly in PLC’s or Networks with colleagues • Helping all students learn the essential learning outcomes • Use effective teaching strategies • Use common assessments to track student progress and effectiveness of instruction • Identify students needing additional time and support

22. School or Regional Leadership Team - “Guiding Coalition” • Members: • School administrators • Representatives from each collaborative teacher team • Specialized Support Staff • Primary Responsibility: To coordinate collective efforts in the school to help all students learn and master the essential learning outcomes.

23. Leadership team tasks • Agree and Articulate VISION • Schedule and allocate resources for collaboration, core instruction and interventions in all tiers • Coordinate school wide human resources to best support instruction at all tiers, especially tier 3

24. Leadership Team commits to... • Lead school-wide behaviour expectations, including attendance, awards and recognition • Ensure sufficient and effective resources are available to provide tier 3 interventions for students needing intensive support in reading, writing, number sense, motivation, attendance and behaviour • Lead the school’s universal screening efforts to identify students needing tier 3 intensive interventions before students fail • Assist and monitor essential learning outcomes and evidence of school-wide student learning

25. School / Regional / District Intervention Team • Members include: • Focus on students needing Tier 3 intensive support • To master essential learning outcomes • Address deficits in universal skills (reading, writing, numeracy) • Address chronic absenteeism, behavioural, motivational concerns

26. The Intervention Team commits to... • Determine specific learning needs of each student needing intensive support • Diagnose cause(s) of students’ struggles in tiers 1 & 2 • Determine most appropriate interventions for students • Regularly monitor student’s progress to see if interventions are achieving the desired outcomes • Revise student interventions when desired outcomes are not being achieved • Determine when special education identification is appropriate

28. The Role of a Team • Yes I Can

29. coffee

30. How Important is Evidence? Ok. Listen up... One surgeon to another... • How many of you say the heart has five valves?

31. be purposeful!

32. Need to Know

33. Universal screening

34. Assessment • Assessment for Learning ..... formative... information (Eg: DART) • Summative - the sum of what we’ve taught • Assessment WHILE Learning - Checks for understanding • Assessment AS Learning... focuses our work... with incredible results - • Where do we fall in the balance?

35. The Balanced Assessment Model

36. Cycle of RtI

37. Time & Structures • #1 Reason for assessment - shared learning • Carving out the time... • To discuss and agree on essential learnings • To agree on level of rigor... what will it look like when student understands • To design common assessments • To review and learn from common assessment results • To devise and implement interventions to achieve mastery

38. Time for collaboration • It is disingenuous for a school or district to claim that collaboration is essential for student learning, then not provide time for teacher collaboration.

39. Finding the time • Instruction + Time = Learning • When do we provide additional time for students to receive additional support to know, do, understand the essential learnings?

40. The question is not... • Should we build flexible time into our schedule? • But.... • How will we build flexible time into our schedule?

41. RtI in the early grades • Getting people together... • Built into schedule • Dinner meetings for additional collab time • Time in lieu

42. Our job is to teach the kids we have. • Not the ones we would like to have. • Not the ones we used to have. • Those we have right now.... all of them. • Anonymous

43. Morphing our system • How will we best use our talents, our resources (time, people, $$), our ingenuity, to develop a systemic response to instruction and intervention (RtI2) that ensures all students learn?

44. With Passion & Persistence • Learning By Doing