Establishing our focus at John Campbell Primary

https://altoncosta.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/keeping-focus2.jpg

Education is one of those professions where you can get completely lost in all that there is to do, and by trying to do it all you end up accomplishing nothing.

Our primary goals for this year go back to the roots of what we know works and what we know we need to become experts at. This year's focus hasn't change much from last year, it's just a matter of getting better and better.

1. We need to work as a team. Teachers who work in isolation will never be able to provide their students with the expertise necessary to help meet the vast array of needs in that classroom. But their teams can. The biggest expert in the room is the room. When teachers see the team's students as "our" students, then we start to see tremendous student growth.

2. We need to teach the whole child. Content can only take hold after a students is prepared to learn. We will continue to focus on the social/emotional needs of students (and staff). We know we have students who come from very challenging home lives, from profound levels of poverty, and having experiences very traumatic life events. At JCP, we teach the student, not the class. We teach to their needs, not to the text.

3. We must remain grounded in what works. There is decades of research that shows what works for students: teachers working together, reading programs that focus on comprehension, scaffolded at each grade level. We will continue increasing the efficacy of our classroom teachers. We will monitor our achievement gaps, use the data to assess our effectiveness of our intervention programs, and change as needed. We have built in 90-minute reading/literacy blocks, push in reading support from our intervention programs during that time, and also create other times during the day to provide 2nd and 3rd rounds of intensive intervention for our struggling students. Even our specialists are pushing in to support reading blocks 4 days a week. We will strengthen our Spanish instruction in the Dual Language classrooms so those students can thrive as well. We need to provide students with timely, specific feedback that they can use to learn from their mistakes. Students need to know what success looks like so they can assess their own growth on their way to mastery.

4. We must set high goals and be willing to be held accountable. By the year 2018-19, we will have 90% of our students performing at or above grade level in math and reading. The remaining 10% will make at least 1.5 years' of growth each year, that way they will grow more than a year's growth each year, getting them caught up over the 3 years we have them. When we obtain this goal, we will be one of the highest performing schools in the state. We know this is a lofty goal, but if we don't raise the bar, who will? We have set grade-level goals for the next two years to help us make the necessary strides to meet this 3-year goal. We know it will take every person in the building to help us reach this goal and I truly believe we have all of the right people on the bus to do so.

This is the most excited I've even been about the start of a school year. We have created a mindset and a support system designed to challenge every student, as well as every staff member. We have created the type of village I am proud of, and proud to send my own children to.