DESIGN

Artifacts referred to in this section are under the DESIGN tab:

DESIGN

Plan of action:

After teaching fifth grade at Crow Agency for four years I have seen the need to better transition the fifth grade students from our school, to the middle school. Ultimately my goal is to continue this conversation of transition and educational needs of the Native students as they move through the school system and develop a conversation that would help educators and administration start to look at how to make the system better meet the needs of the students instead of trying to get the students to fit into the current system.

Instructional Challenge:

The challenge with this plan is communication and misunderstandings. The history of the Native Americans in our area is tense. Stereotypes still run deep between two cultures as well as misunderstandings about how trauma can be ingrained into the genes of the students. The intermediate school currently lacks the leadership understanding to move forward in approaching the unique educational and emotional needs of the native students as well as the flexibility to change a class structure which is failing the students.

Implement the plan:

Through this process I realized I was starting off by biting a huge chunk of change. I learned that small steps are the easiest to put into effect.

I arranged for the middle school counselor and vice principal to come the the classrooms at our school to discuss the transition in a comfortable and safe environment. Students brainstormed questions and wrote letters to the administration voicing concerns and information they wanted them to know before the students arrived in sixth grade. We then worked together to modify the middle school visit to better meet the needs of the students as well as opened communication to better schedule students into classes. (ARTIFACT 2)

Personal growth in the leadership competencies:

• I have grown in my Instructional Leadership Competencies in that I believe have moved from emerging to developing in my ability to coach and mentor my colleagues. I was able to guide my fellow team members to value their opinions and join the discussions I had with the Middle School. They added their own ideas to our shared vision of making the orientation more valuable for our students. This allowed me to establish a more trustworthy work environment in that we were able to build a more personal relationship that went beyond the walls of the classroom. I learned to be a better listener and allow teachers to move at a pace they were comfortable with. By listening I was able to appreciate the thoughtful process they went through when deciding on instructional practices and understand we were all moving in the same direction but just by different modes. The increased collaboration was shown in our 14% growth on our reading assessments this year.
• Community Awareness, Engagement, and Advocacy:

*Emerging: Recognize the unique needs, culture, and context of the students and advocate for their learning and well being.

*Demonstrate awareness of their community by advocating for unique students needs with sensitivity to culture and context.

• Community Awareness, Engagement, and Advocacy was an area I feel I grew the most in primarily because I used my growth in listening and mentoring to help me better understand other points of view when it comes to awareness and advocacy. I began in emerging, recognizing the unique needs, culture, and context of students and advocate for their learning. I was so busy advocating for what I thought wasn't happening, I missed what was happening. By bypassing the misunderstandings ping ponging back and forth between the two communities I was able to move to the Developing Level in that I was able to gain a deeper understanding of concerns of biases in the community. I did not agree with the information I learned, but I can understand both sides of the coin now. When I reached out to the administration at the middle school in a non-threatening way I was able to bridge a gap that has been in place since I began teaching at Crow School. We were able to work together to develop the first step in a strategic plan to connect the schools. After we adjusted past practices, communication continued as I received emails asking for more comprehensive information about the incoming students and partnering when it came to scheduling. (ARTIFACT 3)

To Learn about the context of your challenge

• Engage in a power-mapping (who needs to be at the table)
• Administration at the middle school, Vice-Principal and Counselor
• Administration and Instructional Coach from Crow Agency
• Teachers from 5th grade at Crow Agency
• Sixth grade teachers at the Middle School
• Research your positions and interests and those of diverse stakeholders (needs assessments)
• The challenge here is the administration from the middle school and Crow Agency have limited communication and misconceptions and misunderstandings are present in the relationship between the schools.
• Students were informally surveyed about their questions and concerns when transitioning to the middle school (Artifact 1)
• Identify a challenge
• The challenge is to change a system that has been in place for many years and although it appears to meet the needs of the students, interviews with students shows a portion of students are continuing to struggle in successfully transitioning into the upper grades and dealing with multiple classes.
• The communication and involvement of parents at the transition is limited to non-existent and parents are the key to getting students to school.
• Improve understandings and communication between buildings.
• Research background, strategies, solutions
• Families of the students either attended the schools themselves or attended Boarding School, either way the educational system failed them for the most part and they hold anger tight about treatment and misunderstandings. (ARTIFACTS from https://sites.google.com/s/1oHHLqnKTn3CR35U2D1KouGKRZX5KWI0v/p/1t3G3_Dt7QlolUMN3PaoN4BG8fkwnIn4x/edit )
• Solutions:
  • redesign the orientation at the student level so they are ready to attend the school without attending the fall parent orientation.
  • Provide students with advocates at the Middle School as well as the Elementary School so they can address issues right away and have adult support when parents are unclear of how to procede.
• Strategies
  • Plan and implement parent meetings for fifth graders, at the elementary school, where parents are comfortable and it is a more accessible location.
  • Provide a study hall atmosphere for sixth graders at the elementary school for the first semester of the year so students and parents have resources for educating themselves on how to find help when needed.

• Design your plan of action to show how you will:
  • Connect with diverse stakeholders:
  • I already developed a working relationship with the Administration and counselor at the middle school.
  • Within the first month of school I am attempting to plan a late bbq for students. The Middle School bus drops our past students off an hour after we get out of school and we want to let them know we are rooting for them and are a support for them when needed.
  • October: Provide a homework helper classroom for the sixth graders who need support in organization and or school work.
  • I am working with the principal at my school as well we the middle school to have the parent meetings for the middle school at our school so that transportation will not be an issue and parents will feel more comfortable. This will be attempted in January for the 2020 school year.

• Identify and address communication needs, anticipating both collegial and adversarial situations
  • Gauge—through dialogue, surveys, written and verbal communications—the extent to which your project engages stakeholders in instructional leadership
  • Through verbal communication the pre-conceived impressions of the middle school come out loud and clear. During parent conferences in the Spring many parents voice worry over where their students should go to school. There is a reservation school twenty minutes south of us and a private school forty-five minutes away. Parents/Grandparents are aware of the struggles academically for their students but are more concerned with their students being treated respectfully and not being discriminated against.
  • Students tell tales of how teachers are mean and racist at the middle school. It is important to begin conversations with students and the staff to clarify that holding students accountable isn't being mean but it all depends on the lense the individual is looking through. ARTIFACT 4
  • Communication dealing with poverty and the past of the Crow people is an important topic that can not be overlooked. It may be uncomfortable but necessary. Educators needs to understand the past is not an excuse but an experience that needs to be understood to better meet the needs of the students.
  • Execute your plan of action:
    • Identify tools and strategies to facilitate consensus building and negotiation
    • I have developed a working relationship with the Vice-Principal and Counselor at the Middle School.
    • We worked together to develop a better plan for caring out the fifth grade orientation so it would better meet the needs of the students from out school. We created a more friendly atmosphere where students got to see teachers very engaged in the learning process and using strategies they have seen in the fifth grade classrooms.
    • Communication began to make the middle school aware of the special needs of incoming students; behaviorally as well as academically. Fifth grade teachers were able to give ideas of best practices when working with students as well as suggestions for electives.
    • Administration is willing to sit down with fifth grade teachers to preview schedules for our kids next year and make changes where necessary.
    • Define success, set measurable milestones, determine the evidence needed to measure that success and evaluate success
    • Success will be defined by having an open communication between the two schools. The evidence for this will be shown when we are able to sit down at the end of the summer to discuss successful scheduling of our students.
    • Success will be defined by the communication being able to continue through the upcoming school year so information can be disseminated between administration, teachers, parents.
    • Success will be defined by attendance of Administration attending Trauma Sensitive, Restorative Justice training with the elementary school
    • Success will be defined by staff being able to come together to not only attend professional development on Poverty and Cultural awareness but to be able to sit at a table together to discuss the specific needs of our students and plan for their success.
• Reflect recursively
  • Evaluate personal growth and project success considering stakeholders
    • I have grown through out this project in that I have become a better listener and have grown to understand that educators care about their students in different ways. I am more compassionate toward the administration I am working with and their goals to help the students achieve success. I believe the project success has only just begun with developing a working relationship with a staff I have not been able to communicate with in the past. Students this year appeared to be more open to communicate their fears and questions to fellow Native students than they had in the past. The relationships I am building in the community are growing and I am becoming a more trusted teacher. This will help in developing situations where parents will be more apt to come for help and suggestions. I will consider the project a success if we can get the parents to a meeting to help them understand the next step in the education of their students, but more so help the students understand so they can move forward even when support may be lacking at home.
  • Plan tweaks and next steps
  • I have realized my time frame is one of slow and steady. Having just mended a few bridges means I need to develop those relationships before pushing to advance what I hope is the next step, discussing schedule changes. Now that the administration and I are talking and working together to help this years fifth graders I am going to step back and let that simmer. I will be working this year to create community connections to better show parents the path through the system of middle school and high school so students are successful and do not get left behind due to credit deficits and misunderstandings.
  • Repeat inquiry cycle as needed

How will you use collaboration, questioning, data, and reflection during the implementation of your action plan?

I believe I have improved in the Collaboration competencies in that I have been able identify the leadership style of my colleagues which has helped me to encourage them to find their voices and work more as a team. I have used ideas they have hesitantly expressed to me and by giving them credit I have helped bring them to fruition. We have a much better collaboration and have worked as a team to get data and behavioral information to the middle school about the incoming fifth graders. We have worked as a team instead of relying on one team leader and have gone to our grade level meetings as a working unit. We showed this by showing a 14% increase in our assessment scores by sharing instructional strategies and encouraging not only each other but the students outside of our own classrooms.

How will you address obstacles that you may encounter in implementing your plan?

This continues to be an area I tread lightly. As I look into the graduation data and the data from the middle school showing student retention and dropout rates I see discrepancies in reporting. The data does not show a percentage of students not graduating because they lose a large number of students in their sophmore year. Discussing the retention and credit system at the schools makes it difficult for students to understand they are not moving forward and they need to go into some sort of credit retrieval. The grades and credit system is one most students must tackle on their own. I am hoping with the new administration at the district level I will be able to acquire more accurate data to help see where exactly the issues lie. With data I will be able to provided information that is more helpful for families and will hopefully allow us to work together with more accurate knowledge so we can solve the problems. Without being sure where the problems lie, we can't solve them.

How will you know if your action plan is successful?

I have focused on the specific goal of being a leader for my grade level team in structuring a program where students are supported in the transition process from elementary school to middle school. My goal ultimately being to lead the key players in becoming not only trauma informed but trauma sensitive. I have come to realize I can not wait for others and I must move forward in my own understandings in the impact of stress and anger stemming from trauma. I will know if my plan is successful by the initial plan of easing transitions in the district continuing past this initial year. In addition I will know it is successful if when I informally assess my last year students, I see that they are successfully navigating the middle school.

After discussing my capstone with my principal, I was happy to see we were on the same page and moving forward our building has scheduled trainings in Poverty and a training for School Climate Restorative Practices/Trauma Informed. Unfortunately, however after the initial meeting to gain background knowledge, the middle school has chosen to not take part in the trainings.

What evidence would support your claim?

The primary evidence will be success in the sixth graders transition as well as attendance at the trainings and parent meetings. The ultimate evidence will be graduation rates as I track this initial class through until graduation.

EVIDENCE: Communication between myself and the Administration