Date: Monday January 26, 2009
Time: 7:00 a.m.
Location: United Way of Fresno County 4949 East Kings Canyon Road Fresno, CA
Participants:
· Amy Arambula
· Yvonne Freve
· Dick Keyes
· Tracewell Hanrahan
· Chris Gage
· Joel Rabin
1. Review previous meeting
2. Discussion of recommendation format
a. Breadth vs. depth – the recommendations need to move the district forward. It needs to be a collective will, between the teachers, parents, community members, students….for where we need to go.
b. It is therefore important to not only make recommendations at the 30,000 foot level, such as “the district needs to engage students,” but to also make recommendations more specific such as, “all students in middle school should participate in _____, to develop awareness about careers.”
c. For example, if the Commission believes that all students need to have relationships with positive role-models or adults, then we would need to make recommendations that would enable that to happen.
3. We need to identify our assumptions, such as:
a. The district has finite resources
b. There are resources available in the community, but they would need to be organized into a meaningful system for students.
4. We need to get at what the district’s “strategy” should be around project-based-learning for example….experiential learning
5. Our recommendations shouldn’t just be about dropping a weight onto the district. They need to be framed so that it doesn’t just add more to the district’s plate, but its about partnering with the district. For example, the student-mentoring issue, if a recommendation comes down in that area, we believe that the student is also responsible, for…In other words, we need to describe what each stakeholder is responsible for bringing to the table.
6. There isn’t any single activity that will prepare students to be a career ready graduate. There are a number of things that are going to have to work together throughout a student’s life. Project-based-learning is one strategy
7. Using the Career Awareness, Career Exploration, Career Identification framework would be a good starting point, then we could use a logic model to organize our thinking, for example:
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Focus Area |
District Goal |
Focus Group (seg. Grade level) |
Best Practice or Strategy |
Available and Necessary Resources |
Responsibilities (student, school, community) |
Challenges and Potential Obstacles |
Timeline |
Recommendation |
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Career Awareness |
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Career Games |
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Career Exploration |
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Career Identification |
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Project Based Learning |
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8. To ensure that we make meaningful recommendations that can be implemented, we need to check with the district specialists in each area to find out what is already happening. For example, we need to hear from staff at the Community and Family Engagement Network.
9. We need to identify a specific method for businesses to interact with the district. There ought to be a centralized office, or a specific person, who acts as the point of entry for this work.
a. We believe that businesses and schools should partner for the betterment of students, therefore,
b. The district should develop a system to manage school-business partnerships
10. Discussion of retuning to the 5 questions from the Jan 20 meeting at CART:
a. How do we best engage our students? Our parents?
b. How do we best engage community and business ?
c. What support systems need to be in place? Both academic and career-oriented.
d. Who will deliver these supports to students?
e. What are the best ways to provide our students with career awareness, and exploration opportunities?
f. How will we know if these programs are preparing our students?
11. There are some challenges to implement project-based-learning
a. Requires different curriculum and teaching strategies
b. Reduces the ability to follow a pacing guide
c. Reduces the amount of control teachers have over the learning process
d. May inhibit teachers ability to cover all of the standards
e. Creating opportunities for students to experience learning takes different kinds of time and energy
12. We can’t just add more activities onto a school, or a classroom teacher, without also eliminating something they are already doing.
13. How do we engage students to be career ready?
a. We also need to find ways to work creatively and find other times and places to get things done, for example, after school programs, or projects with the business community outside of class
b. What if we had a standard-based grading policy that allowed the district to recognize what students were actually learning, rather than the achievement on a particular test.
c. The workgroup should speak with someone from the curriculum department about what it would take to implement project-based-learning in elementary, middle, and high schools.
d. How can we change the way we assess what students learn/know so they’re not just filling in bubbles?
14. We need to ensure that we make recommendations about how community-based-organizations can support what happens in the classroom?
a. We need to create effective structures that engage students in these places, like in Boys and Girls Clubs, where they may feel safer than they do at school, to become engaged in career ready activities.
b. Inquiry based, hands-on learning opportunities for students
15. Engaging students interests is a key in the classroom
16. Possible Commission Recommendations…and things to share with the other workgroups:
a. Short blocks of learning – 40 or 50 minutes does not seem to be an effective way to engage students in an active learning process. It seems better to have students learning for a longer period of time. Also, in the real world, a bell doesn’t work and we move to another activity
b. Integrated curriculum, project-based learning, requires that the district provide support to teachers to implement new lessons and strategies. Maybe there needs to be a policy that all third graders all participate in the same type of project each semester. We suspect that teachers would want to implement project-based-learning because its more interesting for them to teach that way, because they have more opportunity to be creative
c. The currently used standardized assessments are not the best way to measure the character and competencies for workplace success. Find other ways to assess student learning. Business partners could play an important role in this area. Having another adult, another voice, telling students why they need to know what they’re learning
d. The organization of the classroom day. We need to work with teachers and set expectations around things other than test scores. We need to give teachers time to divide students based on their needs (differentiated instruction).
e. Longer school day should be explored
f. Eliminate activities currently being performed by teachers that can be contracted out to others. Elementary teachers shouldn’t teach PE, contract with Parks and Rec or other people to teach PE and give teachers time to collaborate, or time to deliver career-awareness activities.
g. We need to have a progression of events, and formal agreements, that will allow teachers to intervene appropriately to support student learning. It’s a lever for teachers. For example consider implementing contracts with students. Schools have contracts with the district and teachers have contracts to perform as well, so we should consider having students sign contracts for what they’re responsible for doing.
h. If the district is going to send someone (a teacher for example) to training, then the teachers need time to practice the implementation of that new learning, to demonstrate what they’ve learned.
i. Students learning doesn’t happen in finite periods of time, just because students didn’t complete the learning from a class. Consider giving students incomplete grades and having them complete the work over breaks.
j. Summer school doesn’t make sense for students to complete an entire course in such a short amount of time
k. Giving students “0” makes no sense mathematically because it digs students into a hole so deep, that they cant dig themselves out.
l. Don’t make every CTE course an a-g course.
m. District needs someone at school to provide community resources to parents, especially for students of poverty. This needs to be formalized. We need to standardize what we’re doing at all schools.
n. The district needs a way to get the city, county, CBO’s to focus resources in particular ways for particular needs based on student referrals.
o. End social promotions.
i. Don’t move students to the next grade if they’ve failed. This seems to be a problem at middle school where a student can fail, but still progresses.
ii. Its too late to involve parents when the final grade is given. If a student is failing, connect with parents immediately when students are at risk of failing
iii. Give students time to demonstrate what they’ve learned
p. We need to help parents learn about all of the resources available to work with schools to support student learning. The district has great resources, like PowerSchool, and the ability to communicate with teachers directly, but they don’t know these resources exist.
q. Standardize what is taught in Sociology of Living and the second semester of freshman year. Focus on experiential learning as well as academic knowledge. Look for ways to integrate that material with English 9 curriculum.
r. Teachers need strategy sessions by grade level to find ways to integrate solutions/interventions that are timely…don’t wait till the end of the semester
s. Community assets are critical to creating an environment for student learning. In communities of economic poverty, we need to be much more intentional about what we’re doing to develop students’ assets (cultural capital). We also need to engage the highly successful, educated, and skilled professionals in the neighborhoods of poverty to work in the schools.
t. Find ways to use technology to introduce students to the whole range of careers available in Fresno. Video tape parent/guest speakers and then make them all available for all students through the district.