of lessons on a daily basis throughout the school . Initially this expectation helped our site administrators prioritize what was important throughout their busy day and helped our teaching staff become accustomed to seeing frequent visitors in their classrooms .
In the first three years , every principal had the option of developing their own criteria and communication process for feedback . Now in year four , district and site administrators have engaged in the process of developing a common language to be used and reinforced across all of our school sites . This common language was created from our collective experiences as educators , as well as current research on strategies that have the greatest impact on the learning experiences for students .
Once the common language was developed , site administrators created a strategic plan to introduce it to staff and began to implement , observe and provide feedback that reinforced this common language .
The implementation of California ’ s new standards in the areas of English language arts , mathematics and English language development served as a springboard to help us strengthen our alignment in the areas of teaching and learning across the district .
Rather than utilize publisher materials as our sole guide for providing quality curriculum , grade-level teachers engaged in the process of creating units of study in both English language arts and mathematics that bundled the new state standards in a cohesive manner .
Once the standards were bundled appropriately , staff identified learning and language objectives within each unit , the academic vocabulary students would need to master the content , and utilized teachercreated culminating assessments and performance tasks for end of unit mastery assessment .
The units of study also provide scaffolds to help teachers and students by suggesting resources , discussion activities , sentence frames and text dependent questions for teachers to consider using throughout the units . These units of study and the identified supports provide teachers with common expectations for student learning , while intentionally providing flexibility and opportunities for creativity to the individual teacher on how students master the desired content .
Monitoring achievement
In order to achieve our non-negotiable goals , there needed to be a clear and purposeful monitoring system in place . Our approach utilizes a transparent monitoring system that includes multiple factors that influence the academic achievement and quality of instruction in our classrooms .
The district provides site specific , monthly data updates to our schools in the areas of academic achievement , attendance , student behavior , and teacher observation and feedback . This data is collected from our different data ecosystems on a monthly basis and placed into a shared document among all administrators in the district .
This level of transparency helps us identify which sites are experiencing the most success in specific areas and gives us a mechanism to leverage those effective strategies at other sites that may need extra support .
The research is clear on the direct correlation between having effective teachers in every classroom and their positive impact on student achievement . Our emphasis on hiring quality teachers is important , but there is also a focus on the continuous improvement of pedagogical skills and the common language previously mentioned that are highly emphasized throughout our district .
To assist with the efficiency , calibration and monitoring of classroom instruction , we enlisted a customizable walkthrough tool called DigiCoach to help us generate data and monitor the effectiveness of our daily instruction . This tool allows site administrators to positively reinforce concepts and strategies witnessed during observations and also offer suggestions for improvement in those areas they are not seeing consistently in the classrooms .
10 Leadership