Building Strong School Culture with Crew at Handy Middle School

This video features the impact of Crew, as shared by the students and teachers at Handy Middle School. They discuss the improvements they have seen, including increased confidence, better communication, stronger bonds, and a more connected community.

Crew is a unique combination of advisory class and ethos that aims to create a supportive and grounding environment for students as they start each day. During the first 30 minutes of every day, teachers focus on lessons that emphasize social-emotional skills and character-building activities. During these lessons, students reflect on essential skills such as communication, collaboration, and leadership, while also building relationships with their classmates and teachers. The lessons learned in Crew are then practiced throughout the day.

The impact of Crew extends beyond the students to the staff as well. Staff crew meetings provide a space for team building and decompression, allowing staff members to connect, support each other, and refocus on their work.

Creating and maintaining a positive school culture is a challenging but essential task for any principal. That's why I was thrilled to partner with EL Education on the pilot of their middle school Crew curriculum at Handy Middle School. Our goal was to provide the school redesign team with a framework and necessary support to achieve this objective.

This video celebrates the transformative impact of empowerment and the importance of fostering a strong school culture. The use of student and teacher voices to share their experiences highlights the positive impact of Crew and the success it has had in the school community.

Transforming Middle School with Essential Outcomes at Handy Middle School

As a teacher, I had my first encounter with the New Tech Network in the spring of 2010 at Bloomington New Tech in Indiana. It was there, under the leadership of Alan Veach, that I was introduced to project-based learning and the intentional teaching of essential skills. I was fortunate enough to later serve as principal for two New Tech high schools and am now working with my district team and a talented group of school leaders and teachers to bring this innovative approach to Handy Middle School.

This video highlights the exciting work happening at Handy Middle School as they implement the New Tech Network's essential learning outcomes. These outcomes, which include agency, collaboration, knowledge and thinking, and written & oral communication, go beyond traditional content standards and equip students with the skills they need to succeed in the future.

Empowering Educators: Handy Middle School Teachers Share Their Vision for a New Approach to Learning

I love this video of teachers sharing their excitement for the new learning approach they had been preparing to implement. Over the summer, they worked closely with a team of instructional support staff, school leaders, and each other to bring the innovative New Tech Network model to life in their classrooms.

What I appreciate most about this video is the opportunity to hear directly from the teachers, as they shared their experiences and perspectives. The personal touch they bring to the story was invaluable in fostering a deeper understanding of the hard work and dedication that goes into shaping the future of education.

Teachers play an incredibly important role in telling the story of the work happening in schools, and their voices are critical in creating a human connection with the community. The teachers and leaders at Handy Middle School are to be commended for their unwavering commitment to education and their efforts to positively impact the lives of their students and the future of education.

It's Called Languishing→

The topic of mental health comes up so frequently in conversation about our response to the ongoing pandemic. It is clear that people are not doing well and that we must do more to support our collective and individual well-being. This article by Adam Grant summed up the state of things so well. I can’t stop sharing it.

In psychology, we think about mental health on a spectrum from depression to flourishing. Flourishing is the peak of well-being: You have a strong sense of meaning, mastery and mattering to others. Depression is the valley of ill-being: You feel despondent, drained and worthless.

Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either.

Why videoconferencing can feel so exhausting→

Dr. Jena Lee explains why spending so much time on Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms is leading to increased fatigue, tiredness, worry, and burnout:

“However, on video, most [social] cues are difficult to visualize, since the same environment is not shared (limiting joint attention) and both subtle facial expressions and full bodily gestures may not be captured. Without the help of these unconscious cues on which we have relied since infancy to socioemotionally assess each other and bond, compensatory cognitive and emotional effort is required.”

"Continuity of Learning Plan" Resources

On Thursday, April 2, 2020, the Governor of Michigan issued Executive Order 2020-35 suspending “in-person K-12 instruction for the remainder of the 2019-202 school year” and requiring all districts in the state to implement a “Continuity of Learning and COVID-19 Response Plan” for providing alternative modes of instruction other than in-person instruction.” Implementation of this plan must begin on or before April 27, 2020. Across the state, education leaders are working to draft equitable plans that meet the needs of all students despite a wide range of student access and district capacity.

The clear bright spot in our current situation is the vast amount of innovation coming out of educational institutions across the nation. Every person in education is trying something new right now in an effort to do the best they can.

Below is a list of resources representing just a fraction of what is flying across my computer screen each day. I provide these resources, frankly, for myself to keep track of what I’m finding.

Other State Plans

• Kansas Continuous Learning Task Force Guidance

• Illinois Remote Learning Recommendations

• MASA Listing of National Distance Learning Resources

Michigan Continuity of Learning Template

• Continuity of Learning and COVID-19 Response Plan (“Plan”) Application Template

• MAISA Quick Start Guidance for Completing your COVID-19 Continuity of Learning Plan

This post will be edited as additional resources are identified.

Bringing Data Together

As mentioned in a previous post, I am in the process of updating the mathematical model used by my school to determine when students are ready to take college-level courses. This model is important to us because we send over a third of our juniors and half of our seniors to college each year and we don’t want to mistakenly send students to college before they are ready. Using this model, my team has gotten pretty good at determining readiness; last year our students passed 97% of the college courses they attempted.

Before the model can be applied, it must first be brought together into a single database or spreadsheet. Depending on your systems, this can be a quick or timely endeavor. For me, bringing together all of the data we have on students took a little over six hours. Here’s what I did:

Google Sheets

Because it is shareable and applies edits in real-time, I do all of my modeling in a single Google Sheet. For anyone who is an Excel devotee, this may sound crazy. It is. But, for me, the benefits outweigh the costs.

For this year’s update, I created a new Google Sheet called “Master Data File” where I pasted an export from our Student Information System (SIS) containing each student’s name, ID, DOB, sex, graduation year, and commutative GPA. Because our SIS contains the most up-to-date information regarding student enrollments, I always start there and then use that data as reference for gathering the rest. No need to gather data on a student no longer enrolled.

Microsoft Excel

So far, there is only one function I need that is not easily done in Google Sheets: consolidating data. At one time, I would spend hours manually inputting data from one system’s export file to another. Excel can consolidate data from two spreadsheets in minutes.

The Consolidate function is in the "Data" ribbon on Microsoft Excel.

For example, data downloaded from the College Board website looks different than data taken from our SIS. The College Board data includes some students who have left my school, is missing data for students who are newly enrolled, and may have other formatting differences that would make a simple copy/paste impossible to do.

As long as I have a single column that uniquely identifies individual student (student ID, “Last Name, First Name” combinations, etc.), Excel can consolidate the data from both sources into a single row to be included in the master file.

Data Brought Together

Here’s the data I consolidated into the single Google Sheet for each student organized by source:

Student information System

• Demographic Information used for sorting and aggregated data analysis
• High School Grade Point Average: used as a primary indicator of future college success. This topic will be expanded upon further in a later post.

College Board

• PSAT 8/9, 10, and 11: We give the PSAT to all students every year in grades 8 through 11. While we do not yet use this data in our model, I decided to pull it in hopes of future analysis and reporting.
• SAT: In Michigan, all 11 graders are required to take the new SAT. Our community college partner accepts SAT scores for determining college course placement, so we use these scores as part of our readiness model.
• Accuplacer: While this is technically a College Board product, we get this data from our college partner. Our students take this college placement assessment each year until they place into college-level coursework beginning in the 9th grade.

ACT

• ACT: Now that the state of Michigan has moved from ACT to the SAT for it’s college readiness assessment, we only have a few students each year who take this assessment. For those who do, though, I need to consider their scores when determining readiness.
• Compass: Until this year, our college partner used the ACT’s Compass assessment for determining college placement. This assessment was replaced by Accuplacer but we still consider Compass data in determining students’ college readiness.

Other

• Agency Score: Each year, we ask our teachers to rate each student’s skill at exercising agency on a scale of 0-5. Agency, for those not familiar with the concept is one’s ability to be an “agent” of his or her own learning. It consists of two components, both a part of our instructional model: 1.) ability to complete tasks to specification and on time, and 2.) growing from challenging work and setbacks. I simply ask teachers to rate each student and take the average of their input. More on this measure of college readiness later.

When recording assessment data, I like to separate it by the year it was taken relative to the student. I like to know what each student’s score was each year they took it. This allows me to see growth or stagnation in student performance, and makes analysis and reporting of data much easier to do.

Next up: what I do with this data once I have it all in one location.

Modeling Future Student Success

Over the next few weeks, I will be updating the mathematical model I created to predict students' future success in college. That model, which my school has been using and revising for the past four years, looks for patterns in academic and behavioral data to help predict individual student's likelihood of earning passing scores in college coursework.

I created the model in response to learning that standardized test scores alone left far too many edge cases to accurately predict future academic success. Too many students had previously scored well on tests yet did poorly in college classes. Similarly, some students we thought could handle college coursework did not score well on traditional measures of college "readiness."

Using this model, my school sends a third of its juniors and half of its seniors to college. Last year, these students passed 97% of the courses attempted. Ninety-three percent passed with a C or better.

To learn more about my school and why we send so many students to college while still in high school, I recommend reading my post from June titled Early College For All.

There is nothing magical about the model. It simply applies what is already known about past students' success to predict how well current students might do in college coursework.

The model uses three primary sources of data:

1. Standardized college placement or college readiness scores: I have used data from different assessments over the years with relatively similar results (Compass, Accuplacer, ACT, and SAT).
2. High school grade point average: in my school, the strongest predictor of future academic success is past student success.
3. Teachers' subjective assessment of student "agency:" Each winter, I ask my faculty to evaluate each student on how well they are perceived to grow through challenging work and complete work on time.

Each year, the weight applied to each of these data sources has changed to reflect what we've learned about past student success. Last year, high school GPA and test scores were weighted about evenly. Agency, while found to be an accurate predictor, was weighted very little (approximately 10%) due to its subjective nature and the potential for perceived bias.

Over the coming weeks, as I update the model, I hope to share more of the details that go into its creation and revision. I see great value in having more schools analyzing data in this way and think it's a simple enough process that can be replicated with bit of time and effort.

Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician and do not claim to be an expert in inferential statistics. I am simply a practitioner with a good memory of his Statistics 101 class. I welcome any feedback from readers with stronger mathematical grounding.

If you have questions about this model that you would like me to expand upon or would simply like to learn more, feel free to leave a comment or reach out by email.

Early College for All

Last week, I wrote a press release about my school that was picked up by our local paper. I'm proud of the work that it represents and I'm proud of the students who make this possible. So, I want to share it here:

Two-Thirds of Meridian Grads Opt for Free First Year of College

SANFORD, MI - June 4, 2016 - One hundred twenty students walked across the stage at Meridian Public Schools commencement ceremony this past Thursday night, but only forty of them took home a diploma. That’s because the other eighty students – two-thirds of the graduating class – have chosen to participate in Meridian’s fifth year program for a free first year of college.

“As an early college high school, we are set up to offer all students five years of education,” said Patrick Malley, Meridian’s high school principal. “During students’ fifth year, they take a full-time course load with one of our early college partners.”

The majority of students will take courses at Delta College. Others have opted to earn vocational credentials through the Greater Michigan Construction Academy or Bayshire Beauty Academy.

None of the students participating in fifth year have to step foot on the high school campus. For the most part, they are treated just like any other first year college students.

“This graduating class has already earned over 1,600 college credits during their junior and senior years,” said Meridian Superintendent, Craig Carmoney. “Now, with so many of our students staying for fifth year, we estimate that over 90% of them will participate in postsecondary education.”

Meridian transitioned its high school to an early college four years ago, when the students in this class were just freshmen. According to Principal Malley, the decision to become an early college made sense considering the work they were already doing: “The district had just joined the New Tech Network in an effort to improve student success after high school. We had the support of our teachers, parents, community, and Board to re-imagine our high school to improve outcomes. We saw alignment between our work with New Tech and the Early College movement, so we went for it.”

As one of only twenty-two early college high schools in the state of Michigan, Meridian is offering students an experience that was unimaginable just five years ago. In the fifth year, students receive funding for tuition, books, and supplies. They also get monthly gas cards to help offset the cost of transportation, and are assigned a laptop that they can use in the classroom and take home. Additionally, they are linked with an Early College Coach who supports them through their first year college experience.

“Our goal is to remove as many barriers to college and career success as possible for these students,” said Superintendent Carmoney.
What are the other third of the class not staying for the extra year doing next year? Most of them applied for an early graduation after just four years and are going on to a university, the military, or to work in a family business. Because of the opportunities offered, only a few of them graduated undecided about their next step after high school.

“While our evaluation of the success of this program will have to wait until students finish their fifth year, the early results appear very positive,” said Malley. “By eliminating the major stumbling blocks to college success – funding, transportation, and support – we anticipate we’ll see our first year college completion rates more than double our ten year average.”

Based on the program's past success and the number of students participating, it is likely that over eighty percent of Meridian graduates will earn a year of college credits before exiting the program.

According to Amy Boxey, Dean of Student Transitions at Meridian, some will even graduate with over 60 credits.

“Our goal is to send students to postsecondary programs once they are able to show us that they are ready,” said Boxey. “Students who demonstrated readiness their junior year went to college. More were ready and went to college during senior year. Now that these students are entering the fifth year, the opportunity has opened to all. We look forward to supporting so many of our students on their next step after high school.”

NewSchool Learning Closed for Business

It was nine years ago that I launched NewSchool Learning, a small Moodle design company that has produced just shy of 1,000 custom themes for clients across the planet. As of this past December, sadly, NewSchool Learning is no more.

The reason I decided to close shop is simple: the company stopped making money. Revenue had fallen 50% each year for the past three years. This last quarter, expenses exceeded revenue and I knew it was time to call it quits.

The reason for the decline in revenue? I honestly cannot say. I’ve been too distant for too long from the day-to-day operations of the business and the Moodle community to even guess. I just know that the accounting stopped making sense and that meant it was time to call it quits.

The fact that NewSchool Learning lasted as long as it did is pretty amazing, and credit certainly belongs to Lead Designer and Developer, John Stabinger. As I moved from teacher to school administrator over the past five years, I stepped farther away from my work with and on the company. John has kept the lights on while I’ve paid the bills, and for that I’ll be forever grateful.

I’d be lying if I said I was wholly sad to see the company close; part of me is happy to be free of dealing with payroll, accounts, and corporate taxes. At the same time, nine years of relatively passive income from a company that started as a curiosity makes it challenging to say goodbye.

Here’s to other adventures.

The new ‘magical thinking’ about high-tech in schools — and why it’s a problem→

The notion that education is a "problem to be solved" is just flat out wrong. 

Could Rubric-Based Grading Be the Assessment of the Future?→

So, apparently the Association of American Colleges and Universities has been piloting the use of rubric assessments of "cross-cutting skills." They call their rubrics Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education or VALUE.

According to Katrina Schwartz's reporting on the pilot last month, the professors involved were surprised by what they, themselves, learned by doing assessments in this way:

Professors began realizing how much the language of their assignment prompts communicated what they expected from students. That might seem obvious, but without other samples to compare to, professors just thought their students didn’t have the skills.

You don't get this type of reflection from multiple-choice tests.