CSSR, in partnership with ASCD, will host the Spotlight on Innovative, Student Centered Schools on Friday March 23, 2018. This one-day Pre-Conference Institute is part of ASCD's Empower18 Annual Conference being held March 24-26, 2018 in Boston, MA. 

The 18 presenting schools are nationally recognized for the unique strategies they use to provide opportunities for students to develop voice and choice in their learning. 

Presenting schools include: Cabot (VT) School - a small, rural K-12 school featuring project-based learning; Boston Day and Evening Academy (MA) - an urban, competency-based school for over age and under credited youth; and Learning Community (RI) Charter School - which serves low income and minority students who have outperformed the state's affluent subpopulations in literacy, and eclipsed the state average in math.

Please see below for an in-depth profile of an additional presenting school: Pittsfield Elementary School. 

Registration for the Pre Conference Institute most be done separately and is accessible here. Learn more and Register for the Empower18 Conference here. 

Pittsfield Elementary School (PES) will present their No Grades, No Grade work at the upcoming Spotlight on Innovative Student Centered Schools, the one-day Pre-Conference Institute being hosted by CSSR at ASCD's Empower18 Annual Conference.

Pittsfield is a small rural town in New Hampshire with two schools: the elementary school serves students in grades PK-6 and the middle high school serves students in grades 7-12. PES serves about 345 students; 25% of students are diverse learners and about 60% receive free or reduced lunch. Many of our readers are familiar with Pittsfield Middle High School (PMHS) and the long history of work CSSR has done with the school. PMHS was a member of CSSR's New England Network for Personalization and Performance. As teachers at PMHS were increasingly able to provide very detailed data on student progress, tied to explicit learning competencies, PES similarly focused on how their instruction could change.

The No Grades, No Grade project at Pittsfield Elementary School has created multi-age classrooms that implement a competency based learning (CBL) program to allow students to move on when they demonstrate readiness to progress. Students demonstrate readiness to progress by achieving proficiency in articulated competencies - for example adding two-digit numbers or constructing 5-paragraph essays. The school leverages a variety of blended learning modalities that tailor skill-building exercises to individual students. This frees up teachers to provide targeted instruction for small groups of students, and to facilitate project based learning.

Danielle Harvey, Dean of Instruction for the Pittsfield School District, identified two strategies that go hand in hand to enable this work to flourish at PES: communication and goal setting. Communication in the classroom is key to ensuring that students understand what is expected of them during learning time. As a responsive classroom school, PES educators have received training around talking to students and ensuring that interactions are positive and student-centered. Part of this work includes interactive modeling - a practice the district had in place before the move to CBL - which teaches students skills that are critical to success in the multi-age classroom, such as transitioning from whole group to individual learning time, or managing their time on digital learning devices. Communication with families is critical for parents, many of whom have not had personal experience with CBL modalities. Educating families about how teachers are able to facilitate dynamic learning environments has been crucial to the success of the program.

Goal setting is at the heart of the student-centered learning at PES. At regular intervals, teachers and students sit down to review student data, have conversations about goals moving forward, and develop a plan for the students to take ownership of the work they do to meet the stated goals. Goal setting is one area where PES educators have had to scaffold the CBL process for their elementary-age students. At PMHS students are adept at working off rubrics to track progress towards competencies. At the elementary level, teachers communicate expectations to students by sitting down and sharing examples of proficient work and letting students know exactly what they have to demonstrate to show they have mastered content. Families are also invested in the goal setting process. Whereas PMHS students lead student-led conferences to regularly share progress towards stated goals, PES students attend more traditional parent-teacher conferences to review progress towards goals.

For Harvey, the No Grades, No Grade work has made students more aware of their goals and better able to articulate why they are doing what they are doing when she drops in on classroom time. She shared that it is now very rare to walk into a classroom and see a teacher at the front of the room leading whole class instruction for an extended period of time. Goal setting has empowered students to direct their own learning and teachers aid them in doing so.

Visit the Pittsfield Elementary School website. 

In just over a week we look forward to welcoming over 200 participants to Redesigning for Student Success: 2018 Student Centered Secondary Schools Showcase. This year's Showcase is bringing together 25 of the nation's most innovative secondary schools to share their stories of redesign; present tools and best practices that facilitate the work that they do; and network with schools from across the country who are looking to do similar work. 

This year's keynote address Adaptive Implementation: Or How NOT to get Lost in the Woods will be presented by a tremendous researcher/practitioner duo: Dr. Laureen Avery from the UCLA Graduate School of Education, and Dr. Marsha Jones from the Springdale Public Schools. Avery is co-author of the book Adaptive Implementation: Navigating the School Improvement Landscape and Jones is Project Manager of Springdale's Race to the Top project. 

In addition, a record number of participants have signed on for school site visits at local San Diego schools: The San Diego MET High School, Mt. Miguel High School, High Tech High, High Tech High Media Arts, The Preuss School at UCSD, and Pacific Beach Middle School. 

We look forward to seeing many of you soon in sunny San Diego, CA! We will be sharing a recap of the Showcase in a forthcoming newsletter, along with a Save the Date for the 2019 Showcase. 

Varsity Lakes Middle School will present their journey to reculture their school at the 2018 Showcase: Redesigning for Student Success. In SY16-17 the school had 2,996 discipline office referrals which meant time that should have been spent on planning and classroom instruction was instead focused on addressing behavioral issues. By focusing on repairing relationships, the school has put in place several initiatives to shift the mindset for staff and students from a punitive, teacher-centered learning environment to a collaborative, student-centered learning environment.

Varisty Lakes Middle School is a suburban 6th - 8th grade middle school located in Lehigh Acres, FL outside of Ft. Meyers. The school has an enrollment of 1,250 students. The school population is 46% Hispanic, 24% African American and 20% White. 77% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, and the school serves 15% Special Education students. The state of Florida organizes school districts by County and further aggregates students based on regional zones. VLMS is one of six middle schools in their county's zone. Due to the competitive market for schools, parents often make decisions based on the programming the school offers. What this means in practice is that students do not necessarily attend school with their neighbors or matriculate into middle school with their elementary school peers.

Prior to the re-culturing at VLMS relationships between students, and between staff and students, were broken. Classroom management was predominately focused on punitive consequences for not following rules - and students did not have much voice. Students lacked coping skills, were very impulsive, and had poor peer-to-peer relationships. When a new administrative team was put into place, they quickly identified relationships as the first priority. Principal Matthew Mederios and Assistant Principal Tracy Fisher wanted to ensure that students had a support system to be successful, and that students know there were caring adults in the building to champion their cause.

Mederios and Fisher identified three primary drivers that effectively turned around the school: a social emotional learning (SEL) class; implementation of restorative justice; and investing in ESE (Exceptional Student Education) supports. The school now offers eight classes for SEL every day. Students are programmed into these semester-long courses based on data from a social-emotional inventory the school uses to identify students in need of this additional support. Through the SEL class, students focus on positive behavioral interactions and develop skills for resolving conflict. In addition, the school has implemented a restorative justice model wherein teachers have been trained to model the behaviors they want to see in students, rather than focus on punitive measures that essentially remove students from the classroom setting. Lastly the school has made several staffing changes to further support students. VLMS now employs five full time ESE teachers as well as a behavioral specialist and a restorative justice coach.

Mederios and Fisher first noticed a shift in school culture when students began coming up to them just to talk. Teachers are reporting that students are now more open and honest about the struggles that they are having. Where previous student conflict typically resulted in a physical altercation, students are now asking for mediations to resolve issues. Mederios recently reflected "these might be small wins as we move forward, but the students are happy that someone wants to know them."

We are proud to host VLMS at the upcoming Showcase and amplify the story of their progress - one that started the way so many do, with a focus on relationships!

Visit the Varsity Lakes Middle School website.