Reigniting the Spark

During our assemblies at the beginning of the year, one of our themes was promoting ownership of the school. We firmly believe that ownership or investment in the school is key to creating a caring and productive environment for our students. We want all our students to be proud to say they go to Sullivan Heights.

Where does this start?

Creating ownership and investment is rooted in building connections, providing meaning and aligning purpose for our students, staff and parents. Our goal is to get all students on board for the journey. The challenge is to get them to wear the ownership of the school with pride.

The uphill battle we face is to find a way to reignite the spark for those students who have lost their desire to do school. In Kindergarten, school is exciting and full of adventure and creativity. Children enter the system full of energy and enthusiasm. Somewhere along the way we lose some of them. Sir Ken Robinson (The Element, 2009) states that 98% of all children enter kindergarten with a genius level for divergent thinking and creativity. What a great way to start. What happens to all that creativity? Robinson’s answer is that institutional schooling systematically kills creativity. Is the way we deliver school taking the shine out of our student’s eyes?

As Secondary School educators, we know that when students enter grade 8, they regenerate, find a spark, and often regain the skip in their step.  We know this is the time to foster and promote investment in order to maintain that spark all the way through to graduation. For students entering High School, investment starts in grade 8. In our work to gather and collect our grade 8 newcomers into the fold of Sullivan Heights, we realize that just introducing our grade 8’s to our school at a grade 8 retreat in September is not enough. We know that grade 8 is a formative year and is a crucial time in a child’s development to make connections. We must make sure we have a thorough process that checks, measures, and follows up with our grade 8’s throughout the year. Investment does not happen in a single event! We must implement ways to foster investment so it starts in grade 8 and sustains itself through to graduation. One idea we have been discussing is having follow up monthly activities for our grade 8’s to focus on key concepts and ideas that promote investment.

Teachers and Support Staff are an integral part of the ownership because they lead the way in promoting investment in the school. School staff, through the delivery of their lessons, involvement in school clubs, arts and athletics serve as the corner stones to a stellar school. A well-supported, energized and invigorated staff helps create the collective investment. It is staff investment that fosters, encourages and nurtures student engagement with the outcome often being improved more effectual ways of engaging and teaching. The collective ownership of a staff provides the impetus for the pedagogy to move forward.

The often overlooked and understated investment in our students are their parents and guardians. Research tells us that children are more successful when they have parents who invest, both emotionally and physically in their child’s development and education. In our work, we often repeatedly ask the question: what do students have in their lives besides school? What else are they doing aside from classwork? Research tells us that parents who actively invest in getting involved with their children reap the rewards of their child’s success. A recent article in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman entitled “How about Better Parents” poses some interesting points about the value of parental investment on student success.  Friedman cites a study called “Back to School: How parent involvement affects student achievement:

“Parental involvement can take many forms, but only a few of them relate to higher student performance. Of those that work, parental actions that support children’s learning at home are most likely to have an impact on academic achievement at school.  Monitoring homework, making sure children get to school, rewarding their efforts and talking up ideas of going to college… A parent getting involved with their children’s learning at home is the most powerful driver of academic achievement.”                                                                          (Barth, American School Journal 2011)

Harnessing the values and strengths of our stakeholders is the goal.  Personal and collective investment is the crucial ingredient needed to move our school forward and ignite the spark of success and pride.

Identify the stakeholders… Trust the process… Trust the people… Edu-Bring

Going Viral with Assessment Reform

Imagine what it would be like…

To have a Report Card that:


·      Exists online and can be accessed by a student or teacher at any time.

·      Shows ownership of "learning and assessment" that is truly authentic.

·      Engages parents as collaborators in the students’ learning.

·      Provides opportunities for parents to provide feedback to support the learning.

·      Is portfolio based where a section is dialed into the student’s interests.

·      Is owned and directed by the student (and parent).

·      Provides feedback on specific skills and strategies for improvement.

·      Has a secure teacher feedback section that can be updated at anytime.

·      Is not organized by subject area.

·      Provides comments on student’s character development.

·      Makes a distinction between behavior, social development and academics.

·      Has a greater emphasis on work habit and effort.

·      Shows progression through to mastery of skill development.

·      Includes skill & assignment specific feedback given by teachers and peers.

·      Does not rank, order or file students.

·      Will not be used to create bench marks or compare schools.

·      Is recognized and valued by post secondary institutions.

·      Is carried on through Post Secondary.

·      Can be used as a valuable tool for job interviews.

Have we reached the precipice yet? 

As Professor Barnhardt, in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (2009), explains “It’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve.” Malcom Gladwell (2000) defines it as the Tipping Point, “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." Gladwell also asserts that, "ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses."  If this is true, let’s start a pandemic on educational assessment reform! 

Join us by helping spread the word on assessment reform. We invite you to add to our list. Please include your pro’s and con’s to a new way of assessing our students. What else would you add to the list? 

Identify the stakeholders… Trust the process… Trust the people… Edu-Bring

Opening the Doors

Where are the boundaries of school responsibility? When does an incident or issue become a school matter and when is it outside our domain?

When we develop school codes of conduct, we do so with the ultimate goal of developing caring, productive citizens. The goal of any educational system is to produce well-adjusted adults who can participate in the social and intellectual constructs of a society. The caring, mindful work we do as educators is to teach students, not courses and with that in mind, student conduct outside the school is the real litmus test of our teaching. When our students become positive contributing members of society, we know we have succeeded.

With the changing demands on our children and communities, the responsibility of the schoolhouse has changed. In regards to responsibility, we all have a role to play, but the locus of responsibility should be on the school to lead the way. It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and point fingers.  Research tells us that socio economic factors do influence student progress and truancy and as educators, we must respond to this need. The responsibility should be on the school to develop structures of support for students based on their needs. Leading researcher, Joyce Epstein, writes:

“Attendance improves when schools take comprehensive approaches to family and community involvement. This means conducting a variety of activities that involve students, parents, and community partners.”  (2008)

In matters of safety, we know that the lines of responsibility become very clear. Knowing that when students do not feel safe their ability to learn shuts down, forces us to respond immediately. We know that when violence, threats, or attacks on personal safety occur outside the school, children often internalize their issues and bring them into the school.

“As they grow, children who are exposed to violence may continue to show signs of problems. Primary-school-age children may have more trouble with schoolwork, and show poor concentration and focus. They tend not to do as well in school. In one study, forty per cent had lower reading abilities.  (2006, Behind closed doors: The impact of Domestic Violence on Children)

More often than not, external threats to student safety lead to issues within the school. A student who does not feel safe at home or in the community will often act out in disruptive, destructive, or anti-social ways. This, in turn, often affects members of the school community.

It is the primary role of school leaders, to ensure schools are safe places that foster and promote productive learning environments. The School Act explicitly states that it is our responsibility to our school communities to share a commitment to maintaining safe, caring and orderly schools.  This vision ties the school to the community and by virtue of that, ties the child to the community as well. It is therefore, our responsibility to procure, when necessary, outside support through the various integrated agencies that work to support our communities.  The days of “what happens at school between 8:30 and 3:00 only matter” are long gone.  Today, our communities are multi faceted and require layers of support that stretch beyond the school walls and time constraints of a school day. In order to meet the needs of our changing student populations and communities, today’s educator must liaise with all levels of support within our school and community.  Schools need to model the way for the community.  Setting goals & mission statements that raise the standard for community responsibility. Creating community connections will inevitably create a social capital that yields collective benefits. Weaving the narrative of a shared success between the school-community partnerships will in the end maintain sustainability.  

The fact of the matter is that all issues that potentially affect our school environments are within our domain and it behooves us to ensure we have the necessary structures in place to support all our students. Just as we ask teachers to start opening their classrooms, we as educational leaders must also open our schools and invite, encourage and promote community integrative support.  We can’t do it alone!

The stakeholders are all of us who have a vested interest in seeing children become socially responsible productive members of society.

Identify the stakeholders… Trust the process… Trust the people… Edu-Bring

Bringing Students into the Assessment Conversation

Do your students have a voice in determining how you assess and grade their progress? The wave of assessment reform is upon us, isn’t it about time we start to ask our students when and how they would like to be graded? Including students (and parents) in our discussion should be part of the process.  When we shift the paradigm for our students (and parents), we as educators, gain a powerful ally in our efforts to support progressive systemic change.  

“I have always related my feelings of being successful and or feelings of being a failure to the grades my teachers give me. Is this right? Shouldn't I feel I have succeeded when I put in my utmost effort and reach a point of self-fulfillment with my work?”  (2011, Grade 12 Sullivan Heights Student)

This strikes right to core of why we need to engage our students in these meaningful conversations.  As educators, I believe we sometimes forget the significant impact grading and evaluating have on our students. Research tells us that when students feel the pangs of failure and/or lack of success, they often shut down and close the doors to their learning due to fears of inadequacy and/or failure.

It's time we all start to involve students in our conversations around assessment and evaluation. Why is it that research alone is not enough to convince all teachers to change their practice? If we educate our students to start using the language of assessment for learning, they will be armed with indefensible discussions regarding assessment and learning.  Students should be able to speak to their own assessment with questions such as, “How does this apply to the learning outcomes of the unit?” or “What does the 6 of 6/10 represent?” or vice versa, “what was incorrect or missing from the 4 of the 6/10?” … or even, “If the goal is for me to master a subject, can I redo my work so that I can get it right?”

“When students are involved in the assessment process, they can come to see themselves as competent learners. We need to involve students by making the targets clear to them and having them help design assessments that reflect those targets. Then we involve them again in the process of keeping track over time of their learning so they can watch themselves improving. That's where motivation comes from.”  (1999, R. Stiggins)

An Education Revolution is underfoot and we need to arm every student from K-12 with a dialogue that helps them support their own learning and take charge of their own assessment. Our narrative needs to move past platitudes of discussions about our stakeholders to a call for action that brings student voice to the debate on assessment reform. As Bal Ranu says… “Parents can provide a child with an upbringing, but it’s our job to provide them with an edu-bringing!”

 Identify the stakeholders… Trust the process… Trust the people…