Comprehensive School Improvement Strategies for Educational Excellence

1. Solutions to Disproportionality Elizabeth B. Kozleski University of Colorado at Denver

3. Schoolwide Contexts • Saying goodbye to students moving on • Moving up, graduating • Student recognition • Behavior Management • Student Support Groups • Intensive Academic Support: Mentoring, tutoring, academic hotlines, • Student and faculty governance • Building Leadership Teams

4. School wide Contexts • Grading and reporting to families • Attendance and absence • Lunchrooms • Bathrooms • Play areas • Athletics • Greeting and leave taking • Orienting new students • Crisis Management • Conflict Resolution

5. School wide Practices • Research-based Practices • Academic Support Referral • Social/Emotional Support Referral • Coaching and mentoring for teachers • Finding compatible student/teacher matches

6. School Improvement Survey • Review the school improvement survey at your table. • Distribute responsibility for the sections (2 people each on teacher and school practices, 1 person for other sections • Discuss whether the survey captures the practices we identified here • What would you add? What would you omit?

7. School Leadership • Beliefs and Values • Social Justice & Equity • Evidencing results • Social and political democracy: Together, we can build a great school • Distributed leadership • Interpersonal Skills • Connecting people, encouraging risk, supporting initiative • Administrative Skills • Systems and Capacity Building

8. Principals that you have known • What traits are usually there? • What traits or skills are often missing? • What do principals need to lead their schools well?

9. Whole School & Classroom Support for Social and Affective Development • Involve families & communities • Know and participate in the community • Understand perceptions • Connect with students • Provide continuum of support • Teach expected behaviors • Develop opportunities for student voice in school governance and student management • Focus on building a school-wide climate of care and support among and between adults and children

10. Quality Literacy Instruction Early instruction & interventions Build on prior knowledge & interests Direct instruction, rich materials, meaningful contexts Emphasize cultural relevance

11. Early Intervention • Focus on language, social and intellectual development • Build habits of the mind (Meier, 2001) • Core ideas, big questions, tools for inquiry, • Bridge home and school cultures in the curriculum • Be culturally responsive –get to know your students’ backgrounds and socio-cultural histories • Provide rich literacy, numeracy and technology environments • Universally design classrooms and curriculum

12. What aspect of literacy education lends itself to culturally responsive teaching? What skills do adults need to do social/affective development well? What structures do schools need to do early intervention well?

13. The Culture of the Classrooms • Routines, patterns and practices • Teacher/student interaction patterns • Student/student interaction patterns • Greeting and leave taking • Negotiating voice and decision making in the classroom • Activity patterns • Individual, small and large group activity • Learning from conflict • Story Telling

14. Getting ready to teach • Standards • Anchors • Canned curriculum • Problem Based Learning • Monitoring progress • Public conversations about work • Classroom results • Coteaching

15. In the flow • Maintaining momentum • Focusing on the work • Sustaining effort • Maintaining engagement • Balancing energies • Networking the class

16. Storytelling as a teachingdevice

17. Rubrics Electronic storage Self-assessment Goal setting Time management Record Keeping Self-monitoring Assessing Student Progress

18. Culturally Responsive Teachers • Cultural organizers, mediators, and orchestrators of social contexts • Caring, committed, and respectful belief in their students’ abilities and desire to learn • Validate, affirm, facilitate, liberate, and empower • Experts in instruction & management • Challenge & support students • Explicitly teach skills and cultural capital • Sense of responsibility

19. Reflection on Practice • Which students benefited? • Which students did not? • Engagement, conceptual knowledge, sustainability, anchors, problem based learning, assessment of progress • What needs to be tweaked? • What should be omitted? • What needs to be reordered? • What needs to be included? • Who needs to be included? • Where could this have been taught? • Who could have taught this?

20. Self Assessment How will I insert these ideas into my own work? How well am I listening? What connections am I making? What do I need the lecturer to do?

21. Families and Communities • Connect with families and local community • Learn about their funds of knowledge • Map the community and its resources (transportation, industry, museums and libraries, recreation centers and other public activities) • Build communication systems that work

22. Get to know your students Sociocultural Experiences Language Interests Knowledge base Let your students know you

23. What are your favorite waysto get to know someone else?