Leadership Project

Introduction

JAMS is a Title 1 school, with one-third of the students eligible for free or reduced lunch, and forty percent socioeconomically disadvantaged. More than half of our students are Hispanic/Latinx, with other ethnicities of white, black, and Asian in the minority. To meet our mission statement, there are a wide variety of programs, from a Science Magnet that provides afterschool and field trip experiences, an Engineering elective, a robust Music program, and a Spanish immersion program. Despite these resources, we still struggle in many areas. On the 2019 Equity Report (CA Dashboard), JAMS has a gap of 3% higher chronic absenteeism rate for Socioeconomically Disadvantaged students than other students. The state testing data shows a gap in academic performance as well. In 2019, there was a 47.8 point gap between Socioeconomically Disadvantaged students and all students in English Language Arts, and a gap of 51.4 between Socioeconomically Disadvantaged students and all students in Mathematics. These quantitative indicators show an equity gap for Socioeconomically Disadvantaged students at JAMS. Data from distance learning lent a sense of urgency to our work. Early data from the end of spring semester 2020 showed large inequities between student groups in terms of access. The district provided Chromebooks and hotspots, however, fall semester data in the form of student grades still shows large inequities, with marginalized groups showing higher number of failing grades than previous years.

Our Get It Done (GID) program began in November 2020 to meet the needs of Socioeconomically disadvantaged (SED) students identified by the counselor as needing support during distance learning. We collaboratively designed our original problem of practice: SED students are less supported academically than other students. During distance learning (DL), these students have lower attendance in their classes, have lower grade point averages, and are less likely to attend office hours or use support offered by teachers requiring student advocacy, and thus do not experience a culture of care at JAMS. Our Get It Done Program was created to meet the needs of these students. These students were invited to come to an afterschool program 3 days a week, with supportive staff from JAMS and the Boys and Girls Club Santa Monica (BGCSM) to create an environment of support.

As we analyzed data from our program, a new problem of practice (PoP) was needed. I facilitated collaborative development of this PoP by initiating a conversation around a starting point we all felt strongly invested in: a desire to provide a school-wide culture of care, in which every adult on campus showed willingness to provide academic and socio-emotional support to every student on campus. The goal of the program was to improve student learning for marginalized students, but recognizes that students’ well-being must be addressed first by building relationships with caring adults in the school site. This is supported by Cooper & Chickwe’s research in 2012, in which they describe an Institutional Culture of Care model, with relationships from adult staff to get to know and meet student needs. This research guided us at the beginning of our program.

The meeting I facilitated looked at data to help us evaluate our original problem of practice of providing support to these students. While looking at the small sample of survey data, and attendance data, low attendance to our program was apparent. During the meeting, the group looks at data for a survey filled out by GID students responding to questions of caring adults and school supports.

The group’s rationale for selecting this problem of practice was based on data that showed low attendance percentages for our GID program. While data gathered was overall positive, the low number of responses helped guide us to our new problem of practice. The small data that we gathered hints to us meeting these needs, however, the group quickly realizes from looking at the data that our low attendance is impeding our ability to meet our GID program goals. We then analyze attendance data that shows that out of 31 students, only 4 students have attendance over 40%. The majority of the students' attendance is in the 10-20% range. While we were in the process of implementing our attendance survey, designed to help our students remember the program, and see if we could address the cause of low attendance, we received word that Santa Monica schools would be reopening. As a middle school, we were aiming for a full reopen, with concurrent Zoom teaching for students who elected to stay home, and full return for students who wanted to come back.

Due to our reopening, our program shifted drastically and dramatically. The program shifted to 3:30 - 4:30, to allow time for students traveling to campus to return home and access the program over Zoom. Our BGCSM partners pulled back their support, leaving one person to come regularly, as they shifted to hire more staff and expand their services to meet the needs of students on campus. Our paraeducators, who supported the program during teacher planning time, returned to classrooms as the schedule changed. My time to dedicate to the program changed as this afterschool time became the only consistent planning time I could find with my co-teacher. The program continues till the end of the school year, but has changed to a quick tutoring help center staffed by Mr. Ostrum and one BGCSM staff member. As students in person at BGCSM ask for help with school work, they are scheduled to log in to the GID program once a week. This creates a revolving door of students, but leaves the program without the consistency envisioned at the start.

Data/Evidence

The data we had planned to collect was the impact of the program on student’s sense of belonging. Ideally, the survey implemented in March would have increased attendance, and our program facilitators (BGCSM Program Director, Vice Principal, and I) would have continued with our work to create a Culture of Care. If attendance was increased, then I could have completed a survey with questions asking students about their sense of belonging in the school community, and adjusted our interventions within GID to increase the sense of school belonging.

The plan was to collect this data via a Google Form survey. During many of our meetings with the GID staff (which happened after meeting with the kids from 3:15 - 3:30, we discussed questions that we could ask the students to help us get to the heart of sense of belonging and the larger JAMS school community. These conversations were definitely impacted by our positionality, as our BGCSM director had great insights about student belonging that were very different from those questions that the Vice Principal and teachers at JAMS had. Some of the questions discussed were:

1. Is there anyone or anyplace you can go to on campus where you feel seen/heard?

2. What does it mean to you to feel like you feel seen? or Describe a time when you didn’t feel like you belonged at JAMS.

3. If you share a personal problem with a teacher, are you supported?

4. Which supports at JAMS do you find the most helpful? Which supports have you never used?

5. What’s the best thing about coming to school? What’s not so great about coming to school?

We discussed quantitative vs. qualitative questions. We as a team felt that quantitative questions would help us with validity, while open-ended qualitative questions would provide us with rich material to draw from and discuss. Our BGCSM partner Jason Hurd and I also discussed the benefits of training our GID students to interview other students at JAMS to expand our data set, but this idea was not flushed out during our time together.

It is also important to note that our target demographic kept changing and was not consistent. While our data from our group and our original Problem of Practice was centered around Socioeconomically Disadvantaged students, we differed on whether it would be better to only collect data from this demographic, or whether we should gather data from any student we could on campus.

If I could have continued with the program and initial PoP, I would have clarified and picked a consistent subgroup to target, as the structures and outcomes can change based on the group we are targeting. I would have also clarified our goal with questions about sense of belonging - as the discussion would sometimes veer onto longer term outcomes of school climate for the entire school confused with school belonging improvement for our GID students through our connecting with students 3 times a week. This data is two very divergent data sets. As we have data from the California Healthy Kids survey providing us a starting point for talking about school belonging and school supports, I would have preferred to stay small, and see which interventions that we were using during our GID program would have changed the students perceptions of caring adults, and total school supports. To help with data validity, I would have used questions very similar to the California Healthy Kids survey to see if our program was improving previous year scores for these two categories. This way, we could have used the Improvement Cycle learning to monitor one small area, and then scale up for other students if needed using our learnings.

implementation

As described above, the program changed due to full school reopening in Santa Monica. However, while we were still meeting with our initial PoP, we encountered several challenges. Upon reflection, some of these challenges could have been prevented or reduced with more time spent on program implementation. One such factor was student attendance. GID was created based on resources available and perceived need, and times and availability were told to the parents and students. Student input was not sought out at this point. Upon reflection, after targeted students were identified, a needs assessment should have been conducted to clarify times and types of support wanted. Based on student comments, the program might have had more attendance if it was conducted in the evening, or during lunch, to help students who were supervising siblings. Taking student input into account is a factor that should be considered, and might have reduced challenges with attendance that we faced.

Another challenge was inconsistent paraeducator support. While it was wonderful that we had so many paraeducators who were able to help out with the GID program, their attendance was not consistent. This actively got in the way of helping form a connection with the students, which was one of our main goals of the program. Instead of asking paraeducators to come when they could, asking each paraeducator to commit to one day would have given us a better sense of our staff, and allowed us to form some consistency with the students.

The last change that I would have considered is in regards to the goal and intent of the GID program. The program came about when BGCSM approached JAMS about collaborating in some way during Distance Learning. While JAMS definitely had a need to provide services to Socioeconomically Disadvantaged students, they began with outreaching to a very limited group identified by the counselor. However, part of BGCSM’s strengths are their ability to help students make social connections, and create activities that allow students to socialize. Had JAMS outreached to all of our Socioeconomically Disadvantaged students, and used BGCSM’s ability to create tutoring groups from peers (as they do for their in person activities), I believe that more students would have attended, as they would have had an opportunity to socialize with friends as well as academic support. The current implementation of GID depended on social interactions with adults, and ignored the lack of peer interactions during Distance Learning. While the program tried to follow Improvement Science, start small and then scale up - this actively impeded taking advantage of the assets that our community partners have.

My Identity within GID

My identity as a leader came through in the GID team in many ways. The first and foremost was as a respected teacher leader from the JAMS community. Within my leadership team, while there were some people I didn’t know as well, I felt relaxed enough to be my authentic self. This meant that my identity as someone who grew up Socioeconomically Disadvantaged was recognized and valued. My experience as a successful teacher who is able to make relationships with my students was an asset that immediately added value to the program. Finally, because I trusted the other group members to be their authentic self, the leadership team did not have to spend much time on getting to know each other.

From my first meeting, I was asked to help call parents and recruit students, work during the GID program with students who already trusted me, and help set up technical issues with zoom and Google Classroom. These tasks all recognized and valued my expertise.

My other areas of expertise include follow through and consistency. This was recognized by the leadership team and students. One student who had never attended GID was BJ, a student I had conducted an empathy interview with in October. I immediately texted his mom, and worked out a system to text her regularly 15 minutes before the program started. Other parents might have felt this was a bother, but since I had formed a relationship with her previously, it worked out well. I also committed to attend two days out of the three GID program days, and this allowed me to keep consistent with my team, and with the students. This was especially welcome when our leadership teams schedules were stretched thin in March, and we were able to keep a consistency going for the students despite this.

Leadership project experiences and philosophies

During GID, I was hoping to utilize skills from ED 448, which focused on Improvement Science within the school system. I was excited to implement tools such as driver diagrams, and Pareto Charts. However, when I came on board, I found a program that was already in progress. While I was still able to use some of these tools, I felt they were not as effective to be used after the fact as they would have been if the data from them had been used to implement a program that specifically targeted a smaller Problem of Practice.

Since I was an outsider coming in, I made sure to take the time to respect each team member's role, and get to know the community before I randomly started suggesting changes. This is a major takeaway for me during my time at PLI, and I was able to implement it during GID. Over time, I figured out the insider knowledge and tricks, and then felt like I was able to give suggestions as an authentic team member, instead of as an outsider peering in.

While I felt comfortable as a member of GID, I was also aware that the GID program had started with a behaviorist theory of learning guiding its conception. This was evident in the ways that we discussed the PoP, and how to support students. For example, when discussing how to support students who are behind assignments, the conversation centered around building habits of checking Illuminate, and then completing assignments. While these are definitely positive study habits, they ignore any underlying support that the student might need that prevented them from completing the assignment in the first place, and assume that with enough practice, students will be able to check Illuminate and complete assignments on their own. In separate conversations with the BGCSM Program Director, we discovered that we both share more sociocultural theories of learning, and enacted smaller changes in the program to shift us toward that direction. These consisted of students sharing out at the beginning and end of the session to share strategies that were helping them. While these were small changes, they helped value student participation within a behaviorist program.

Thinking forward

A social justice leader needs to educate all stakeholders that our system has perpetuated inequity, and that our goal is to disrupt that system. It requires making it clear that shifts to meeting the needs of marginalized students often benefit all students. As was stated in the video on Universal Design for Learning, “It turns out, if you design for those in the margins, your building works better for everyone.” It means confronting racist assumptions that meeting the needs of marginalized students will water down curriculum and decrease rigor in our schools. These are lessons that I will take with me after leaving PLI, and they are applicable as a teacher, and applicable as a school leader. This year has helped me find my voice, and remind me of “My Why”. Despite the fact that I work in, and am complicit in a system that continues to track and other students, I will continue to push for students to be acknowledged, and for all students needs to be met. In some cases, this will be through small changes over time, as happened during the GID program. In other cases, it will be lending my voice to push for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work to take place within Santa Monica schools. At the forefront will by making sure that authentic care is taking place when I interact with my students.

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Supporting Documents