Vision: Building Responsibility, Respect and Resilience to Inspire Academic Excellence- Everyone! Everyday!  Not too lofty, yet inspiring enough to feel a buoyant uplift in mind and attitude as it rolls across the tongue and into reality.  But school improvement will not end with a vision.  It requires a plan and as we learned while slogging through the process an extremely mind-numbingly detailed plan.

Each academic subject requires a three-part written plan. First, there is a list of the problems we face such as “low math scores”.  Then, we explored the root causes for the problems and came up with several, including a high rate of absenteeism, student apathy, behavior problems, etc. Finally, we had to create a plan of action to apply to each problem area. Our school worked through this in departments, in leadership meetings and with the school improvement committee.  We wrote it up, edited it and rewrote the plan more than five times.  Our principal will officially present the plan to the School Board this week.

That will not be the end of it, however, and this makes it very different from the last time we created a school improvement plan.  Back then, most of the staff saw it once and it was whisked away, edited and presented with little fanfare.  This time it is under completely different circumstances and a new administration.  Our district is under the auspices of AYP, which means this plan, will be reviewed and updated during the three years that it will last. The new principal seems to welcome transparency and staff members have been encouraged to be thinking about the changes that we will be making in curriculum as we move through those three years.

Next stop: RTI- Response To Intervention (The website listed will take you to a plethora of articles and information on the RTI model.)  Basically, we will identify students who are struggling and create action plans to assist them—not unlike our school improvement plan.

It will take a lot of dedication and no doubt we will spend many frustrating hours working through the process. The goal is that more students will be successful and more will be able to realize our true vision that rings with the tone of hope: Building Responsibility, Respect, and Resilience to Inspire Academic Excellence¬-¬ Everyone! Everyday!

Pamelia Valentine is a guest blogger and teacher in the Shelton School District.

Previous Blogs:

School Improvement—The Mission for a Vision Continues

Gettin' Visionary with School Improvement

Improving My Notion of School Improvement