Check-in #3—Interventions, roles and supports

1)   Describe how leadership, teachers, families and students will be involved in this process.  What role will each play?

Leadership:

• As part of our school focus for the 2014-2015 school year, collecting data on school climate has been on-going and our Administrative team provided our ILT staff with a copy of the book, How to Create a Culture of Achievement (2012) and assigned chapters to read and come prepared to discuss at the ILT meetings. Although we cannot change all of our school culture overnight, as a staff we are looking at elements that we can use to improve our school climate and culture such as implementing the five pillars discussed in the book by 2016. This year we have focused on the Welcoming Pillar, Do No Harm, and Choice Words. We still need more training in terms of restorative justice, which our administrative team supports for next year. To support district LCAP goals for 2015-2016, we are also looking at ways to improve parent involvement at our site and we are starting to implement PBIS this year and will be continuing with this next school year. Attendance is also already a focus and will continue to be next school year. The data we are collecting is being used in our WASC process 2014-2015 and our site will build on this for 2015-2016. Given that my administrators were involved in my data collection decision and target group improvement focus, I expect to have their full support with my action plan for next year and they will build time into our PD schedule and WASC committee process for me to implement the plan. This year I strategically placed myself on WASC focus committees connected to my plan, and I am leading one of the focus groups—Focus Group E: School Culture and Support for Student Personal and Academic Growth, with the idea in mind of using this to support my plan.
• VP for Middle School and Counseling Overseeing PBIS Implementation
• PBIS Lead Teacher and ELD Coordinator
  
• School Site Technician (Data Collection and Support for PowerSchool Data that I do not have access to)
  

Teachers/Staff:

• Horizontal grade level teams for middle school grades 6-12 (Arts and Academic Teachers)
• PBIS Lead Teacher and Team
• ELD Coordinator (Assistance with CELDT data, parent DELAC committee, and ELL supports)
  
• SPED teachers
  
• 6th Grade Team Leader (Oversees Student Academic Probation and Appeals Process for Middle School and created and implemented an effective behavioral support/management plan that works at the 6th grade. She is willing to assist with training, share plan with 7th and 8th grade teachers). 6th grade teachers are also open for observations of their plan in action.
  
• Arts Teachers: Increasing involvement in middle school students in Arts productions at SCPA. To be in these productions, students must be in good academic standing and have no Ns and Us in citizenship.
  
• Custodian staff (manage campus beautification projects and community service and gardening projects)
  

Families:

• Parent involvement for ELLs (DELAC committee just got reinitiated at the end of this year and there are plans in place to increase involvement for next year and outreach efforts. 
  
• Parent notification of students on academic probation and appeal process
  
• Use of progress reports, email, and eMessenger to notify parents of at risk students in terms of behavior and academic probation and notification of improvement and success.
  
• Bring your parent to school day and Principal chat
  
• FOSCPA (Non-profit parent organization—Friends of the School of Creative and Performing Arts)

Students:

• ASB Cabinet Members or representative (work to reduce bullying on campus and sponsoring events for middle school students)
  
• Circle of Friends: Middle School and High School student club geared toward promoting mutual respect and assisting students who are having difficulty connecting with others.
  
• 8th Grade Promotion for 8th grade students.
  
• 7th Grade Retreat (restorative justice activities)
  
• Middle School field trips designed to encourage students to be in good academic and behavioral standing in order to attend these events.

2)   What are the interventions that you plan to implement based on your goals and objectives? Indicate interventions for students, faculty/staff, and families/communities and indicate whether they are focused on individual students, groups, grade levels, or whole school.

Interventions for Middle School Students:

• Appeal Process for Middle School Students (Grades 6-8) on Academic Probation (new Spring of 2015): Revisit the criteria for middle school students that was established by ILT high school teachers and approved through Governance (currently this is the same as for high school students. Students need to have a 2.5 GPA, no D’s and F’s, and an A or a B in their Arts class including P.E.). Implement with revisions fall of 2015.
  
• Technology Intervention to the Probation and Appeal Process (Grades 6-8). Problems this year online upload, electronic scheduling of appeals and teacher signups, as well as student notification. Currently several formats are being used including paper. Plan to make-up use of Google Forms and look into a more efficient use of technology to improve the time issues and confusion involved in this process (teacher in charged spent hours and her weekends). Plan to look at what is working at the High School level prior to implementing this. Not all of this process is electronic at the High School level either.
  
• Technology Intervention—Implement the use of badges at the middle school level for grades 6-8 (might only focus on grades 7 and 8 because 6 grade is not the target area). For more info about badges, see ISTE: Chart students’ growth with digital badges https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=320 or Faculty Focus: Higher ED Teaching Strategies http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-with-technology-articles/using-badges-classroom-motivate-learning/ (I still need to workout the details and get staff buy-in for this idea. There are several levels and different ways to use the badges).
• PBIS: Restorative Justice (Grades 6-8). Currently it is mostly being used at the 6th grade level and 6th grade is not experiencing the referral issue that 7th and 8th grade are experiencing. Include ASB cabinet members and grade level representatives from all grade levels in this.
  
• PBIS: Implementation of 6th grade behavior support system at the 7th and 8th level for students (this system comes out of the restorative model). 6th Grade Team Leader is onboard with implementing this for next year. Will need 7th and 8th grade team support and commitment to implement.
  
• Digital Citizenship and Literacy (School Wide—All Grades): As part of the district LCAP and to meet technology standards, school sites are supposed to be implementing this at each grade level. Several are not. Plan to included a tiered plan for this and share with teachers, admin and staff (district has planned and lessons, but it has not really been deployed at the site level). This will assist with some of the behavior issues our site is experiencing, particularly at the middle school level in terms of cyberbullying and bullying.
  
• Use of ASSET funding for High School Computer Lab: (Middle School students can use lab. Many of our students from disadvantaged economic groups do not have Internet and computer access at home. Currently, we do not have consistent computer available on campus before or after school. (Secured funding this year, but was unable to secure staffing to effectively implement the lab and was not able to run the lab myself due to already being over committed. Plan to get everything in place over the summer, so I can hit the ground running with this next year).
  

Interventions for faculty/staff:

• PBIS: PBIS and training implemented by Lead PBIS Teachers and 6th Grade Team Leader
  
• PD: Restorative Justice (Role Playing, observations of what this and also how the 6th grade team is using it).
  
• PD: Use of Electronic Badges (Middle School Horizontal Grade Teams only)
  
• Collaboration Time for 7th and 8th grade teams (6th grade team all has common prep period)
  
• ILT: Revisit Appeal Process at the Middle School level. What is working, what isn’t, does the criteria need to be changed? (Before school starts fall of 2015 using data from Spring 2015). This involves team leaders from grades 6-12.
  
• PD: (Last week in August 2015 before school starts). Review Middle School Probation and Appeal Process to familiarize staff (School Wide)
  
• 7th and 8th Grade Teachers (Observations of 6th grade teacher classroom management strategies, behavior support plan). Use of Ghost Walks, Capacity Building/Learning Walks, and instructional walks. Middle School Cross-curricular (Arts and academic courses) observations.
  
• PD: Use of eMessenger (new this year, not everyone uses it for parent communication). School wide.
  
• Illuminate Training (more specific focus on data collection and what data will be collected). We had several issues with this last year as teachers and administrators could not effectively customize the reports needed for the start of the school year. Some of this has since then been resolved.
  

Families and Communities:

• Outreach efforts to parents of ELL students and parents of targeted groups
  
• Look into transportation issues and childcare issues for parents wanting to be more involved.
  
• Electronic Job aids for parents of target groups that can be accessed on SMART phones (PowerSchool Parent Portal, eMessenger, Classroom Dojo, teacher Learning Management System (LMS), Videos/screen cast explaining Probation and Appeal Process, how to get the most out of our school website.

3)   What type of support will be needed to carry this out? For example, time, professional development, materials, etc.

Time:

• Collaboration Time for 7th and 8th Grade Horizontal Teams, Time for PBIS PD and Restorative Justice Training built into the school year, and for observations.

PD: 

• School Wide PDs the week before school starts (Illuminate, Including Restorative Practices into the Curriculum to improve school climate and culture, Use of electronic badges for middle school, and Review of probation and appeal process).
  
• Digital Citizenship and Literacy (much of this can be done with job aids and videos)

Materials

• Data prior to the start of the school year (some of this can be pulled in advance and already has been). Non-academic data focusing on school climate, student attendance, and parent engagement; PBIS data on referrals at the Middle School level with a focus on Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino students in grades 6-8, data on root causes/reasons for referrals, and correlation between student referrals and academic achievement and whether reducing referrals will improve student achievement; Spring 2015 data on number of students on academic probation and appeal process.
  
• Calendar/Timeline
  
• MBC stored videos and Safari Montage stored videos for Digital Citizenship and Literacy
  
• Electronic Badges (This still needs to be developed and badges need to be selected).
  

References:

Fisher, Douglas, Nancy Frey, and Ian Pumpian. How to create a culture of achievement in your school and classroom. ASCD, 2012.

James-Ward, C., Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Lapp, N. (2013). Using Data to Focus Instructional Improvement, ASCD.