Learning Together

Message from Troy D. Olin, Assistant Superintendent for Instruction

We're thrilled to have you back, and we're excited for a fantastic year ahead. For those of you who are new to Gates Chili this year, welcome to our first Learning Together newsletter of the year. Each month, this newsletter will serve to provide updates, resources and highlights from the Office of Instruction.

It's been truly heartwarming to witness the joy and excitement of welcoming students back to school. Let's continue to build on this positivity and work together to create meaningful relationships that foster belonging and nurture growth, learning, and success.

Relationships are at the heart of teaching and learning. Knowing each of our students helps us find ways for them to express their ideas, take initiative and have high expectations for their learning through authentic ways that actively engage and explore real-world issues and problems. An example of this occurred last school year.

The flyer shown here highlights a three-part webinar series on “Elevating Student Voice as Leaders to Advance Equity and Inclusion”, hosted by NYSED in partnership with WestEd. The first webinar includes our very own Gates Chili students and staff who helped plan, facilitate and host hundreds of students from 40 Rochester-area high schools for the spring ROC 2 Change Student Summit on Race last March in the Spartan Field House. Spartans worked with their counterparts at Holley High School and the School of the Arts (SOTA) to plan, co-host and organize the event centered on combating racism and fostering a culture of understanding and appreciation of other cultures. The day’s theme was “Deconstructing Tolerance Rebuilding Understanding” and featured keynote remarks and breakout sessions led entirely by students. If your schedule allows, click here to register, and support our colleagues and students.

As an office of instruction, we strive to provide each of you with the support necessary to provide our students with a rigorous learning environment. This support takes many forms and one of those includes classroom visits. Last year, members of our team alongside building administrators began visiting classrooms monthly to deepen our knowledge of the learning happening throughout the district. These opportunities were the highlight of our day and helped to foster collaboration and communication, promote relevant and meaningful professional learning opportunities and celebrate the exceptional teaching happening in your classroom. We will continue our visits this school year and look forward to spending time with you and our students.

Think about a particular grade or department at the school where you teach or where your child attends. Imagine that there are three teachers. Each has a different grading policy: One counts homework as 40% of the grade, the other two as 10%. One accepts late work; the others don’t accept it at all. One deducts points for sloppy binders. Two include participation in the grade, one offers extra credit that can be earned in a variety of ways. Inconsistent grading practices are often based on teachers' values or ideas, but they are not equitable for our students.

When we talk about "grading," we mean the way teachers calculate, describe, and report student learning. As we work together this year to develop our understanding of equitable grading, we will be discussing practices that promote equity, as well as practices that inhibit it. Equitable grading has three pillars: accuracy, bias-resistance, and motivation. Grades should be an accurate reflection of a student’s academic level of performance towards learning standards. Equitable grading practices counteract institutional biases that have historically rewarded students with privilege and punished those without and protect student grades from our own implicit biases. Grading practices should not use points to reward or punish student behaviors, but instead should motivate students and teach them the connection between practicing their learning and demonstrating it during an assessment.

These are the ideas that we will be thinking about as we learn together this year. Challenge yourself to reflect on your own practices and think about what our grades are communicating about student learning.

One area of focus for the 23.24 school year is consistent Tier 1 instruction that supports the diverse needs of each student. Instructional expectations that are aligned to curriculum and program goals ensure consistent learning opportunities for students. The use of common assessments allows us to gather information to plan targeted support for students.

The use of Atlas when unit planning is a practice that will help to support this focus area. Reviewing the three stages of a unit outline and included documents ensures a consistent Tier 1 instructional program for all students. The components of Stage 1 (i.e. standards, knowledge, skills, guiding questions, etc.) establish the consistent instructional expectations and curriculum goals. Stage 2 outlines required as well as suggested assessments that can be used to collect information about student learning and plan for targeted support to reach the goals of Stage 1. The learning activities in Stage 3 provide required, along with suggested learning experiences to support students in meeting the instructional goals for a unit. Grounding ourselves in our curriculum ensures an equitable and consistent learning experience for all students.

As Superintendent Dailey shared in his email, we are excited to welcome The Children’s Institute to join us for the upcoming Superintendent’s Conference Day on Friday, Oct. 6! As you already know, we have partnered with them to revise our code of conduct this school year. In addition to this code of conduct work, we are collaborating to support our collective learning about what restorative practices are, build our skills for having a restorative mindset, and how to put the skills into action in our individual roles.

During our October conference day, you will have the opportunity to learn about restorative practices together during the keynote from 8-9:15 a.m. in the Gates Chili Performing Arts Center. Then within your buildings, we will all participate in an extension activity to connect the dots between ourselves, the restorative work, and how each of us can make a difference in our students and each other's lives.

Check out the District Professional Learning Catalog in Frontline for new professional learning offerings and check back regularly for more coming soon!

Congratulations to Keri Martin, Kristen Joseph, and Chris Varlan who were the first three to respond to last month's riddle correctly - The Horizon

If you know the answer to this month's riddle, click HERE to submit your answer. The first three (3) people who answer the riddle correctly will receive a special prize in their mailbox next week!

Good luck!

September Riddle: You measure my life in hours and I serve you by expiring. I'm quick when I'm thin and slow when I'm fat. The wind is my enemy.