NORTHWEST
EDUCATION
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SEATAC, Washington—Andrea Gray’s ninth-graders form a loose circle and share their thoughts on Night, Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust novel. They barely notice the three observers just outside the circle who listen intently, jotting notes on the discussion.
Having visitors in the classroom is routine for Gray and five colleagues who make up the language arts team in Tyee High School’s ninth-grade “house.” Like beetles in an entomologist’s laboratory, team members and their students are accustomed to close scrutiny: The teachers make regular forays into each other’s classrooms; district instructional staff drop in, as do Tyee’s principal and assistant principal; and outsiders watch, too—especially during the monthly visit by Tyee’s literacy coach, Jen McDermott, who is a contractor with the University of Washington’s Center for Educational Leadership (CEL).
Today, McDermott is working with Gray on improving students’ written reflections on their reading. Using Night to discuss author’s stamp, Gray models her own reflections and then gives the class different options for their independent work time: from expanding on their previous reflections to using sticky notes to mark new ideas in their books that can be developed later. In a class where reading abilities range from third grade to college level, students try to apply the group lesson to texts as different as Fitzgerald’s multilayered masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, and thin, large-print stories like Parrot in the Oven and Stone Fox.
As the kids scatter to their desks, Gray and McDermott ask one girl—Cassie— if they can see the entries in her reading journal. Cassie explains that though she wants to write down things when she comes to a “powerful place” in her book, she sometimes struggles to find the right words. McDermott has reassuring advice: “You’re worried about the whole rock pile instead of the pebbles. Just get your good thinking out and then go back and do your reflections later.”
McDermott and Gray have an easy rapport with the students and with each other. Although Gray is only in her first year of teaching and McDermott is a veteran, it’s not readily apparent who the coach is and who’s being coached. After several student conferences, the two instructors reconvene the group and take turns gently prodding the class to share examples of the work they’ve done in their independent study time. When the bell rings, McDermott will go through the same lesson with another language arts teacher before sitting down with all six members of the ninth-grade team for a two-hour debriefing session.
It’s clear that there’s nowhere to hide when teaching reading and writing to freshmen at Tyee. “It’s about a community of learners,” remarks Cheryl Smith, the district’s secondary literacy coordinator and one of the observers in Gray’s classroom. “It’s exciting but stressful. [Teachers] aren’t used to having company in our rooms, but this is an open door policy. We feel it’s the only way to meet the needs of our diverse learners.”
Literacy coaching, the Reader’s Workshop curriculum, increased professional development, and a team approach to instruction are all elements of a broad campaign to improve reading achievement in the Highline School District. Located just south of Seattle’s thriving international airport, Highline faces some unique hurdles: Lessons are sometimes drowned out by the roar of planes, and the fact that the district encompasses not only an airport but four other distinct municipalities makes it difficult to foster a sense of community.
Another challenge lies in Highline’s demographics: Its 17,700 students form a veritable United Nations with 79 countries and 59 different languages represented. More than two-thirds of the district’s 30 schools, including Tyee, are high poverty. Around 12 percent of students are identified as transitional bilingual.
Poor showings on the state test—the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL)—signaled a need for change. Partnering with CEL, the district chose to concentrate its resources on improving literacy instruction and instructional leadership. District administrators visited San Diego and New York City District #2 to learn about successful reform efforts. Applying that experience, Highline radically revamped leadership duties so district staff spend more time in the schools; principals, in turn, are more visible in classrooms. In keeping with the CEL mantra that “you can’t lead what you don’t know,” Highline also instituted monthly literacy instruction for all principals, assistant principals, and key teacher leaders.
The literacy training—together with leadership seminars, weekly instructional letters from the principal, and written feedback to teachers on the principal’s classroom visits—support what CEL Director Stephen Fink calls “the big ideas behind Highline’s theory of action”:
Fink adds, “Principals need to know their teachers as learners, just as teachers need to know their students as learners.”
Tyee’s principal, Max Silverman, does regular building walk-throughs with district leaders and spends at least a couple of hours a day in the classroom. After observing three ninth-grade literacy classes and a reading class for English language learners, Silverman wrote to his staff that he was struck by the “teachers’ focus on intellectual work, personalization, and their steadfast belief that every student in the room must be challenged. In these rooms, student success is aided by clear purpose and individualized teacher support.”
Silverman also shared his experience meeting after hours with eight mothers of Somali students at a nearby apartment complex. Through an interpreter, he asked them what they hoped for their children. All adamantly told him they wanted their children to graduate and go to college. “They made it clear that if we were willing to help, they would make any family sacrifices necessary to help their kids,” Silverman reported. “For example, these women dismiss their children from family chores and taking jobs so they can focus on staying after school and doing homework. During my drive home, I could not get over how easily and clearly these women were able to give me a working definition for equitable outcomes. As we discuss the appropriateness of having all students college ready, I will hold the voices and expressions of these women in mind.”
At Tyee, the ninth-grade language arts teachers gather around tables littered with brown bag lunches, prepared for their monthly debriefing with coach McDermott. Stacks of student journals sit alongside the sandwiches and yogurt containers. McDermott starts by asking, “What kinds of thinking are your students doing about their reading? How is that helping them?” The teachers flip through the student work to find reading reflections—strong and weak—to share with the group. As they critique the entries, they discover a shared frustration: Lots of students are simply summarizing what they’ve read rather than going deeper and exploring new ideas that bubble up from the text.
McDermott drills to the heart of the matter: “You sense there’s a lack of rigor in their thinking. Who needs to be pushed? How can we use these entries in our teaching?” Ideas fly around the table: share students’ reflections on the overhead projector; probe what students were thinking as they wrote their entries; key off the work for a fishbowl discussion; ask for textual evidence to back up students’ observations. McDermott then moves from the general to the specific, asking each teacher to choose a student writing sample to use in class the next day, explain why she chose that passage, and describe how she’ll incorporate it into her lesson.
No one at the table appears to shrink from being put on the spot or from making her practice so public. Assistant Principal Joan Ferrigno, who also sits in on the meeting, says the six teachers knew that collaboration was expected of them when they applied to work in the ninth-grade house, which serves as a pilot program. (With the help of a grant from the Coalition of Essential Schools, Tyee is preparing to break into three small schools in the 2005-2006 school year).
“Obviously teachers have been in their classrooms for too long with their doors closed and nobody knows what’s going on in there. [But] we have to make our work public or we’re not going to get better,” Ferrigno believes. “Fortunately for us, we have teachers who have built relationships and are not afraid of that; they’re reflective enough to want to get that input.”
Ferrigno points out that the six teachers at the table are still “rather polite,” critiquing the work rather than each other. “They don’t push as hard as they need to and will eventually get to,” Ferrigno thinks. “But they definitely make their rooms public and spend a lot of time together planning, brainstorming, sharing ideas, and reflecting on what they did.” And although it may be going slower than some would like, they’re beginning to see results. Tyee High’s scores on state reading tests jumped from 39.3 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards in 2001-2002 to 56.3 percent in 2004-2005. Writing proficiency improved from 36.7 percent to 53.6 percent during the same period.
This year has been about growth, not only for students but for the teachers themselves. “With Jen, they’ve been honing their vision for what this work should look like and feel like and be like for students, and they’re learning that as they go,” observes CEL Project Director Anneke Markholt. “So, it’s about how you keep your eye on the prize, but the prize is constantly getting bigger—hopefully not more elusive, but more enriched and more robust.” Just as they urge their ninth-graders to go deeper in their reading reflections, the Tyee team and their coach delve deeper into how they can become even more powerful teachers.
For more on the University of Washington’s Center for Educational Leadership, go to www.k-12leadership.org.
Original URL: http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/11-01/district/
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