SCHOOL REVIEW FROM A DISTRICT PERSPECTIVE

As the Director of Reading for the Springfield (MA) Public Schools, it was difficult to consider being away from my district for a nearly a week to participate in a Cornerstone School Review. Last year was my first year as Director, and the demands of the job made going on a review out of the question. This year I promised myself that I would try to go on one during the first part of the year. When the opportunity to join a review at the Worthington Hooker School, New Haven, Ct, just an 90 minutes south of Springfield presented itself, I signed on. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to work with and learn from Norma Empringham and the other members of the review team.

The review did not begin until late afternoon, so I went into my office to take care of some last minute work and leave things in order for the next few days.  I changed the message on my voice mail and put an out-of-office notification on my email in hopes of reducing the number of messages I would receive while I was away. I also decided that I would make an effort to check my email at the hotel at least once a day so I could keep up on the messages that needed immediate attention. Then with bags and computer packed, I headed south to New Haven.

As I drove, I thought about my own district. We have four Cornerstone Schools in Springfield, two Foundation Schools, Frank H. Freedman and Fredrick Harris, and two schools that are new to Cornerstone, Thomas P. Balliet and Mary M.Walsh. Terry Powe, our Content Supervisor, and I are also working with Springfield’s four District Coaches and the Collaborative Professional Development Teachers (CPDT’s) from each of our 33 elementary schools to aid understanding of Cornerstone practices. The previous Friday, Terry had shown the CPDT’s Lu Lewis’ video about classroom environments. After seeing the video, we talked about how important it was to help teachers de-clutter classrooms while making sure that they have all the appropriate materials to address the needs of all students. Lu’s statement that everything in a classroom has to have a purpose really resonated for me. For me the review had already begun. I would think deeply about the purpose of the practices and materials that I would see in classrooms over the next few days.

When I arrived in New Haven, I met with Norma and the other members of our Review Team, Johnnie Tankersley from Talledega County Alabama, and Shelley Woodson and Michael Sanders for Stamford, CT. We discussed the schedule for visiting the classrooms at Worthington Hooker, the plan for our meetings for the next day and the process of completing our Overview Logs where we would record our findings from the classrooms and the evidence that supported them. The next morning, after a short briefing at the school, we set out for the classrooms.

Since Worthington Hooker is a first-year Cornerstone school, I focused on the environment and the purpose of the layout and materials. When I entered classrooms, I found that there was little extraneous clutter. Areas were designed for crafting and composing meaning. Children’s literature displays and classroom libraries invited children to read books from a variety of genre. Small lamps gave off soft light and pillows provided children with comfortable places to read.

I sketched the seating arrangements in each room and began to ask myself a series of questions. Does this arrangement allow for interaction among the students and among the teachers and the students? Are the desks arranged in groups so the children can talk easily to each other? When desks are arranged in rows and horseshoe configurations, is talk among students limited? What is the purpose of single seats that are staggered among the groups of desks? Are these seats for children with challenging behaviors? Each question was not one to which I would get an immediate answer, but rather the beginning of an hypothesis to be articulated and then possibly checked out by the entire team. Throughout the week, I would continue to formulate similar questions.

In addition to attending to the physical set up of the room, I also paid close attention to the talk and resulting written work. Again, I had a series of questions. Was I hearing mainly teacher talk in the form of IRE sequences (Cazden) in which the teacher initiates a question, the child gives a brief response and the teacher provides a quick evaluation like excellent? Or was I hearing genuine discussions? Was the written work mainly word answers, or were students being asked to write extensive thoughts?

As a district administrator, seeing the classrooms in New Haven also led me to reflect on similar classroom arrangements and to consider the same questions about classroom talk and the impact on student learning in Springfield. At the end of the day, back in our meeting room, our team talked and compared findings. There was agreement and disagreement and the formulation of assignments to further check on our hypothesis the next day.

The next day, Norma suggested that I join another reviewer in Charting the School. This practice requires the study of hallway displays to determine what messages were conveyed. Johnnie Tankersley and I went together and recorded the messages that we found on the walls. They included posters about State Standards, portraits of the students, writing samples, information about the student population and a map that families had marked to indicate the 42 countries and 19 states that are the original homes of the diverse student population at Worthington Hooker. In Springfield, I also study the print that is displayed in school hallways and classrooms. As I Charted the School at Hooker with Springfield in the back of my mind, more questions arose. What is the purpose of the display? Does text accompany the work? Are there captions that explain the work to the uninitiated visitor? Is there a clear explanation of the standard that is being addressed and how it is being met? Are there rubric-based teacher comments on the work that provide genuine feedback to the writer?

Back at the hotel, the members of our review team continued to record our findings in our Overview Logs. We also talked about some commonalities among our observations. We had one final visit to make to Worthington Hooker. On this day, I would shadow two students and observe one of the coaches as she modeled a classroom lesson.

The Cornerstone Coach I observed had spent the first weeks of the school year arranging the classroom environment and modeling lessons for her co-teacher and the students. During my visit, she modeled a lesson where she read the students a story that focused on a major character. She then invited the first grade students to write a story in which they would be the major character or “star.” Students delighted in writing. Their ideas were complex and they helped each other figure out how to spell the words needed to capture their ideas in print. Within twenty minutes, the students I watched each wrote over six lines of text, one of the students was an ELL student who did not speak English a year ago.  It was clear that the work of the coach, the teacher and the students within this supportive environment was working. Seeing a school from an outside perspective clarified the next steps that were needed in my own district. I could not wait to get back to Springfield!

Once I arrived home, the first thing I did was to put together a schedule for our Content  Supervisor so she could be in schools on a regular basis. I knew that, like the coach in New Haven, her expertise was needed to move the new schools in our district forward and to support and advance the work of our Foundation Schools. Then together, we visited one of our new schools. We found the Cornerstone work taking shape. In many rooms furniture was arranged to encourage collaboration. Classrooms had libraries and areas for crafting and small group work, and teachers were eager to find out more about Cornerstone. Our next order of business was to hold a district meeting with the principals to discuss partnerships between Cornerstone Foundation and partner schools. At that meeting, we finalized the pairings of the partner and foundation schools, described the support that the district would provide to the schools and set up days for our CPDT’s to visit the Foundation Schools.

Day by day our work in our district continues, and I have a clear picture of the goals for our schools as a result of my participation in the Cornerstone School Review school review in New Haven. Rather than detracting from my work in my district, the time at Worthington Hooker School provided a fresh perspective and a deeper understanding of the steps to take next. I think other district administrators would find participating in a school review and working closely with other Cornerstone colleagues beneficial to their work. You’ll find that you can even stay in touch with your own district through late-night email!