HUMS Staff week of April 1, 2019

1.  Meetings
April

April 2 - Department Meeting (please go to your dept meetings for this time.
I have a conflict so I cannot host a HUMS meeting)

April 9 - (orig Shared Staff, now is…) All staff ELO planning (Dilemma protocol)

April 23 - Learning Community Meetings

April 25 - LT/DH Meeting

April 30 - Full Faculty (Part I of Recovery planning procedure)

2. Busy Week!

Wednesday: Career Fair Day
Thursday:  Shadow Day information
Friday: Click here for getting to Y information: Getting to Y


3. Reminder: Family conferences May 1 and 9th.

4. Yearbook information needed:

Hi All, It with great pleasure that it is again that time of year to pull together the memories of the year for print. Here is what I kindly request of you all in support of this fun project.

Superlative Survey 4/2- I understand many of you will be out Tuesday, so I am using this time to send the superlative survey to the kids to do during TA. Please ask them Monday to bring Chromebook Tuesday. It will arrive in their school email.

I will be down in case of issues.

TA photos 4/4- I will be down during long TA Thursday to start TA photos. Entire TAs are never present so I will do my best to catch most of your group, but I am hoping this can happen over a couple of days.

Photos and MORE Photos ASAP- Your photo contributions are much of what makes the book relevant to the kids and is really appreciated by me. Please share/send any all photos you have of your classes, kids being kids, trips, dogs or anything else you want from over the year. The more the better, so no need to edit out. You can share through drive if that is how you have saved or send to my email lcummings@huusd.org, or if stored on Dropbox let me know and I can let you know where to share there. 

Actual Yearbook Info- Sales will start in May and books will distribute the last week of school. Information will be going home and to TA as we approach.

Thank you so much for all you do every day and for the support of this project specifically. Please let me know if there are questions or concerns.

Remember to send photos!

Best,

Lynda

5. Article to think about..

 A Troubling Analysis of Data-Driven Instruction

            In this Teachers College Recordarticle, Margaret Evans (Illinois Wesleyan University) and colleagues report on their study of six upper-elementary teacher teams that met bi-weekly to discuss assessment results and student work. By observing 76 teacher meetings and conducting individual and group interviews, the researchers took note of several reactions to the mandated process. First, most teachers were not fans of the meetings. “Across school sites,” say Evans et al., “in individual and group meetings, the vast majority of teachers expressed frustration with the time spent on discussing student data.” Second, many teachers said assessments were taking too much instructional time and the information from assessments added nothing to what they already knew from their day-to-day work with students. Finally, teachers saw the data meetings as one of several burdensome, unhelpful initiatives (including curriculum programs and a new teacher-evaluation process) that were part of their district’s effort to win Race to the Top funding. 

            Observing teacher team meetings throughout a school year, Evans and her colleagues documented five ways that teachers explained their students’ performance on assessments:

-  Students’ actions, attitudes, or behavior – for example, students didn’t do well because they hadn’t paid attention in class or didn’t take a test seriously.

-  Problems with the format, content, or features of an assessment – for example, EL students didn’t do well because the assessment required oral fluency in English. 

-  A suspected physical, mental, or emotional issue with a student – for example, a low-performing student might have dyslexia.

-  Students’ home environment – for example, a student didn’t do well because he doesn’t read at home.

-  Instructional practices – for example, students didn’t do well on a section of a test because the concept wasn’t taught, or hadn’t been taught effectively.

Significantly, the last explanation was rarely discussed by teacher teams – on average, only 15 percent of the time. When instructional causation was discussed, it was mostly to explain positive student performance rather than to dissect and problem-solve around ineffective instruction. 

            “Although a major finding of this study was that teachers most frequently explained low performance by citing characteristics of the student,” conclude the researchers, “we do not want the takeaway message to be that we should blame teachers for blaming students. Instead, we suggest the need to distinguish between helpful and harmful claims that teachers make about students and their academic performance. Our findings denote a need to differentiate between teachers’ claims about students that are verifiable and those that are subjective, particularly negative, opinions about children. We suggest that this current political emphasis on ‘evidence-based’ teaching provides an opportunity to challenge subjective, negative claims about students and in turn place a greater value on teachers’ verifiable claims about students and their academic needs. In other words, we suggest that teachers’ knowledge of students is important in instructional decision-making, but teachers’ low expectations and/or stereotypes are not.” 

“How Did That Happen? Teachers’ Explanations for Low Test Scores” by Margaret Evans, Rebecca Teasdale, Nora Gannon-Slater, Priya La Londe, Hope Crenshaw, Jennifer Greene, and Thomas Schwandt in Teachers College Record, February 2019 (Vol. 121, #2, p. 1-40), 

https://bit.ly/2UCMHXo; Evans can be reached at mevans@iwu.edu.