Chap 3 C: Learning and Teaching 

Students are engaging in rigor, relevance, relationship-building, and meaningful work in all classes at EHS. Classes at EHS over the past number of years have been trained and collaborated to align units and lessons with common core standards and relevant, real world, practice and college and career readiness. The focus is to ever improve and that is why in the Spring of 2023 EHS Staff created SMART goals that focused on student learning: 

1. Students will be able to follow multi-step instructions in all subjects within the first two times of directions being explained.

2. Benchmark  tests on essential standards in every subject. Tests given at regular intervals to meet essential standards in order to move to the next level.

3. Students will be able to write a summary from a passage with appropriate grammar, spelling, and sentence structure. 

At the start of the 22-23 school year, EHS staff began to engage in the PLC process through the newly created early release time on Wednesdays. Throughout the PLC and WASC process we have discussed growth areas like common academic vocabulary to teach and graphic organizers that can be used in all classes. Many classes on campus also have collaborated to implement common instructional practices and skill building. The process is in the early stages of refinement as staff has begun to breakdown data for CAASPP and Renaissance to understand better our areas of need. 

Since the last WASC Cycle, teachers inform students of these standards through providing lesson objectives and through both summative and formative assessments. Additionally, as mentioned, staff have been engaged in planning and creating engaging and relevant performance tasks that are scaled in rigor and will assess student proficiency in standards and expectations aligned with our classes which will be communicated to students throughout the teaching, learning, and assessing process. Many classes use guiding questions throughout lessons to provide opportunities for students to understand and engage with the standards/expected performance levels. Students are given diagnostic reading and math tests through Renaissance 4 times this year. Renaissance is a k-12 system that overtime will allow us to better understand a student’s need by looking at multiple years of growth. Each teacher has access at EHS to access individual and collective results to analyze student levels and proficiency in order to differentiate instruction and assess individual learning as well as for collaboration time to plan instruction and analyze student learning. Although we are working with teachers on how to access those systems.  Teachers collaborate on instruction, curriculum, and/or student support every Wednesday during Professional Learning Community time.  This planning includes collaboration around differentiated instruction, best instructional practices, curriculum planning, assessment planning and analysis. Through the PLC process these discussion have moved away from more anecdotal discussions and focused more on what the data says.  Although weekly collaboration and learning time is embedded in EHS's schedule and our staff engages in this, there is a need to  use data and evidence to guide collaboration time and decision-making. The current assessment results from Renaissance are new and show the impact of COVID but these diagnostics, our upcoming performance tasks, students' grades and grading practices will be used to help guide our professional learning collaboration in order to best support and guide our students learning and our teaching practices.

Students have a variety of opportunities to demonstrate innovation, creativity, and critical thinking skills in EHS classes. As previously mentioned, all of our teachers are working on creating engaging performance tasks to assess student learning and for students to demonstrate critical thinking through creating, engaging, and relevant ways. While each class has its own unique curriculum and teachers use their expertise and creativity to allow students to demonstrate these skills, it happens across campus on a daily basis through both formative and summative assessments and projects. We have also had an increase in project based learning activities because of our change to a modified block schedule that allows for extended periods for each period. It is evident that the teachers at EHS have created relevant and engaging lessons and assessments for students to demonstrate creative and critical thinking. We look forward to the next step in using this process and aligning skills across the curriculum to better assess learning in common creative and critical ways. 

Students at EHS can demonstrate they can apply acquired knowledge and skills at a higher level. The goal moving forward for EHS's staff to be trained in creating lessons and assessments that are rigorous and based on the Depth of Knowledge through a variety of professional learning opportunities. Our teachers have spent the Fall of 22 discussing what skills and standards we need to adapt and exercise in order to increase student learning.  EHS acknowledges that now it is important to use evidence and data from these performance tasks and assessments to analyze student learning and collaborate around common instructional practices and common cross curricular skills to continue building rigorous lessons and assessments that will allow students to demonstrate their learning.

Students have access to and are engaged in career preparation activities through many classes as well as through school-wide programs. This happens via a myriad of ways but mostly through our CTE programs. Students as part of those programs take field trips and have regular presenters in class speaking on careers. CTE teachers have access to Pathful, formerly Nepris which is a  K-12 exploration and planning platform that prepares students for college and/or career. Post pandemic we have returned to having a College and Career Day.  Additionally in many classes, students are exposed and learn skills to prepare for life beyond high school. This happens in Econ through personal finance projects, our health class that focuses on living a healthy lifestyle, our Spartan Success class in which students create a 10 year plan. Through CTE advisories staff and students are informed of trends and growth in industry and higher education sectors. EUSD and EHS has a healthy relationship with YCOE in which we discuss further opportunities of community partnerships for internships and aligning college and career ready skills for all students.  Additionally, there is the need to assess student skills to identify which skills can be taught across classes to engage in career preparation and our school wide learner outcomes.