Byron High School

I interned under two mentor teachers, Rob Warneke and Troy Faulkner. Rob and Troy have both been teaching high school math for over 15 years. Though they have both been awarded locally and regionally for their individual accomplishments as classroom teachers, they recently received their greatest award as a math department: being named the high school math winner in the Intel Schools of Distinction competition. Intel gives out this annual award for innovation and continuous improvement in how students are taught and the results it leads to. I entered the department at an amazing time: I was introduced to PLCs and how they can be effectively used each week, taught how to track detailed data on the department's common assessments, trained on classroom technology and recording videos for the "flipped classroom" model of instruction, and was given an open license to innovate alongside a great team of peers. For more on what the math department is up to right now, see http://tinyurl.com/bhsmath.

Beyond the department, Byron High School is an excellent place to learn about the design of an effective school as a system. Administrators and teachers closely track and use assessment data to help struggling students receive appropriate intervention in a timely fashion. Technology is widely available to teachers and students, but more importantly, teacher training and communities of peers exist to put everything we have into immediate practice. As a small school with an open culture of innovation, new ideas are implemented within a few weeks of their conception, with the expectation that all ideas have clear goals and that they are measured to track success. This culture has paid off in greatly improved results, as measured by state test results and the Department of Education who recently designed Byron High School as a Blue Ribbon school.

Finally, the Byron School District, using the Continuous Improvement model, expects all aspects of the organization to continually set goals, innovate, and measure progress. Teachers from different grade levels communicate with each other to ensure alignment in the curriculum. Staff from all areas of the organization communicate and work well together, aligned to a common purpose. People know each other by name and treat one another with respect.