How do you flexibly support your students for the future?

Brittany often has students entering her classroom at vastly different levels – and that means that she needs to meet students where they’re at, first by figuring out the underlying issues or missing pieces preventing them from being fully on track. When helping students gain a solid foundation in math, she’s seen that, “When you make it intentional and really work to fill those gaps, you start to see why they have the issues that they’re having”, and can better provide personalized support along the way.

What are signs of success?

“The goal for a teacher for the whole year is to grow them a hundred percent. Last year, my average student growth was a hundred eighty percent…They’re learning how to be students and how to be learners and how to make choices. And they’re solving problems.”

Lesson #1 – Find eager adapters who aren’t afraid to get messy, and then offer differentiated entry points that boost their passion for change.

Kristen says: “For each respective school, thinking through that process, what’s going to make the most sense for them…there was a lot of messiness in it, and everyone’s path was quite different. The lesson learned is having a system that you can continually go back to and personalize for the adults that are learning along the way, which is what our first steps guide helps us do.”

Melissa says: “During the pandemic, Robin, a seventh grade teacher at Saluda Trail, had like offhandedly said, paraphrasing, ‘In a year of drudgery, this work has been like a real light for me – we get to come here and think and dream about possibilities and ways to make things better.’  And, you know that’s not quantifiable in something but I’ve definitely felt that the energy that people feel about it.”

Lesson #2 – Take one step at a time, and document the process as you learn what it takes.

Melissa says: “There’s a lot of changes that need to happen to make a true PCBL system.  So looking at that big picture can feel pretty daunting to anyone. And so some of that early feedback around, ‘This is just too much…I don’t understand …it’s great to design a project, but if kids are at all different levels, how do we start to do all different levels in this big project and how do I manage that?’- there’s a lot there. So I think that really forced me as a coach to be like, ‘Let’s slow down and let’s go back’. And then that’s when we started thinking about what might be a step-by-step kind of progression in itself of this work.”

Lesson #3 – Let the work of teachers flourish in order to inspire leaders, rather than having leaders always give directives from the top down.

Kristen says: “There was more of an interest growing at the district level to learn about the competencies. And so we did a competency series. And then what was neat, the circle back to the intensive support was that we had the intensive support teachers come in and do a panel and they got to talk to their district leader.”

Melissa says: “As it starts to scale and spread, there’s a real pressure on school leaders and district leaders to kind of catch up with everyone else, which is kind of the reverse of what often happens, where districts are like, do this!”

On educator engagement

David says: “We started the month with an idea, a tool, a training, a PD, a resource, whatever..they got to familiarize themselves with it, learn how to apply it and something they could apply and then put it into practice. They had a couple of weeks where they would actually utilize whatever they learned. And then we get to come back two weeks later, and there’s a share out. And so it was the opportunity then for each teacher to take – how that went, what worked, what didn’t work – ideas from each other.”

Apryl says: “I think there needs to be more professional development on it. I think also, new teachers need to just be introduced to it. Because I currently have an intern. And I just told her, ‘Hey, we use competencies in this class…’. And so now she’s just speaking in the language.”

On student skill development

Kathryn says: “I have one student who had a conflict with her mom, so she was filling out her journal today. She did that navigating conflict piece, which gives sentence starters to kind of think through that conflict and what’s the best [approach], how do I feel about it? How does the other person feel about it and what’s the best course of action moving forward?”

David says:  “Our focus needs to be more on the skills that allow someone to be a learner and to be an effective communicator – to be effective across the skills within the competencies. Then the individual content becomes almost secondary. And so for the kids, they’re able then to keep up instead of being stuck with a particular, you know, mindset that’s not going to allow them to grow. So it builds in a little bit of that growth mindset. That efficacy just gives them more success.”

On students taking ownership of their learning

Apryl says: “The competencies that we use in that class are advocating for myself, navigating conflict, identity, and setting goals and monitoring progress, like those are the ones that we thought that freshmen really need. So with the identity one, you know, they are definitely trying to figure out who they are as freshmen.”

Apryl says: “We just got finished writing press releases for the school and now we are doing stuff for Black History Month – but each kid is doing something different for Black History Month, so I have some kids who are working on a display in the library, I am getting just a more, like, a wider variety of things because it is very, very personalized. And the kids are so engaged, like one kid is reaching out to a black-owned business, and she’s going to do a social media campaign for them.”