High Quality Work

In early 2015, a group of stakeholders, including parents, teachers, students and community members, worked together to develop a 10 year vision for Shorewood public schools. After several sessions of brainstorming, collaboration and definition, the top priority determined was to create more Authentic Learning opportunities for Shorewood students.

In Shorewood School District, Authentic Learning means that students will connect their skills and knowledge to real-world issues and needs while participating in research and reflection. Authentic Learning at our schools means that children will collaborate with peers and engage with their community to advance their learning, and will share what they have learned with an audience beyond the classroom.

To support the district in living out this vision, EL Education was a partner with Atwater in strategically rolling out several key Core Practices that harnessed the energy and craftsmanship that was already percolating in the building. In the beginning, staff worked together to build a mental model of what high quality work should look like. They explored the attributes of high quality work: craftsmanship, complexity, and authenticity, and infused those qualities into their projects and products students worked on during expeditions. To compliment Core Practice 8: Designing Projects and Products, teachers leaned into Core Practice 12: Planning for and Supporting High Quality Work. Initial professional development cycles dipped into drafting, feedback, and using models. In the years to come, PD zoned in on layering in aspects of complexity and rigor into products through the skillful use of rubric criteria and peer critique protocol. In 2018, when the building lifted the work of documentation panels that honored the high quality work process, along with the expedition process, a school-wide culture of “we do good work to serve others” and “my contribution and voice matters” was solidified at Atwater.

As the reader will see on the following claims pages, Atwater as a whole has grown in its understanding of Authentic Learning and the purpose of High Quality Work. The culture of writing and communication has shifted over the years. Children now know that they write and create products with a purpose- to share their learning and voice with others. Teachers at Atwater have learned to consistently think ahead about the use of rubrics, documenting quality products in student portfolios, and planning writing pieces that involve higher order literacy skills and allow students to reach an audience beyond the classroom.

“When we were doing our persuasive essays, we could choose what we wrote about, which was cool because not everyone had the same topic and we could write what we wanted to and interested us.” - Cassidy, 5th grade student

In continuing our journey as an EL Education network school, the vision for Atwater’s HQW is to keep evolving and find ways to peel back any missed opportunities for students, and to recreate any systems and structures that hold inequities so that all students in this learning community are empowered to produce authentic and meaningful work to share with the world.

Graphic Representation of Atwater's High-Quality Work Journey

The graphics below show the paths taken by Atwater students and staff toward our High-Quality Work claims. The large arrows represent professional development opportunities staff participated in, which led to the blue rectangles - student impacts. The building of these professional development cycles and resulting student impact results led to the development of our High-Quality Work claims. The long rectangle holds key core practices that provided the foundation for our professional development and student growth.