6th Grade Going Green Experience

Many of our 6th grade students are completing an interdisciplinary research unit entitled "Going Green".  This unit employs student choice and differentiated instruction.  There were many possible topics of study that included Alternative Energy, Transportation, Arctic Region Study, Climate Change, Designing your own Green Home, Reduce Reuse Recycle, and Wacky Weather.  Students could investigate many aspects of each topic and choose a challenge level and a way to demonstrate what they learned in the form of a product.  

Students who choose "Alternative Energy" as a topic compared and contrasted benefits and drawbacks of alternative energy sources such as wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, and biomass.  Students attended a presentation with an alternative energy expert during the school day.  Some students choose to demonstrate what they learned through a power point presentation while others created models and one student even invented "solar house siding".  

Students who chose transportation investigated alternative ways to power motor vehicles.  These alternative methods included electricity, hydrogen, biodiesel, hybrid, ethanol, and natural gas.  Students attended a presentation by a biodiesel expert and Peter Zack from Maine Energy Education made fuel cells with students and displayed his hybrid car in the back of the school.  Mr. Zack was brought in as a result of a student contacting him for an interview.  He was so impressed with the project and our student, that he volunteered an entire day in our classrooms.

Students who choose Arctic region study investigated how diminishing polar ice would impact sea levels and wildlife in arctic regions.  Students worked with science teachers to create and analyze ice cores in an after school session.

Students who investigated climate change defined climate change and researched evidence of climate change including the causes, perils, solutions, and actions.

Many students were intrigued by the "Designing Your own Green Home" topic.  Students investigated what a green home was and how individuals can go about designing a zero-energy home.  Students considered location and house size, construction materials, heating, plumbing, electrical, septic, and appliances.  Students attended a presentation by Ms. Roe, a local green home and product expert.  Some students also chose to interview her further relative to their product while other students created model homes and noted features of interest.

"Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" was another interesting topic where students explored the reasons for diminishing waste and presented ways that people are cutting back, re-using materials and turning materials into other products for consumption.  Students were excited to learn that Patagonia recycles fleece jackets and they were astounded to find that schools in Naples, Italy were closed because their landfills were filled and trash was piling up on the streets.  Many students started recycling programs at home and one student has created a compact florescent light bulb fundraiser where classmates can purchase energy efficient lightbulbs at a reduced cost!

The final topic of choice was "Wacky Weather".  Students investigated how climate change leads to extreme weather patterns and how our weather and temperatures are changing.  Students attended a presentation from the Mount Washington Observatory.  Students could choose to investigate effects on precipitation including floods, droughts, and heat waves, hurricanes, tornadoes and relate them to impacts on health, plants, and animals.  

Student learning was evident with the presentation of their products and the written response of their reflection papers.  Students were asked how the research has changed the way they think about the Earth and climate change and brainstormed changes they could make in their life to help the environment.  I believe that we have only begun to see the impact that this project will have on the students.  I am proud to say that they are stewards of the environment.  With Earth Day approaching, students are eager to find ways to make a difference.

Professional Learning Communities

Last week, 12 CMS teachers and administrators (all of whom are members of the Good to Great Committee) had the opportunity to hear Rick and Becky DuFour speak about Professional Learning Communities.  Many of those who attended reflected upon the two days.  Their thoughtful and thorough reflections can be read here. 

What do we do on "Inservice Days"?

Often times, people come up to me and ask what goes on during those mysterious "inservice days". Well, Tuesday was one of those days and I thought it would be worth sharing  a bit about the program.

The entire SAU professional staff met at the high school for two presentations. Ray McNulty, Senior Vice President, International Center for Leadership in Education and Dr. Stephanie Spadorcia, from Lesley University both spoke to the group about literacy, specifically, 21st Century Literacy. After their presentations, all faculty returned to their respective schools, broke into small groups and discussed how what they learned in the morning could be applied to their classroom everyday.

I'd like to share my thoughts about what Ray and Stephanie shared with us, respectively.  I'll report some of the general remarks of the staff on a later post.

First, I'd like to comment on Dr. Spadorcia.  Her presentation focused on four current issues:  scientifically-based educational practices, response to intervention, high-stakes assessments, and the widening of the achievement gap.  More specifically, she addressed how effective reading instruction can address all four of those issues.  She made the argument that the "Whole-to-Part Model of Silent Reading Comprehension" can be one such strategy.  Ultimately, she said, the ability to read and comprehend silently is of vital importance to today's learner.  If you think about it, it makes sense.  How often do you read aloud and/or are read to once you reach high school and beyond (Although she does believe that all students should read aloud and just be read to not read aloud themselves at upper grades - it is actually more difficult to read aloud and comprehend as you increase in skills no matter the age.  Students need to hear words multiple times before they can pronounce it correctly - think of the first time your biology teacher wrote the work deoxyribonucleic acid or adenosine triphosphate on the board.  In fact, she specifically said, "Oral language, hearing others read aloud, and discussions are the most effective means of supporting vocabulary growth".  She credited www.nifl.gove/nifl/pfr.html for that research.)  She really punctuated the fact that students need to be skilled in the area of silent reading comprehension if they are to be literate in the 21st century.

Dr. Spadorcia broke silent reading comprehension into what she called the "three legs" of the reading table.  They were Word Identification, Language Comprehension, and Print Processing Beyond Word Identification.  She said that just like a table, if any one of these three parts are missing (or undeveloped) the ability of the student to read at grade level is unstable.  She then spoke of several practical strategies to increase proficiency in all three areas.  I would encourage all of you to review her presentation to learn more about those strategies.  Early feedback from the teacherswas that they were glad she shared strategies that could be used the following day in their classroom.

One of the most interesting things I learned from Dr. Spadorcia is the importance in blending strategies from both phonics and whole language instruction. In short, she said that neither way, in and of itself is the one right way to teach reading, that students need to employ both phonics and whole language strategies to be proficient readers.

Ray McNulty shared with the faculty his belief that education systems need to change to adapt to the needs of 21st century learners.  He spoke of the "false proxies" we have created to signify learning such as finishing a course or textbook, listening to a lecture or getting a high score on a standardized test.  He emphasized that teaching and learning are two separate entities and that learning should focus on meaning, engagement, inquiry, exploration, personalization, collaboration and trust.  Mostly, he stressed that educators need to become agents of change. Instead of reacting to change (i.e. NCLB & Standardized Assessment), educators need to be proactive and author and cultivate those changes that are needed to help students compete in a global economy.   He spoke passionately about the idea that what has worked in education in the past will not necessarily work today (or tomorrow).  The needs of society today are much different than they used to be.  For example, our students are immersed in what he called "millennial-oriented Technology" (blogs, wikis, tagging, IM, Myspace and Podcasts for example).  Many students talk of "powering down" when they enter a classroom and "powering up" when they leave. He distinguished between digital immigrants and digital natives.  Immigrants work at conventional speed, natives a twitch speed.  Immigrants like linear problem solving, natives like random.  Immigrants read text first, natives "read" graphics first.  Immigrants are "work" oriented, natives are "play" oriented.  Couple these observations with the fact that the skills needed in todays workforce are changing, that employers are looking for workers who can solve problems, communicated effectively and in diverse manners, apply technological skills to access, apply and create new information, are leaders, and who have a thirst for lifelong learning, self direction and renewal and schools, for the most part, are not only missing an opportunity to capture a fleeing school population, but also to prepare students for 21st century work opportunities, opportunities that are quickly going over seas.

In short, it was a thought-provoking, perhaps even thought-challenging lecture.  I encourage all readers to view his presentation and to visit the institute's website.

"It's the Economy Stupid."

James Carville first said it 15 years ago when he was a campaign manager for then Governor Bill Clinton.  His point was simple.  George Bush was beatable, despite the perception that he was unbeatable having just ended the cold war and been successful in pushing Iraq out of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War.  Carville's point?  Bill Clinton was a better choice because while President Bush was gaining success overseas, he wasn't taking care of the U.S. economy. President Bush's presidency will always be notable.  It was when the Berlin Wall was torn down and America's presence in the Persian Gulf was intensified, but to folks in America at the time, jobs and a healthy economy were more important.

I bring this up because as CMS begins the process of moving from "Good to Great" it is important to always remember the singular power of an effective teacher practicing effective instructional practices.  It is the single most important determinant of children's success in school.  A single, caring teacher can have a greater positive impact on a student's life than any program, curriculum alignment, policy and/or federal mandate will ever have.  

The 2007 McKinsey Report (Which I first read about at Ewan McIntosh's edu.blogs.com) studied successful schools from around the world.  Their research identified three "things" that mattered most in those top schools that were identified as such.  They were:

1.  Getting the right people to become teachers

2.  Developing them into effective instructors

and

3.  Ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.

In other words.   Education is a people business.  Successful schools hire high quality people and then provide the support needed for them to continue to develop their craft.  As CMS moves from "Good to Great" these three "things" that all successful schools have in common should be kept in the forefront of our minds.

Good to Great

As was written of a December, 14th post, CMS is dedicated to continual improvement .  On December 11, 2007, the faculty of CMS began this process.  The focus of the meeting was on the statement made several times by Dr. John Cronin (NWEA) during his visit to CMS.  The statement was also written in his formal report.  The statement was:

"CMS is a good school, not a great one."

Toe begin the process of moving to "greatness" the faculty engaged in a cross-grade, cross discipline discussion to answer/discuss the following questions:

1.  What can we do and/or stop doing to move CMS in the direction of greatness?

2.  How can a school's greatness be measured?

Notes/data were collected from those discussions and CMS administrators, through an iterative process, looked for not only general themes, but also the frequency of such themes.  A summary of discussions was posted and all CMS faculty were invited to provide additional comments and or edit the summary.  The following are the themes that emerged through that process.

1.  Most groups commented about the over-reliance, over-use, and general amount of standardized testing CMS engages in each year.  Generally, teachers like having data for a variety of uses, including, but not limited to instruction, placement, IEP evaluation, and recommendation for high school, but the disruption caused by standardized testing is wearing on the faculty.  There seems to be a general need for assessment, but in a more reasonable, pragmatic way.

2.  All groups expressed their desire for common planning time for curriculum groups (e.g. all 7th grade social studies teachers).  The idea that common planning time can help CMS move from Good to Great is consistent with current educational research.  Rick Dufour was able to lead Adlai Stevenson High School in Illinois from poor to high quality partially because of their use of common planning time.  More can be read about common planning time and the development of a professional learning community at the following websites:

http://www.mesd.k12.or.us/si/dufour_PLCs.pdf

http://www.allthingsplc.info/

3. Several groups made comments regarding the elimination of non-teaching duties (e.g. lunch duty, hall duty, etc.).  The general thought would be to provide more time for teachers to collaborate, plan, etc.  Two comments in particular best expressed the faculty's sentiment:

"Take away duties for teachers not related to curriculum, instruction, and assessment."

"Stop (Remove!) extraneous duties that take up time."

4.  Several groups expressed support for a systemic model of support for those who are struggling with their academics.  The general idea was similar to the Response to Intervention (RTI) model implemented in many schools.

This theme is consistent with Dr. Cronin's report in which he highlighted the growth achieved by our high achieving students is not seen in our middle achieving students and especially in our our low achieving students.  This achievement gap, as measured by NWEA, between our high achievers and our low achievers is widening!  RTI (or similar program) may be a strategy CMS can employ to reduce that gap.

5.  There was a large contingent of comments expressing the feeling that the CMS faculty is "spread too thin."  It was pointed out that there was a certain irony in the fact that Mr. Baldasaro asked faculty to identify those items on their plates which needed to be removed and in the next breath announced a new "Good To Great" steering committee.  The duality of those events was noted.

Generally, this concept was similar to what Dr. Cronin proposed when he spoke and wrote of "constancy of purpose" and the need to develop a comprehensive long-term improvement plan.  While we prefer the idea of a long-term vision (Good to Great) using short, measurable goals based on that vision, there is a general belief in having a "constancy of purpose."

6.  There was a lot of discussion about the CMS curriculum.  Within this theme, there were many sub-themes.  They were:

More sharing of curriculum.

"Slimming" of the curriculum.

Eliminate obsolete curriculum items - concentrate on key concepts.

Greater adherence to curriculum and grade level standards.

Vertical (6th to 7th, 7th to 8th grade) alignment of the curriculum.

Consistency across grade level content areas.

"High Accountability for all students."

Generally, the conversations centered on the amount of curriculum concepts that needed to be "covered" as opposed to the quantity of the curriculum.  This is a classic "depth over breath" discussion.  Robert Marzano would call for a "guaranteed and viable" curriculum for all CMS students as opposed to a curriculum spread so thin teachers are racing to "cover" it.

7.  A couple of groups discussed the grading and development of more consistent school-wide grading policies.  There is already a group of teachers meeting on a regular basis to discuss the possibility of standards-based assessment and the use of formative assessment in the classroom.  Although that sentiment was not discussed widely during the Good to Great meetings, it has been talked about generally at CMS.

8.  Almost every group discussed the importance of the emotional and social well-being of CMS students - something of an addendum to the discussions related to concerns of becoming too focused on data.  While the focus of the afternoon was on curriculum, instruction and assessment, it is clear through the development of this theme in so many groups that there is a concern on the part of the teachers about the social and emotional well-being of CMS students. Further, there is a belief at CMS that if we are educating the "whole" child, then one can not focus solely on "academic" growth.  There is an interesting study by Kristen Bub (an advanced doctoral student at Harvard) on the connection between behavior and grades.  You can read more here.

9.  There here a couple of comments regarding the supervision and evaluation of teachers.  Two comments centered on the "informal" walk-through process, that teachers felt as though a 5-10 minute walk-through did not provide adequate time for an administrator to make a judgment and provide feedback.  There was also a discussion in at least one group on the importance of feedback for teachers and a suggestion that others in the department (i.e. peer coaching model) complete observations to offer constructive feedback.

10.  There were a number of miscellaneous items that did not fall within a "theme".  They are quoted below:

• "Stop letting the school board 'push' us around.  Need to be more direct and less defensive at school board meetings - things that are going well need to be voiced.  School board needs to hear that emotional rigor is important and that it is part of our mission statement.  The administration is being passive with the board.  The board needs to be told that they aren't looking out for all students."
  
• "[Need] a true "curriculum" coordinator."
• "Observe/visit other 'great' schools to find out what makes them great."
• "Define a 'great' school from administration/board."
• "No attendance policy, no accountability for kids, passing times for kids, no bells, clock differences."
• "Emphasize thematic learning"
• "Stop scheduling like we are a junior high school."
• "Parent Portal - time consuming, takes away from preparation."
• "Current goal setting process is too restrictive/dictatorial and pointless."
• "Teachers have meetings without agendas to be creative and attentive."
• "Is the 'Good to Great' committee just another example of 'whack-a-mole'?"
• "Stop feeling tied to textbooks/old instruction."