Access:

High School A

(2 - Proficient)

About this exemplar

This section features the planning and execution of Access opportunities of a high school English teacher in Virginia. Their classes include both honors and standard 9th grade English. At their school, 26.4% of students are black, 41.4% of students are Hispanic or Latinx, 24.9% of students are white, and 4.5% of students are Asian. 29.7% of students are English language learners. 63.7% of students are considered economically disadvantaged.

HS_ Access Rubric Markup and Commentary.pdf

Introduction

Access Opportunity 1 - Dungeons and Dragons Club

Access Opportunity 2 - Resource Series: Planning for the Future

Access Section Conclusion & Reflection

Introduction

In a section of this project devoted to access, it is important to first answer the question, "access to what?" Access can refer to a wide variety of specific and general practices and phenomena that occur in schools. In the abstract sense, access refers to the opportunities that exist for students to take full advantage of their education and to apply it towards achieving their long term goals (Glossary of Education Reform, 2014). More specifically, this can look like giving students access to assistive technology, I.E.P.s, or specialized programming that aims to help them get the most of their education (Wright et al., 2014).

One of the greatest problems confronting the field of education and indeed our society as a whole right now is that access is not equally available to all people. This is to say that some people have a better chance to take advantage of their education than others. Often race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, and ability status among other identity features can cause a student to lose access to critical resources, information, and practices that can lead to academic success. The consequences of racial differences in access are visible in the persistent achievement gaps that exist between white students and students of color (NAEP Dashboard, 2019). Indeed, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, while scores across the board have risen in the past twenty years, racial achievement gaps have remained largely the same size. One of the results of this unfortunately stubborn trend is the perpetuation of the systemic inequalities that led to the gaps in access in the first place.

With respect to my school specifically, the state of Virginia recently published its 2021-2022 accreditation information for our school, which included a new school quality indicator measuring the achievement gaps at the school. While we are performing at or above state standards when it comes to the English achievement gap between students of different racial groups, in math the school is performing below state average. Even in English, though, Black students still get substantially lower test scores on reading and writing than white students, and Hispanic students get even lower scores than that. The opportunity gap in my department may not be worse at our school than it is elsewhere in the state of Virginia, but that does not mean it isn't a problem here.

The opportunities listed below were efforts I made to try repair the differences in access that contribute to the achievement gap. By providing my students access to new resources, both formal and informal, I aimed to give them new and valuable experiences they could use to get the most out of their education.

Access Opportunity 1 - Dungeons and Dragons Club

Introduction to Dungeons and Dragons Club

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is a tabletop role playing game in which players design characters for a fantasy setting designed by a Dungeon Master. The players interact with each other in character and go on adventures with one another. Last year, I started the Dungeons and Dragons Club as a place for students of all experience levels to enjoy the game while building valuable life skills such as intrinsic motivation, critical thinking, social skills, and empathy. Since then, the club has blossomed and has shown signs of supporting these goals as well as others.

Gaming the System - How Can Games Improve Access?

Given the enormous, society shaping ramifications of unequal access in schools, one might find it strange to include a section devoted to covering the introduction of a new tabletop game as an extracurricular. However, substantial research has shown that games can have all sorts of significant positive impacts on student lives, and can certainly act as a gateway to valuable tools and experiences. First, games can offer students motivation to engage in challenging material and remind them of their agency in the events in their lives. Second, games almost universally require players to learn systems thinking and adopt creative problem solving strategies, practices that can be very valuable outside the context of the game as well. Third, games can offer students both affective benefits (i.e. games can improve their mood) and sociocultural benefits (i.e. games can improve how students interact with one another). Finally, specifically tabletop role-playing games can advance student creativity as well as interest in creative writing.

The first way in which games can significantly positively impact students is by improving their general motivation. Rigby and Ryan (2011) point out that games can fulfill human needs that may not be getting met in other ways, including feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness. In my classes, though it is by no means unique to them, I have noticed that it tends to be my standard students, and particularly my standard students of color, who start the year as what Hammond (2015) calls "dependent" learners. These are students who rely on the teacher to carry most of the cognitive load, feel unsure about how to tackle new tasks, need intense scaffolding, will feel stuck and shut down rather than try to figure out a way through, and will struggle to retain information (p. 34). More often than not, these students feel this way because they have learned to feel that they lack competence, lack autonomy, and do not relate to anything being taught. Games can be incredibly powerful motivational tools for teaching dependent learners that their contributions matter, that they can learn and succeed, that they have choice and agency in their lives, and that the material they're learning can be connected to their world. These results are consistent with van Roy and Zaman (2017), who underscore the significance of intrinsic motivation, as well as motivation based on a belief in autonomy. Generally, exposing students to games can lead to significant motivational improvements.

Beyond improving motivation, games can also help develop student problem solving and critical thinking skills. Gee (2013) demonstrates how players develop understandings of the systems in games, and display mastery of those systems when they manipulate them to their own advantage. Strategic thinking, planning, and mastery of complex systems are all valuable skills in the modern world, and they are skills that some students have better access to than others. Salen and Zimmerman (2003) start at an even more basic level, and understand meaningfully playing a game to mean the act of discerning and integrating actions and outcomes in a game into the larger context of the game (p. 34). This description sounds almost like meaningful play necessitates reading a game to make sense of what's going on, identifying what's important and what's not, and making decisions based on the information provided. In this sense, too, problem solving and critical thinking skills are employed in games without the unpleasantness of an accompanying explicit lesson.

Third, there are a variety of socio-emotional benefits students can gain from playing a game like Dungeons and Dragons. First of all, there is a clear relationship between emotions and learning (Plass et al., 2015). Some studies support the idea that positive emotions improve available cognitive resources (e.g. Fredrickson and Branigan, 2005). Others, meanwhile indicate that feelings of confusion or other "cognitive disequilibrium" can improve outcomes (Craig et al., 2004). Whether it's triumph at a recent victory, pride at a touching character moment played well, or confusion and intrigue about a plot that players are just beginning to unravel, Dungeons and Dragons is filled with the types of emotions that make learning a fun and engaging process. Similarly, Dungeons and Dragons is a highly collaborative activity that forces players to work together not to beat each other, or even to beat the Dungeon Master, but to create a shared narrative that everyone is happy to be a part of. This lines up well with Plass's description of games as a "social context for learning," in which players feel they are a part of a community and can participate in group actions and decisions. These features, too, are experiences that some students may not otherwise have access to.

Finally, tabletop role-playing games in particular can guide students down a path towards creative expression without them even realizing it. While this is not as well backed up in the empirical literature, there is no end of fan made Dungeons and Dragons content that is explosively popular. Critical Role, a popular Youtube channel featuring full D&D sessions and campaigns, frequently gets over one million views on their videos. Stranger Things uses D&D as one of the starting points for the series. Many of my students have never taken creative writing or other art seriously before, but when they need to inhabit their character, they find themselves running away with the idea. Last year I was inundated with questions, thoughts, and stories from my students about their characters, and several have gone on to continue writing creatively or doing visual art after the year concluded.

It may seem weird to focus on games as an avenue towards closing the achievement gap, but games like D&D can provide students with desperately needed access to motivation, cognitive tools, and socio-emotional resources, and can potentially tune them in to a long-term interest in creative expression. This research heavily informs how I go about structuring the D&D Club. While the game is fun for me and the students, I do my best to ensure the game brings about positive change at the school.

Starting the Club

Calling All Dungeon Masters.pdf

"Baern of the Leaf," a student digital drawing of a character from the first campaign.

The COVID-19 Pandemic disrupted almost every aspect of education in the United States. Last year, the first year back in the classroom, saw students across grades and classes struggling with significant learning loss in both English and math, with students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds or high-poverty schools hit disproportionately hard (Turner, 2022). While I and my coworkers scrambled to help students rebuild their academic foundations, students were also wrestling with trying to recover from the sudden and precipitous collapse of their social lives. Clubs were shut down, interpersonal interaction grew significantly less common, and general social skills including conflict resolution, empathy, and listening all suffered. One of the social clubs that was shut down when students went remote was the ACHS D&D Club.

Early last year, I contacted the previous sponsor of the defunct ACHS Dungeons and Dragons club to try to resurrect the activity. While I was still a very new teacher, I was aware of the transformative potential of the game, especially after such a traumatic preceding year and a half. The previous sponsor was unable to continue sponsoring the activity due to other obligations, but he agreed to host a meeting with me and another ACHS teacher who was interested in bringing the club back to discuss available resources and guidance for the club. After a few provisional meetings, we drafted and distributed an announcement informing students of the existence of the club and of an upcoming interest meeting.

Our initial interest meeting had three attendees, each of whom were incredibly enthusiastic and invested in Dungeons and Dragons, either as longtime players or curious but excited new players. We created characters with them and began holding weekly sessions on Thursdays, where we would collaboratively tell the stories of our characters living in a shared fantasy world.

To the left, you can see one of the early email exchanges between me and the previous club sponsor. As the previous sponsor describes, the club was defunct, and it was incumbent upon me and my cosponsor at the King Street campus to rebuild a functioning club. This included taking steps such as arranging a room to meet in, coordinating with building administration to add our club to lists and publications mentioning extracurricular activities, making announcements to classes and student groups that there would be a D&D club, and securing copies of all relevant game material such as dice, books, and play-mats (whiteboard grids on which some Dungeon Masters choose to manage the combat portions of their stories). This is to say that although it is true the club existed in the years before the pandemic, as is true for so much of the world, it had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Below this email chain, you can see a student drawing sample of a character from this campaign. This drawing was not a required aspect of the campaign, indeed many players, including myself, choose never to illustrate their characters. However, this student's enthusiasm for the campaign combined with their talent for art led them to inspiration and the creation of a new and impressive piece that would not have existed without Dungeons and Dragons club.

Bringing D&D to School Branch B

Once the School Branch A of the D&D club was up and running, I worked with school administration to ensure that our club application was approved and would be listed in the club listing PDF. It was not long after our club listing appeared on that list that six 9th grade students stopped by my room during lunch with a starter box for Dungeons and Dragons. Only one of these students had me for any of their classes, but they told me that they had heard I was the sponsor for the D&D Club, and asked if I would be willing to teach them how to play. I told them I would be happy to lead them through an introductory campaign, but that the formal club would still meet at School Branch A, and they should head over there if they wanted to play longer-term.

I didn't plan on it at the time, but this introductory lunch campaign drew on for a few months. As it continued, more and more students became interested in the game. I think there were a few reasons for this. First, I advertised the activity readily to all my classes, including with an announcement on my board that was up from the start of the club to the end of the year. I also mentioned the club to Mr. X, who ran the related but different tabletop/board gaming club, and he told his students about it as well. Second, Dungeons and Dragons is not a discreet activity. We spent much of our time yelling, laughing, and using silly voices, which seemed to attract a lot of positive attention from students in the hallway. Several students came in to watch just to see what was going on. Finally, students themselves brought their friends, as D&D is always more fun with people you're comfortable around. As a result, I had students sending me messages over Canvas (one example of which is visible below, where student A's enthusiasm is quite obvious), students asking if they could attend lunch meetings even if just to watch the game, and every week there would be several students who would ask me if they could create characters and join the campaign.

This introductory campaign saw students coming out of their shells in really beautiful ways. For instance, Student B was a quiet but attentive student in my class. He was a gifted artist, though he was wary about showing it. Indeed, he seemed to chafe under praise I offered him early in the year complimenting an illustration of a city street he was working on. He was one of the original 6 students who joined the introductory campaign. While it took him a while to get his bearings, by the end his wizard, Dio, was a snarky, sarcastic, insane, and all-around hilarious figure. One of the moments that really illustrates this came at the end of the climactic boss fight when the adventurers had just vanquished the banshee that was haunting a local barrow. The fighters were reveling in their success, but all were taking it quite seriously until Student B asked me with a broad smile, "Can I dance?" I instructed him to roll a die to see how well he did so. He rolled a 20, the highest possible. I announced, "Dio boogies down!" The way the students tell it, Student B had milk coming out of his nose. After that point, Student B was more comfortable in class, began making illustrations for (and of) me, two of which are visible to the right, and even led our set design team for our classroom performance of Romeo and Juliet later in the year, displaying remarkable creativity by re-imagining Shakespeare's tale in a compelling and totally unique dystopian setting inspired by our D&D campaign.

When the introductory campaign ended, I realized that interest at the our campus was too high for me to effectively merge it with the School Branch A campaign. By the estimate of most Dungeon Masters, it becomes difficult to play Dungeons and Dragons with a group size above 6, and by the point the introductory campaign ended we were hovering in the 10-12 region. I spoke with my cosponsor at the main campus and we agreed that it was time to formally start a branch of the D&D Club at our campus. I updated the club information to what's visible in the sample to the right, and further split our group into two campaigns, one led by me and the other by a student who was an experienced Dungeon Master themselves. In total, our initial group for the official start of the School Branch B had 14 students with a wide variety of skill and experience levels, including 5 people who had never played before. We continued to meet during lunch until the last month or so of the year, when extenuating circumstances described below meant the school's lunch structures needed to change.

The Dungeons and Dragons Club listing I wrote for the school's PDF of club listings.

Clubs Approved.pdf

The final email approving our D&D Club, confirming it would be included in the club listings. Attendance soared after the publication of this information and lead me to create our branch of the activity.

Student B leading the set design team for our Romeo and Juliet in class performance, showing work inspired by our D&D setting.

A Canvas message from Student A sent after the introductory campaign concluded and the School Branch B club was officially set to start. It wasn't really a quick question, but he turned out to be one of the clubs most enthusiastic members.

D&D Club Throughout the Year

Welcome page of our Discord Channel with student names removed.

A scrambled puzzle I made that students needed to solve to advance to the next area. They took turns, each attempting to move pieces around until they solved it together (see below).

A group of this year's students ready for their campaign to resume, including Student B (far left).

Due to a variety of disciplinary issues, our school lunch structure changed for the last month or so of school. As a result, our club was no longer permitted to meet in the same way it had been. I spoke to a few other teachers who led lunchtime extracurricular activities and they were frustrated that their clubs had been canceled, but they had no solution.

I worked with my students to identify how we would be able to wrap up our campaign before the year ended. We agreed that I would set up a Discord channel in which we would coordinate our last couple sessions. We used this Discord for our dramatic last few sessions before the end of the year, and students have continued to use it since to discuss D&D.

Almost all students who participated in the School Branch B club last year are participating in it again this year now that they have moved to School Branch A. Some of them have even come back to School Branch B and joined the campaign I'm running this year, including Student B. The club has over 40 students at the moment, an enormous increase over this time last year. There are a few reasons for this. For one, the club has existed since the beginning of the year this time around, so students are able to learn about it and join it earlier on. On top of this, I have advertised the club more thoroughly to my class, including through some D&D-analogous classroom assignments and the quests described on the Dramatic Academic Growth (link removed for privacy) page. For each of these activities, I mention to my students that if they like the fantasy aspect of the exercise they should consider joining D&D club. Several of my students have as a result, as is made clear by their comments on the daily check-in.

My advertising efforts don't currently extend much further than this because the club is quite nearly at capacity. In order for the club to function, there must be the right ratio of Dungeon Masters to players. We're lucky to have enough student Dungeon Masters at the moment to lead all the participants in the club through their campaigns, but not by much. If we advertised more widely, we would get an influx of disproportionately new players, since players who know how to be Dungeon Masters and are interested in doing so with the school club likely already have joined. Consequently, we would either need to overload pre-existing campaigns or turn students away, neither of which are desirable outcomes.

D&D Survey

I collected data from student participants through a survey to measure how access to D&D may have impacted them, visible to the right. This survey was designed to be easy for students to fill out while still generating valuable information. The items in the survey intentionally do not ask students to self assess on complex features such as "motivation," or "critical thinking skills," but instead offer scenarios and give students the chance to respond to those specific circumstances. This was done in order to give a students a somewhat more meaningful picture of how D&D Club may have impacted their lives. There were a few optional open ended short answer questions on the survey, which were also very informative on what students valued the most in D&D Club.

D&D Google Form.pdf

Survey Responses

The results of the multiple choice questions strongly support the conclusion that Dungeons and Dragons club has had a positive impact on students' lives. Almost all items have exclusively positive or neutral responses, and some of the positive response rates are impressive. Some highlights include that 75 percent of student respondents report both that D&D club has made them more excited about coming to school and that it has increased their interest in creative writing. Likewise, more than 80 percent of respondents express that D&D club has made them more comfortable around new people and that they have made new friends in the club. These two conclusions are consistent with the expectations described in the literature regarding the impact of games on motivation, creativity, and social skills. Likewise, when it comes to student confidence when challenged, likelihood of seeking out answers when confused, and time spent coming up with new ideas, the club seems to have largely positively impacted students as well, with 50 percent of respondents to these questions selecting this option. This suggests that while the D&D club's most significant contributions to student access are in the domains of of social skills, creativity, and motivation, it also contributes in meaningful ways to student character strengths such as determination, curiosity, and thinking skills. The qualitative results from the survey were similarly positive, extolling many remarkable benefits of the activity.

How the Club Uniquely Improves Access

The D&D Club clearly carried with it many of the benefits researchers have found can accompany the use of games in education, including motivation, critical thinking skills, social and emotional abilities, and creative enthusiasm. However, the D&D Club cannot be said to have truly expanded access unless students would not have been able to reap these benefits without the club. There is strong evidence that the club was uniquely able to provide access, mainly based on the fact that the game on it's own without the club is a fairly inaccessible hobby to get into. Despite it's popularity and it's recent resurgence in pop culture, the game is difficult to pick up for a beginner, and especially challenging for a young person for a few reasons.

First, the rule book, called "The Player's Handbook," is several hundred pages long. It takes impressive commitment to really read the book well enough to understand every aspect of the game, and even more work to read the additional texts required to be a Dungeon Master. This is commitment and time that few people possess, and I know my 9th graders would struggle with it on their own. The club overcame this difficulty by having knowledgeable students and teachers leading campaigns, introducing students to the game and teaching them to play without the struggle of the lengthy readings.

Second of all, the books required to play the game cost $30-$50, which for many is prohibitive, and even for those who could afford it it's still a steep price tag for a game they do not yet know how to play. To surmount this challenge I provided hard copies and PDFs of D&D material to all students and created a reference guide for the wide variety of D&D books that exist to help guide new players through the admittedly confusing collection. Students took advantage of the digital library I created especially, and many used it to create their first characters.

In these ways, the D&D Club provided students a way to navigate around the traditional barriers to accessing the benefits of tabletop RPGs in education. The D&D Club welcomed students into the new experience of playing Dungeons and Dragons for free and with significantly less work than would be required to read the books in their entirety.

Guide to D&D Books Capstone Exemplar.pdf

Reference guide to D&D books I created for students, including links to each item in the guide.

Access Opportunity 2 - Resource Series: Planning for the Future

Introduction to Resource Series

One of the most significant areas where access differences exist across our student population is in access to information about paths through and out of highschool. While some students have parents who have been through college and so know what is involved in applying, enrolling, and attending college, the families of other students have very little to no experience with these processes. Our school does have a college and career center, and it does a good job of supporting those students who are considering college but may have limited access to information once they arrive at the School Campus A for 10th grade, but many 9th graders go through their entire year at School Campus B without being given the tools to develop informed goals for their future. This can have serious consequences for student motivation and academic performance. Last year on more than one occasion, I had a student respond to me with shock when they learned that colleges would be able to see their 9th grade transcript. This access opportunity, which will bring in two different guest speakers and involve accompanying goal setting handouts and workshops which students will complete with parents, is designed to boost student and parent understanding of the application and enrollment process early in the student's high school career so they will be able to establish realistic expectations and work to achieve their goals going forward.

Planning the Speaker Series

The idea for the speaker series first occurred to me at the end of last year when I discussed academic progress over the course of the year with several students. It struck me that if students were given a better understanding of the various paths out of high school, they may have been more motivated during the year. This year, I consulted with a coworker of mine and we sent emails to the admissions teams at a variety of different community colleges as well as 4 year institutions. We also reached out to the our College and Career Center to see if they would be able to speak to our students at some point this semester.

Guest Speakers for 9th Grade.pdf

Emails setting up visit from local community college.

Arranging the Visits

We made contact with team members from all the schools we reached out to and arranged for speakers from to come speak to our students. Unfortunately, the speaker from one college had to cancel their visit before it occurred, so in their place we scheduled for the 9th grade counselors to stop by our classes and discuss high school grades and paths towards the future. The College and Career Center at our school agreed to come talk to our students once the busy season of college applications concludes. The schedule can be seen below:

Community College - 6th period, October 14th
High School Counselors - Assorted dates depending on period availability.

6th period was chosen for the speaker from the Community College because for both me and my coworker, our 6th period classes include the greatest number of students who may lack access to information about paths after high school. Almost half the students in my 6th period class class are receiving accommodations for a disability. On top of this, more than 50% of students in this class scored below grade level on their most recent MAP reading assessment. Likewise, my coworker's 6th period class includes the most students who need support as English language learners. We figured that by inviting the speaker to join us during this period, we could create the largest impact for our students, as these are the students who are most likely not to have encountered the information before.

My coworker and I created a list of ideas and topics we thought it would benefit our students for the guest speakers to cover, and distributed the list to each of the speakers. They agreed they could design presentations to cover the areas we specified. We used this list to design a handout to send home with students to prepare for the guest speaker.

Once the speakers agreed on the dates and times, we spoke with the main office to verify that the auditorium would be available for the required slots and to reserve those times. Once we did this, we then coordinated with the head of our academy, and confirmed that we could hold the event at this time.

Topics to Cover (as sent to guest speakers)

1. What are some post secondary options (and how are they different - community college, 4 year college, military, trade school, straight to work)

2. What is community college? What does life look like for students at your school?

3. What might make community college right for you?

4. What do you need to do in high school to get to CC and what are some of the paths student follow into CC? Why is working hard in high school (including 9th grade) important to achieving success at Community College?

5. Where do students go after graduating?

7. What do you need to do to apply and enroll? (A quick breakdown. They're in 9th grade, but I do want them to have a sense for what's required).

8. How much does CC cost? What opportunities are there for students to make attending more affordable?

Guest Speaker.pdf

Email confirming with the head of our academy.

Preparing for the Guest Speaker

Doc7.pdf

Form sent to students and families asking them to consider their options for the future.

Community College Talk.pdf

Announcement made over parent square describing the guest speaker, the form, and inviting parents to attend.

After the logistics were established, I created a form for students to complete with their parents about what they wanted to do for their future. The form is visible to the left. The form asked students to have conversations with their parents about the paths they chose in an effort to foster a productive conversation grounded in each family's cultural background and experiences. I then announced the form on ParentSquare, our schools platform for communicating with families, along with some information about our speaker, the goal of the activity, and an invitation to parents to attend the conversation over Zoom.

Unfortunately responses to these activities were relatively low, though some good likely came from them anyway. No families responded to the Future Form, and only one parent attended the Zoom meeting. I think there are a few reasons for this. First of all, while ParentSquare does translate all messages into whatever language the recipient selects, it tends to do so somewhat poorly, as Google Translate might. The end result is that potentially my message was garbled or unclear. Second, this type of family contact is well outside the norm at my school and potentially my district, so consequently many families didn't engage. That said, this was only the first of several moments where I engaged families, and subsequent opportunities received much stronger responses. On top of this, the ParentSquare reports indicate that parents saw the announcement, including the portion of the announcement suggesting that it was not too early to be considering students' futures. This likely prepared them for these later activities. While engagement with the activity was disappointingly low, it was not for nothing.

The Visit from NVCC

As planned, Ms. X, the outreach coordinator for the Community College, joined our 6th period class on October 14th. Given that the talk was only to two of our smaller classes, we combined our classes into a single classroom for the speaker rather than going to the auditorium. We held a Zoom room open and welcomed a parent, who joined us for the conversation. Likewise, we encouraged students to think of questions ahead of time, some of which are displayed to the right alongside a recording of the talk.

The talk went very well in a few ways. First, student engagement was surprisingly high. This was partially due to the fact that Ms. X was a very engaging speaker who offered students prizes at the end of her talk. At the same time, however, there was good evidence that students were seriously interested in hearing about their options after high school. For example, at one point during Ms. X's talk, a normally disengaged student in my class raised a question about athletic scholarships for college. This prompted an excellent conversation that seemed to hold students interests about all the ways in which college can be made more affordable.

Likewise, in the followup to the conversation, students discussed some of the things they learned from the guest speaker, including that the military can contribute to paying for college, that CC has several different e-sports teams, and that the cost of a semester of community college can often be less than a quarter of the cost of a semester at a four year institution. All of these set students up well for the next phase of the resource series when counselors came and spoke to our classes.

Video Redacted

The Visit from the High School Counselors

Video Redacted

Guidance Counselor Presentation.pdf

Shortly following this visit from Ms. X, the school counselors visited each of my classes to discuss how high school differed from middle school, and emphasize the importance of doing well even in 9th grade to maximize the odds of success in the future. Before the guest speakers arrived, I primed my students with a brief discussion about the topic, and reminded my 6th period about what came up during our conversation with Ms. X. The slides the counselors used are visible to the left, as is a recording of their talk to my first period class.

Similar to the previous guest speaker, this presentation proved to be very valuable for students. As the video demonstrates, students were quite engaged throughout. Likewise, students really seemed to understand better now the difference between their grades in middle school and their grades in high school. I know this would not have been an opportunity they would have had otherwise, as many of my students who didn't get these guest speakers last year missed out on this important information. It prepared them well for the culminating activity of the resource series.

Family Engagement Project

After these guest speakers had visited my classes, I wanted students to reflect on what they had heard and create a provisional plan for their future. I conducted research on how to do this effectively, recalling how unhelpful questions like "what do you want to be when you grow up" were when I was in high school. I settled on a reflection form which would ask students to evaluate the things that thought would be most important to them when eventually deciding on a job, what I termed "work values," identifying a few career categories that might include jobs that would be consistent with these work values, and some preliminary research on what kind of pathway out of high school would be required to navigate to one of those jobs. Students then were expected to take this home to their parents and go over their plan with them. Parents would offer at least one sentence of reflection on the topic, write it in a box on the form and sign it. Students then wrote a sentence of reflection on their own considering their plan and the advice of their parent before submitting it to me for credit. To the left, see a blank copy of the future form and the ParentSquare announcement informing parents of the form as well as a collection of future planning resources including video recordings of the guest speakers. Below, see several completed copies of the form with identifying information censored out.

The results of this assignment have been quite positive. First of all, the response rate was considerably higher, in part I think because the first announcement as well as other assignments, began normalizing this type of parent engagement. Another contributing factor is that while the first announcement was made only to parents of one class, and my most struggling class at that, this second announcement was made to all families in all my classes. The results reveal that most parents are strongly supportive of their student's goals, and some have even made suggestions for additional fields their student may want to consider. More fundamentally, the student and parent reflections indicate that these opportunities have given families access to planning tools and resources that they would not have had otherwise, and students have begun to think about their long term goals in high school and afterwards in ways they had not before. Indeed, the ParentSquare announcement including those resources for families was viewed by 76 families.

This activity improved access for families in a few ways. First, many of my students come from families in which they would be the first one to go to college. Consequently these families have less knowledge about what the college applications process entails and how to navigate it. Particularly for parents who work long hours, it can be difficult to find the time to research these things, to think about post-secondary opportunities for their students, and to adopt realistic plans for achieving goals, especially as early as 9th grade. The first way this process improved access is to give students an opportunity to begin thinking seriously about where they want to go, and what they will need to do to get there, as they previously may not have had much of a venue for doing so. This activity also improved access by creating a list of resources for students and families to begin considering the various post-secondary options. These resources included several sources of information about making college more affordable and accessible to all. By providing these tools to families directly, I eliminated the barrier families confronted when it came to finding these resources themselves. By taking this extra task off their already full plates, my hope is that I made it easier for them to engage readily with their students schoolwork and future plans.

Future Packet.pdf

Future packet.

ParentSquareAnnouncement2.pdf

Parent Square Announcement

Finished Form 1

This submission form presents an excellent example of a parent and student using this form as an opportunity to collaboratively start thinking about the student's plans for the future, including working together to consider both what features matter most in a potential job and in which career areas the student may want to work.

Parent reflection reads:

"For work values, I think 'enjoyment of job' is an important value and agree with that being the top. I would reconsider whether 'salary/benefits' needs to be #2. Later in life I have found this to hold less value for me. Of the careers, those STUDENT selected make sense. She could consider something in the athletic field/working with athletes or with creativity."

Student reflection reads:

"I like and agree with what you said about reconsidering salary/benefits' place. I also like and would probably like to put in what you said about working in the athletic field."

Finished Form 2

This submission shows a parent both offering encouragement and advice for a student's current career plan, as well as a student connecting the dots and recognizing that to achieve their long term goals, they'll need to take school, even 9th grade, seriously.

Parent reflection reads:

"I think that the options chosen by my son are a good fit for him and in addition to those two I also think he would do well in technology."

Student reflection reads:

"I don't have much reflection besides the fact I'll need to work hard and pay attention in school."

Finished Form 3

This submission shows how the project acted as a way to open lines of communication between students and their families about their goals, as well as an avenue for parents to provide sage and meaningful advice to their students. Furthermore, this student clearly has taken seriously the task of trying to plan out how to achieve their goals, as illustrated by their focus on finding scholarships described in their reflection.

Parent reflection reads:

"I'm happy to see that you are now considering finance as a career option. Don't ever limit yourself. Explore as many career options early/now. Think about the problems you want to solve to make this world a better place."

Student reflection reads:

"I want to continue exploring career paths for the future. I hope to also find ways to receive scholarships to help me pay for college."

Finished Form 4

This submission came from a very quiet and typically fairly disengaged student. This form gave her the chance to lay out her goals clearly and communicate them to her parents, who were clearly supportive of this planning. Her reflection emphasizes the effort she will put into finding continued success.

Parent reflection reads:

"I support any career path STUDENT chooses as long as she is comfortable with it."

Student reflection reads:

"I want to try as hard as I can to be successful in the future."

How the Planning for the Future Resource Series Uniquely Improved Access

The Planning for the Future resource series provided access to information, tools, and resources that would not have been available to many of my students otherwise. Without this series of activities, much of the important information surrounding paths through and out of high-school would not have been available until students arrived at the School Campus A for 10th grade, if not later. However, students' 9th grade work is of course reflected on their high school transcript, contributes to their GPA, and can impact their prospects after leaving school. Consequently, the added motivation, sense of purpose, and optimism provided by having realistic goals, as well as the understanding of the impact of one's 9th grade work on one's future, was reserved for those who had resources outside of school that could give them this information. In this way, many of my students were left out of the loop, as evidenced by the interactions I had last year with students who were shocked to learn late in the year that their grades for 9th grade mattered when it came to college admissions and post-secondary employment.

This resource series changed that. By providing all students with realistic knowledge about what they can do after high school, helping students to recognize that college is feasible for everyone, and incorporating families into the planning of their student's future, some of this difference in access was reduced, and students can now take a more informed approach to their 9th grade year and beyond.

Further Family Engagement Activities and Planning

Beyond this resource series, I also remain in close communication with my students' families. To the right, see a preliminary family engagement plan completed during the previous academic year, before the introduction of ParentSquare as an easy mechanism for reaching out to all parents. Since the introduction of ParentSquare, I have adopted many of the proposals discussed to the right. I communicate with parents using this tool to keep them informed of what we're doing in class and how they can be involved with it. ParentSquare also makes it easier to maintain communication with families whose English is not as strong, as the tool does translate all messages into the recipient's preferred language. This has permitted me to maintain stronger communication with families who previously would have been more challenging to engage in their students' learning.

I also make regular calls to families both for positive calls home and for constructive calls where I need to work with the parent to help their student. I keep track of these calls in a classroom management tracker kept for each of my classes on a quarterly basis. See an example of my quarter two period six tracker to the right with student names removed. The lines in red are so I can easily identify students who are currently on hall restriction due to repeatedly using the hall pass to stay out in the hall for extended portions of the class.

The positive calls home typically are a welcome surprise for the families of students in this class. This class, as described above, tends to struggle the most with staying focused and maintaining good classroom practices. When parents pick up, I explain that I'm their student's English teacher, and that their student did some excellent work in class that day, usually identifying a specific moment that stood out that was grounds for my call. The parents sometimes take some reassuring that I am only calling to praise them and their student, and that their student is not in trouble, but once they understand this they are both relieved and thrilled. As I attempt to normalize positive calls home, I hope to improve the parent-teacher partnerships such that parents don't always assume the worst when I call.

The constructive calls typically take the form of me calling and describing a particular incident that occurred during the day, explaining how it got in the way of either their student's or their student's peers' learning, and describing what I communicated to the student about the issue. I then ask the parent what ideas they have to address the issue, with them usually agreeing they will talk to their student. Sometimes this works wonders for student engagement in class. Other times it seems to have fairly little effect. However, by continuing to call home even when it seems like there hasn't been much of a change, it is my hope to reinforce the partnerships that can help students

FamilyEngagementPlan.pdf

Provisional family engagement plan from last year. Several of the issues addressed in this plan have since been addressed, and many of the plans described have been implemented.

P6Q2 Classroom Management Tracker - Sheet1.pdf

Period 6 Quarter 2 Classroom Management Tracker.

Access Section Conclusion & Reflection

Conclusion

Ensuring all students have equal access to informational and academic resources is a critical step in achieving educational equity. However, in schools today many students are disadvantaged as they lack the cultural, social, and economic capital to be able to take advantage of all the resources that exist and make the most of their education. Through Dungeons and Dragons Club, I hope to broaden student horizons by creating a gateway to a new experience that can improve motivation, critical thinking and problem solving skills, emotional regulation, social skills, and can foster an interest in creative projects and writing. (As results trickle in from student survey, incorporate how the club impacted them here). Through the Planning for the Future guest speaker series, I hoped to create an opportunity for students and parents to gain access to information about the college application process early enough in high school for it to make a difference in their 9th grade year. (Discuss the impacts of the event here). In these ways, I believe improved access across the board and contributed to dismantling educational inequity.

Reflection

The experience of organizing these opportunities was quite empowering and fulfilling. The Dungeons and Dragons Club has given me enormous pride and enjoyment in the year or so since it launched, and students seem to really be enjoying it as well. I look forward to fielding students enthusiastic and creative ideas, and to giving them puzzles and problems they need to work together to solve. It is great to feel like I am creating a fun yet productive experience for them in real time. Setting up the guest speaker series, meanwhile, had a different, though still positive, effect on me. It reminded me of my agency, as I was the one to coordinate the moving parts to make it happen. It's easy for me to sometimes just operate within preexisting systems, filling out forms when something needs to happen, or notifying someone else when I have an idea. This was the first time in a while when I had an idea and actually made it happen myself. This was reassuring and invigorating, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to do it.

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