Congratulations to my school! We have been given the
opportunity to apply for California Distinguished School for the second time! This is what the website
states: “Honors some of California's most exemplary and inspiring public
schools. Schools selected for the Distinguished School Award demonstrate
significant gains in narrowing the achievement gap.” (http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/sr/cs/)
Of course, I have to be involved in the writing of the application!
I’m so excited! I am working with my principal and two other colleagues. Our
district is so supportive that they are even providing us with substitutes for
3 days to write the application. It’s due on December 10th! We were
notified on November 8th!
Already, my colleagues and I met at a local restaurant on
the day after Thanksgiving to brainstorm and create an outline. Today, all four
of us met to discuss our next plan of attack. We chose our three days to be out
of the classroom. We reread the requirements and made a list of the data we
need to collect. The application requires both quantitative and qualitative
data to provide evidence of narrowing the achievement gap through our programs.
The quantitative data we are focusing on are the reports we
create every year that shows demographic data, the reports that show discipline
data and attendance data, the GPA data, the free and reduced school lunch data,
the frequency of online gradebook logins from students and parents, and sports
and extracurricular attendance data. We are also looking at the class sizes and
number of classes we have for ELD as well as the rates of EL reclassification.
I think we need to spend some more time thinking about the
kind of qualitative data we collect. Today, I interviewed the teacher in charge
of Homework Club to gather some data. I would like to see some kind of student
survey or questionnaire, but I don’t know if we have enough time to do that.
Perhaps we could work in some classroom observations.
Relating back to this course, the reason we have so many
great programs supporting student learning is because we have studied our data
to identify students’ needs and have adjusted our curriculum and school focus
to make our school a great place for kids. I am glad we are being recognized
for that, and I am honored to be part of the writing team!
No comments:
Post a Comment