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Transformed by Literacy

Transformed by Literacy High Standards, High Expectations, NO EXCUSES!!!. Sue Szachowicz Senior Fellow, ICLE Principal (retired) Brockton High. PHOTO. My Lesson Plan. Why am I here? Our Brockton High story WHAT did we do?

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Transformed by Literacy

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  1. Transformed by Literacy High Standards, High Expectations, NO EXCUSES!!! Sue Szachowicz Senior Fellow, ICLE Principal (retired) Brockton High PHOTO

  2. My Lesson Plan • Why am I here? Our Brockton High story • WHAT did we do? FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS: LITERACY FOR ALL The power of whole school literacy • Lessons Learned (if we can do this, ANYONE can!!!) • Wicked Awesome Results PHOTO PHOTO

  3. But please remember… Ours is a story of every school, every teacher, every student. This IS NOT just about high school, NOT about urban, NOT about size of school. This IS NOT about any individual, any principal, any teacher… it is about us ALL. This IS about change. This IS about being the best you can be. If we can do this, anyone can!!!

  4. The Brockton High Story: 10 YEARS!!! Sustaining a Decade of Continuous Improvement

  5. Brockton, City of Champions Massachusetts Boston Brockton

  6. Brockton High, School of Champions School of Champions

  7. Some info about Brockton High? PHOTO • Comprehensive 9 – 12 • Enrollment: 4,155 • Poverty Level: 80.2% • Minority population: 78% • 39 different languages • 39.3% speak another • language in the home • Approximately 17% LEP • Services • Approximately 11% receive • Special Educ. Services PHOTO PHOTO

  8. 60% Black - includes African American, Cape Verdean, Haitian, Jamaican, and others 22% White 12% Hispanic 2% Asian 2% Multirace 2% All Other Who attends Brockton High? Cape Verde Islands PHOTO PHOTO

  9. Countries of the 888 members of the Class of 2014 • Italy • Jamaica • Liberia • Mexico • Russia • Somalia China Columbia France Guinea-Bissau Guadeloupe Guyana United States Cape Verde Haiti Puerto Rico Dominican Republic Nigeria Portugal Brazil Canada Cameroon Kenya Peru Pakistan Senegal El Salvador Thailand Barbados PHOTO

  10. WHAT we faced… Any of these sound familiar??? • Mass. implemented a high stakes test (MCAS) • Three-quarters of our students would not be earning a diploma • Culture of low expectations – “Students have a right to fail” (former BHS Principal) • Negative image in our city, in the state (nasty comments!) • Yet we were living in DENIAL!!!! • Who is responsible???? We had silos (My kids, your kids, not OUR kids) • Success by chance – depended on who your teacher was – are you lucky???

  11. MCAS arrived, and here we were: MCAS 1998 Failure ELA – 44% (Sped – 78%) MATH – 75% (Sped – 98%) MCAS 1998 Advanced+Proficient ELA – 22% MATH – 7%

  12. Just in case you were thinking MCAS is easy, take a look… Remember, they MUST pass to graduate – NO EXCEPTIONS!!!

  13. 2013 Readings from Previous Years Include: • Burial at Thebes from Sophocles’ Antigone • Shakespearean Sonnet # 73 • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad • Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (3 page excerpt) • Making Humus by Composting by Liz Ball • Proof (4 page play excerpt by David Auburn) • The Trial (2 page excerpt by Franz Kafka) 2013 ELA MCAS 2013

  14. 2013 2013 Math MCAS 2013

  15. Science MCAS (Biology) 2013

  16. Accountability and the Achievement Gap: Pressure for accountability in education and closing the achievement gaps among students will continue to increase.

  17. That’s where we were… Here’s a preview of where we are now… Then, at the end some WICKED AWESOME stuff!…

  18. THEN NOW MCAS 2013 Advanced+Proficient ELA – 88% MATH –70% MCAS 1998 Advanced+Proficient ELA – 22 % MATH – 7 %

  19. THEN NOW MCAS 1998 Failure ELA – 44% MATH – 75% MCAS 2013 Failure ELA – 1.8% MATH – 11%

  20. It’s cool and fun to be smart 1998 859 STUDENTS (4400 students) 19% • PHOTO Honor Roll Statistics 2013 1608 STUDENTS ( (4155 students) 39% PHOTO PHOTO PHOTO

  21. How Did BHS go from this to a Model School???

  22. Turnaround at Brockton High Emphasis on literacy brings big MCAS improvement Principal Susan Szachowicz, shown chatting at lunch with Yiriam Lopez, is in many ways the school’s biggest cheerleader. (Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff) By James Vaznis Globe Staff / October 12, 2009 BROCKTON - Brockton High School has every excuse for failure, serving a city plagued by crime, poverty, housing foreclosures, and homelessness. Almost two-thirds of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, and 14 percent are learning to speak English. More than two-thirds are African-American or Latino - groups that have lagged behind their peers across the state on standardized tests. But Brockton High, by far the state’s largest public high school with 4,200 students, has found a success in recent years that has eluded many of the state’s urban schools: MCAS scores are soaring, earning the school state recognition as a symbol of urban hope.

  23. GO Boxers!!! Boxers in the NEW YORK TIMES High Expectations NO Excuses!!! September 28, 2010

  24. Transforming a Culture through Literacy A.K.A. - It’s COOL to be smart at Brockton High!!! As we say in Boxer Country, we are WICKED AWESOME!!! Our Turn Around Story… We did it our way! PHOTO

  25. Brockton and ICLE philosophy Rigor Relevance Relationships ALL students-and ALL means ALL!!! So, that’s who we are… What did we do? PHOTO

  26. So, what did we do??? Our turnaround: 4 Steps • Empowered a Team • Focused on Literacy – Literacy for ALL, no exceptions- all means all • Implemented with fidelity and according to a plan • Monitored like crazy! PHOTO PHOTO

  27. Step ONE: Empowering a Leadership Team Restructuring Committee – our “think tank” • Every department represented with a mix of teachers and administrators • Balance of new teachers and veterans, new voices, and voices of experience • Challenge for Change funding (NOT grant $) PHOTO

  28. We looked at the data And, our first plan: Let’s figure out the test The result of that: The Great Shakespearean Fiasco

  29. After our Shakespearean fiasco, a better approach: • Asked “What do our students need to be able to do to be successful on the MCAS, in their classes, and beyond BHS? (Read challenging passages, difficult nonfiction, write – a LOT, solve multistep problems, explain their thinking… etc.) • Examined our data: what did we need to focus on, what skills did we need to target for ALL • LITERACY – First, defined it, then trained ourselves how to teach these literacy skills to our students. It HAD to be about LITERACY!!!

  30. The “WHAT”: LITERACY for ALL: Step TWO: Focused on Literacy for ALL Reading,Writing, Speaking,Reasoning

  31. How did we determine our focus? Literacy Skills Drafted: 32

  32. Engaging the faculty: After each discussion, back to Restructuring for revisions. This process went back and forth to the faculty four or five times that year. Review, discuss, revise, repeat!

  33. So now what… We had cool looking charts on the walls… SO WHAT… The KEY to our implementation is HOW we trained teachers to teach these Literacy skills to our students.

  34. Says Mike Schmoker in Results Now It’s about teaching, stupid… PHOTO PHOTO PHOTO

  35. Step THREE: Implemented with fidelity and a plan Faculty Meetings became Literacy Workshops KEY = Adult Learning Teachers teaching teachers – GOOD stuff!

  36. FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS We started with writing! Writing is thinking PHOTO PHOTO

  37. Our First Training: Open Response OPEN RESPONSE STEPS TO FOLLOW 1. READ QUESTION CAREFULLY. 2. CIRCLE OR UNDERLINE KEY WORDS. 3. RESTATE QUESTION AS THESIS (LEAVE BLANKS) 4. READ PASSAGE CAREFULLY. 5. TAKE NOTES THAT RESPOND TO THE QUESTION. BRAINSTORM & MAP OUT YOUR ANSWER. 6. COMPLETE YOUR THESIS. 7. WRITE YOUR RESPONSE CAREFULLY,USING YOUR MAP AS A GUIDE. 8. STATEGICALLY REPEAT KEY WORDS FROM THESIS IN YOUR BODY AND IN YOUR END SENTENCE. 9. PARAGRAPH YOUR RESPONSE. 10. REREAD AND EDIT YOUR RESPONSE.

  38. Now I will model the ten steps students will use when answering an open-response item. The following chart includes the training steps that the facilitator will use and an explanation of the work to be done by the participants. Let’s go through the ten steps using The Book of Ruth as our sample text. Here’s an example of explaining a step: 5: Take notes that respond to the question. Brainstorm and map out your answer. Remind students that they should be doing ACTIVE reading. They should use strategies to develop their answer, such as taking notes, circling and underlining key words, and using brackets. Follow reading strategies developed in the workshops.

  39. So then what… Success by design! First step:Training – ALL faculty Next step – HOW to bring this into the classroom • Lessons developed • Implemented according to a calendar

  40. Step THREE: Implemented with fidelity and a plan We didn’t leave it to chance. (Success by design, not by chance!) The implementation was according to a specific timeline…

  41. As a follow up to this activity, I am requiring Department Heads to collect from each teacher at least one student sample from each of the teachers’ classes. The student samples should include: Student Name Teacher Name Date Course Name and Level Period A copy of the reading selection and question Evidence of the student’s active reading All pre-writing work that the student has done, e.g. webs A copy of the written open response The new scoring rubric and completed assessment After you have collected the samples from each teacher and have had the opportunity to review them for quality and completeness, please send them to me in a department folder with a checklist of your teachers. Again, please be sure that your teachers clearly label their student samples. The Open Response calendar of implementation is as follows: Nov 2-6: Social Science, Social SciBiling. Nov 30-Dec 4: Wellness, JROTC Dec 14-18: Science, Science Bilingual Jan 11-15: Business, Tech, & Career Ed. Jan 25-29: Math, Math Bilingual Feb 22-26: Foreign Lang, Special Ed Mar. 7-11: English, ESL, Guidance Mar 20-24 Family &Cons. Sci, ProjGrads Apr 5-9: Music, Art

  42. Step FOUR: Monitored like crazy!!! What gets monitored is what gets done! • Monitoring the work of the students (rubrics and collection and review of the work) • Monitoring the implementation by the faculty (walkthroughs, evals) PHOTO

  43. How do we know the students are learning it?

  44. Monitoring the implementation What gets monitored is what gets done! • Implementation set by calendar • Admin team present in classrooms observing the literacy lesson • Follow up walkthroughs • Frequent feedback provided PHOTO PHOTO

  45. Remember: It’s about the adults, not the kids! We taught ourselves to teach these literacy skills to the students. And we will ALL do it THIS WAY!

  46. FromTalent is Overrated by Geoff ColvinThe factor that seems to explain the most about great performance is something the researchers call deliberate practice… Deliberate practice is hard. It hurts. But it works. More of it equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.

  47. So what does this look like in the different subject areas??? GOOD STUFF!!! Third Key Trend

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