The professional learning community movement in the school district has been making a big impact for years on instruction in the schools. But this year it has moved even farther than before.
“I think with the new leadership in the district we are now going even deeper into that collaboration,” said Dina Wise, the principal at Bruin Point Elementary. “We are understanding it and applying the concept more.”
Wise said the new reading basal that the district has adopted is making a big difference already.
Program advantages
“One of the things I like best about the new reading program is that you can not only do an assessment on the story of the week but you can do it on the skill that was taught,” she said. “As a teacher we can all make sure the students know the answers to the questions on the assessment about the story. But on the other hand if we are testing for the skill, and they are getting a passage that they haven’t read before, an instructor must change the way they are teaching. That way students can learn to use that skill or strategy to get the information.”
Essential standards have become a big focus for the staff this year and that has been reinforced by some things that have been done by the faculty as a whole.
Faculty participation
“We took the entire faculty to the PLC conference in September in Salt Lake City,” she said. “It was a three day conference. In the past I have shared articles and used the books to help us with the PLC process , but its hard in the short amount of time we have to get everyone to see the vision. Just the fact we went to the conference together, as a whole team for three days, that became team building in itself. While we couldn’t all go to every session because there was so many, at the end of each day we debriefed to inform everyone what we had learned. That helped us to look at it and construct what the process was going to look like when we got back to school.”
New specialists
She said that through the Community Council and the Lands Trust Fund two more specialists have been hired so that on Mondays the teachers have a three hour uninterrupted block of time during the school day. During that time teachers can do professional development and meet together as an entire faculty for 45 minutes to an hour and then the teachers have time to meet with their vertical team (a multi grade meeting). There they can plan and look at the standards across the grade levels. That is where they get to work on the essential standards.
Because of the small size of the school, with only one classroom per grade, the vertical meetings become important.
The faculty has worked to build in flex time to aid students who lag behind. So each day at 9:30 a.m. kids are grouped to reflect their abilities and their needs. These groups are led by various teachers and paraprofessionals who do interventions to help the students.
“While we have always done interventions, it is a lot more targeted this year toward the essential standards,” said Wise.
The Lands Trust money also is providing a 30 hour stipend for all teachers to work with programs outside of the regular time they work. in. They are going to work on things they learned at the conference and for Response to Intervention concepts many of the teachers learned last year at another conference they attended.
Bruin Point explores new territory this year
Bruin Point