With a new calendar year the discussion of goals and resolutions are all around us. This felt like a great opportunity for me to highlight some of the great work happening at our school.
Last year our leadership team studied the book, Four Disciplines of Execution. Although, I was not here to experience the great conversations, I know that the team was inspired by the concepts they were reading about. Specifically, "Execution starts with focus. Without it, the other three disciplines won't be able to help you." So, during the spring months the staff came to consensus that focusing on student engagement would be the most important work of our school.
Fast forward, to fall of 2019 and our building leadership team set a WILDLY IMPORTANT GOAL, that we lovingly call our WIG, to improve student engagement. Our goal is to raise our student engagement score from 4.35 to 4.5 as measured by the Studer Student Engagement Survey. This survey is given twice a year to our students by our guidance counselor Mrs. MacGregor, and it is also given across the district to all students in Urbandale.
The work described above is then outlined in our building strategic plan. We write goals in seven areas: literacy, math, science, student engagement, staff engagement, parent engagement, and safety. Then, our building leadership team works to create action steps (tactics) that we will use to move us toward our goals. These action steps are evaluated monthly, by myself and Jill Miller, to make sure we are doing the work that we planned for the year. Additionally, progress towards our goals and action steps are then reviewed and updated three times a year by our Building Leadership Team, made up of teachers, our instructional coach (Jill Miller) and myself. The overview of this plan can be found on our website here.
One thing we know is that we needed to check in on our progress towards our end of year goal, so set up a "lead measure" or weekly check in to monitor student engagement. Each week teachers check in with students about how they are learning (what strategies are working, which strategies are not). On Tuesdays, during our professional development teachers then check in with us about how they are checking in. When you come in the north doors there is a bulletin board outside the gym that has been helping us keep track of our progress towards these goals. So far, this school year, teachers have checked in with their students a total of 151 times and we can't wait to see that number continue to go up.
Our teachers and staff have been working hard on this during the school year. All of our professional development has been centered around these concepts. We've been studying the book, "The Joyful Classroom". Even the teachers' Individual Teacher Career Development Plans are written to align to this goal.
While our BIG focus is on student engagement, strategies that help us with this, and asking students how they learn best; we don't lose sight of our other 6 goals. Teachers are continuously monitoring academic achievement in their classrooms, we have regularly held data day discussions to ensure we are working hard to meet the needs of our students in reading and math, and we measure our monthly behavior data to assess where we need to focus and make changes. We have implemented BLOOMZ as a tool to communicate more frequently and regularly with parents about what is happening during our school day. I send weekly communication to families using this newsletter, and we continue to work hard to make Valerius a safe place for students and staff.
As a Valerius staff we know that student engagement is something that we can continually improve and I am so proud of our school for committing to this work.
