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Shmoop interSECT 2014: Best Practices Make Perfect Panel First Half 283 Views


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Description:

Here's the best practices panel from our very own 2014 interSECT conference down in LA, California.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:15

So first i'd like everybody to just introduce their school

00:18

district They're demographics so you can have an understanding of

00:21

where they come from and then we can go into

00:24

what they've succeeded at within their schools So tracy so

00:28

i'm tracy best growth from bird ville texas now what's

00:31

funny about that Is it's actually six different cities We're

00:35

a suburb of fort worth texas So birdville is [woman discussing birdville]

00:38

the name of the school but there's no longer a

00:40

bird ville city by itself Our total population in the

00:44

area is one hundred twenty thousand I didn't know that

00:46

kristina looked at that for me That's Awesome Our student

00:49

population and our thirty one schools We have a total

00:53

of about twenty six thousand students three high schools seven

00:56

middle schools and twenty one elementary schools As a district

00:59

we have an average of about fifty eight percent low

01:03

SES for free and reduced However we have a

01:06

large disparity so some of our schools might be asshole

01:09

aya's ninety percent free and reduced lunch and other schools

01:13

might be as low as twenty percent So that's kind

01:15

of an interesting thing about our district is what's the

01:19

next one and the most interesting thing would be our

01:22

changing demographics overtime I can speak to this personally as [demographic chart appears]

01:26

i went to school k twelve in this district and

01:29

i have had my twenty three year career in this

01:32

district so literally i've been there since i was five

01:36

so i can describe those changes at a very personal

01:39

level But essentially we have a huge shift in what

01:43

used to be a very fluent area is now majority

01:48

low income and the ethnicity has changed which is something

01:52

very unique for our school board for our population of

01:56

teachers to relate to our students because many of them

02:00

came from the is district as well so they're not

02:02

they they've had a hard time with this change It's

02:06

also changed the the what's going on in our programs

02:11

so like we talked about it's not you know a

02:14

lot of times we focus on ethnicity and low scs [BISD program participation chart]

02:17

to raise students out of poverty but really we have

02:20

also a problem with our low income of white households

02:25

and those students performing as well So it's an interesting

02:29

dynamic that's going on that i think is really going

02:31

on all over the country So i think it's pretty

02:34

important to point out and i think that might be

02:36

all Okay um thank you tracy Next up is elizabeth

02:42

from northeast high school philadelphia Good afternoon everyone As alison

02:46

said i'm elizabeth fernandez veena from northeast high school and

02:50

we are located in the north east Most portion of

02:55

this map it's a school that was built in the

02:58

nineteen fifties as a white flight school so public transportation

03:02

doesn't really go out to where school is But many

03:05

of our students to take public transportation to school it's

03:09

become a largely immigrant working class neighborhood So if you

03:14

notice in the top left go back that shows our

03:19

income which is a thirty thousand dollars a year less [households earnings chart by neighborhood]

03:23

per household And then if you look at the bottom

03:26

left it shows the senses from two thousand ten which

03:30

represents our neighborhood And as you will see our school

03:33

certainly represents the demographics of our neighborhood So we have

03:40

a twenty nine hundred plus or minus students down from

03:44

about thirty eight hundred when i started there Part of

03:47

that has happened because of students decided to goto virtual

03:51

charter schools charter schools and other neighborhood schools now that

03:56

they can decide to travel We have about five hundred

04:00

students in our program currently but many of our

04:04

students are also exit diesel students so when we look

04:07

at our numbers a large percentage of our students were

04:10

not born in the united states... Additionally unlike

04:17

many schools a third of our school is represented by

04:21

a magnet school which was started in the nineteen sixties [woman discussing magnet schools]

04:23

as a stem program so ahead of its time and

04:27

so these students come from all over the city But

04:29

something i'd like to highlight is that even though thirty

04:32

three percent of our school is represented in the magnet

04:35

program it only represents sixty percent of our a p

04:40

program and we're working towards even changing that even further

04:44

When i started at northeast five years ago eighty percent

04:47

of the students in the program or from the magnet

04:50

program and so it was seen as an extension of

04:53

that school and we're trying to change that So as

04:55

we grow the program we're not decreasing the number of

04:58

magnet students but we are increasing the number of non

05:01

magnet students to sort of make those percentages were

05:04

eighty four percent of our students are free and reduced

05:07

lunch which is up from forty percent about six years

05:11

ago So as you see this increase in free and [student population chart]

05:14

reduced lunch which is how we measure our poverty very

05:18

and an increase in the demo changing demographics in our

05:23

school our AP scores have increasing So is the percentage

05:26

of students in ap and then fifty six they're categorized

05:30

as special ed Fifty six languages are represented so i

05:34

would like to say that there's no majority in no

05:36

minority at north east high school on so that's represented by [woman discussing north east high school]

05:40

ethnicity which you can see for yourselves It's tough to

05:43

read but it's about thirty three percent black twenty two

05:47

percent asian nineteen percent white i think it's about seventeen

05:52

percent latino I have two can't do the math that

05:53

quickly and then a cz you see our ninth grade

05:56

classes are pretty large so in our senior class does

06:00

go down to below about six hundred So we do

06:03

deal with issues of dropout rates and other We have

06:07

other issues that many schools in the country face especially

06:10

in the inner city And so as i mentioned on

06:15

dh weaken just quickly go through this Our student population

06:18

has decreased as our free and reduced lunch rate has

06:21

increased and so we're really proud of our ap gains

06:23

in particular because of that And then elizabeth how many

06:29

assistant principals do you have at the school Five four

06:34

okay depends so we've had significant budget cuts in the

06:37

last year and so we've lost a lot of staff

06:41

and were slowly rehiring cem cem folks so we have

06:45

no library in we started off the school year with

06:47

one counselor for three thousand students Um we lost twenty

06:53

six teachers last year and we lost twenty the year

06:56

before that So i've been really fortunate to be able

06:59

to keep my job and we lost assistant principals Our

07:04

entire administrative team with the exception of two people is

07:07

new this year Um so so we're dealing with a

07:11

lot of change and change that we don't necessarily want

07:15

to happen Thank you And next up dr lipkin from

07:20

tustin All right i'm gonna go really quick quickly through

07:25

this but easiest fine Easiest place to find I couldjust

07:29

reference disneyland We're pretty Close to that Most people know [Man discussing Tustin]

07:32

where that is but tustin serves three different major cities

07:38

in this area It's down in orange county right by

07:40

john wayne airport ah tustin irvine in santa ana Um [Tustin shown on map]

07:46

so we have twenty eight schools three major high schools

07:50

and then there's a continuation adult school that i did

07:52

not list there about twenty four thousand kids The thing

07:56

that's important A lot of people like working with tustin

08:00

from publishing perspective from a research perspective because we have

08:05

almost mirror demographics to the state of california So we're

08:10

a microcosm of the state on dh it's a fairly

08:12

good size sample So a lot of people really like

08:15

to look at at us the one place where we

08:18

are beating beating the odds i guess when you consider

08:22

that sample size we do have a fairly high graduate

08:27

and once you extend a little bit it actually gets

08:30

up in the about the ninety eight range But our

08:33

initial grad rate is ninety six Point two in about

08:37

eighty percent of our kids do go on a four

08:39

year college So that's a pretty high rate when you [man discussing rates of kids going to college]

08:42

consider that we are we do have that demographic set

08:45

we have specific for year MUN program AP program i

08:51

b and then early college where we actually have about

08:54

last year was about sixty kids who get there a

08:57

before they get their high school diploma So we have

09:02

we have kind of the realm We have a third

09:04

of our kids on free and reduced But then we

09:06

also have ah third of our kids whose attorney will

09:10

talk to you are their nanny every time you know

09:13

that there's an issue So you deal with the wide [Man discussing peoples issues in schools]

09:16

variety of people and it's a it's a great city

09:19

and a great place to work because you get that

09:21

full gamut Um i think that's pretty much it Okay

09:25

great And charles is a high I'm i'm charles mazzei

09:29

thie assistant principal in indio high school Um for most

09:33

of us even know indio it's more in the area

09:35

of the palm springs area California desert So me coming

09:39

out here It's actually cold Um just real quick Ah

09:43

lot of your students would probably know where we are

09:46

We are the home of the world famous coachella fest

09:48

which happens every april And if your country western fan

09:51

of two week long events called stage coach we also [events staged in indio]

09:54

have the tamale festival which is pretty international around We

09:57

have about a thousand companies come out and do that

09:59

in our city My high school is about two thousand

10:03

We used to be a little bit larger but five

10:05

years ago we opened up a second high school

10:07

in the city of india So we went from about

10:09

twenty seven hundred down to two thousand My high school

10:12

was ninety five percent hispanic Um forty eight percent of

10:16

them are english learners Um and we are i think

10:21

this year about eighty eight percent frame reduced lunch No [Man discussing ethnicity in high school]

10:26

we are the the poorer school in my school district

10:29

We are also in this in the school district that

10:32

includes cities such as retch rancho mirage indian wells palm

10:36

desert the country club cities And so we are definitely

10:39

the the opposite side of the tracks in the sense

10:42

of our area Great Thank you So we have the

10:45

desert We have disney We have philadelphia in texas So

10:49

obviously you can see there's a vast geographical difference demographic

10:55

difference but in terms of accomplishing great things with digital [Woman discussing high schools]

10:59

curriculum thes four individuals have done an amazing job incorporating

11:06

Shmoop as well as a variety of other resource is

11:10

so at this point i'd like for each of you

11:13

to just talk about some of the biggest challenges and

11:16

what your goal was to do with in your district

11:20

Well when i started in this position i really wanted [Woman discussing challenges]

11:24

to find ways to help teachers target content needs and

11:28

diagnosis those content needs appropriately especially with ap teachers that's

11:33

really difficult to talk about because they don't think they

11:37

have any content needs they understand it and so they

11:41

don't necessarily think they need much help with it but

11:44

so that was also a barrier but really what i

11:47

wanted was for them to not think of the shmoop

11:52

offering as online prep but to take those little quotations

11:57

from around the words online so that it's really about

12:00

a student taking ownership and response ability for their own

12:04

needs that a student can leave their classroom and choose

12:08

to do preparation for their course that that teacher doesn't

12:12

necessarily build or lead or directly instruct And when you

12:17

talk to ap teachers about that That makes them a

12:19

little frightened because they're a little controlling I don't know

12:22

if you've met any of them but so that's really

12:26

we could I could say all day long that the

12:28

barriers were you know we don't have the one toe

12:30

one initiative we have bring your own device but we

12:33

don't have enough band with I mean we could talk

12:35

about those those issues that come with devices all day

12:38

long But it's really about the concept of how teachers

12:41

and students view preparation and confidence in the content And

12:46

so that's what we faced i faced Sure so one

12:53

of our initial goals was really it's really started from [Woman discussing initial goals]

12:55

changing from having a very fixed mindset about ourselves and

12:59

our students tohave to changing to having a growth mindset

13:02

So what i mean by that is that we could

13:04

reflect and think about our practice what we were doing

13:06

in the classroom what we were providing for our students

13:09

and thinking about our students and what resource is an

13:11

access they had So we overhauled the entire program on

13:17

dh Many of the teachers initially said well i teach

13:19

the ap students they're the best in the brightest and

13:21

we're doing everything we can to make sure that they

13:25

succeed and unfortunately they're not We were at eighty percent

13:28

eighty percent of our exam score tto one at that

13:30

time and we started thinking about extending class time with

13:36

limited resource is how do we do that Our students

13:38

have smart phones So how do we connect with them

13:42

What spaces are available in the building for them to

13:44

come together to study What can we do with saturday's

13:47

Our building's open on saturdays for recreation Why can't we

13:51

take advantage of the classroom So we started thinking about

13:53

everything that we had not necessarily the obstacles We put

13:56

everything on paper and then said what is feasible and

14:00

and that's how we started to change So our initial

14:02

goal was really toe lower ones and to make sure

14:06

that we were providing for our students and then it

14:09

just became a it just i see everyone looking back

14:14

so what's back there on building community So we started

14:19

also having community building events we go ice skating Now

14:22

every year we go to a Phillies game at the

14:24

end of the year after ap exams And so now

14:27

it went from students taking ap classes to students becoming

14:30

ap students and ap scholars and that was an unintentional [Woman discussing AP students]

14:35

outcome of what we started doing And i really think

14:40

that just by taking baby steps and not to use

14:43

the words that we use this morning becoming intoxicated with

14:45

potential but just taking it one step at a time

14:48

is really how we got to where we are wonderful

14:53

grant All right andi i put all my answers on

14:56

the slide so i don't know but some of the

14:59

things that some of the things that i didn't share

15:02

before though really quickly um we really did face a

15:06

lot of obstacles but a lot of our obstacles are

15:09

also advantages when you really look at it Um we

15:12

have jonathan blackmore is in the back he's the tustin

15:15

high principal but he's been working with his school for

15:19

about four years I believe with shmoop um and has

15:23

had a lot of tremendous success with ap but we've

15:26

also been really fortunate in our district that band with

15:29

issues are not a problem We got one hundred and

15:31

thirty million dollars tech bond that we have to use

15:33

just for technology S o r infrastructure is just ridiculous

15:39

and we have one two one programs and things like

15:41

that that we're putting into place so we're really looking

15:44

for ah full digital transformation on dh not just put

15:49

a you know a book onto a device or just

15:52

have a really cool website but really to change teaching

15:56

on dh really change learning night and day from what

16:00

it wass on dh we don't have huge problems we

16:03

have high socioeconomic six overall so we're trying to force

16:07

change in an area where a lot Of people think

16:09

we didn't need a lot of change and that is

16:11

kind of ah hard time but with common core We

16:14

thought it was perfect timing to do something like that

16:18

So a lot of the things that we have for

16:20

major obstacles with this curriculum rob's obstacles that handing uh

16:25

ipad as well or something like that to a student

16:27

to walk home through three gang neighborhoods with eight hundred

16:31

dollars in their back pocket you know So we had

16:33

different things like that to consider whether they have internet

16:37

at home which we have solutions for those things just

16:40

the sheer size of it But also how are we

16:43

going How are we really going to change things with

16:46

this Are we gonna get better results How are we

16:50

going teo Change teaching in the classroom How we can

16:53

extend the school day and then really take the tutor

16:58

market away We have a really strong tutoring market and

17:02

it creates such an imbalance between our rich and are

17:05

poor You especially see that in a p and i

17:09

think it's the genius of what shmoop can do on

17:12

and it's also the genius of people That are visionary

17:16

like jonathan and are able to see that this helps

17:19

lower and close that gap because for free essentially for

17:25

our kids once they log in their ableto access ap

17:31

is a perfect spot because they can't take those tests

17:34

five seven times I can't remember how many times but

17:37

at least five times practicing in the past only the

17:40

rich kid that could get a kaplan book or go

17:44

sign up for ah crash course or something like that

17:48

actually has that access or can pay for a tutor

17:51

or something like that This really levels the playing field

17:54

um and provides a lot of those opportunities for kids

17:56

so we were really looking for for that home from

18:00

a teacher training perspective We were really worried as well

18:04

that are are certain demographic of teachers that were pretty

18:07

set in their ways and not digital native we're just

18:11

going to be afraid of using the internet period But

18:14

with that hundred thirty million dollar tech bond we hired

18:17

thirteen digital learning coaches that are specifically to train teachers

18:22

on dh provide p d every day all day amendments

18:26

where people so so a lot of things that i

18:30

could complain but i'm i would not have a lot

18:33

of sympathizers i don't think and then the other things

18:36

that we're concerned about is obviously cost too when we're

18:39

talking about the scale that we have weii what had

18:44

some big ambitious goals but we had things like plato

18:48

and we have all of these other digital re sources

18:50

that are out there and they cost a fortune and

18:53

digital books and then you throw in eight hundred dollar

18:55

ipad on the top of it or whatever and it

18:57

starts dad up one hundred thirty million dollars It sounds

19:00

funny but it doesn't go very far with twenty four

19:02

thousand people over thirty years so we have so much

19:06

to take in a consideration but from a curricular perspective

19:11

the bang for your buck with this particular program and

19:15

his wide ranging is it is it's just incredible You

19:20

know if you look at a digital even the most

19:22

interactive digital textbook about sixty two teo eighty dollars is

19:26

about as cheap as you can get it So this

19:29

is just a tremendous value for what we've been able

19:31

to get so we were and i don't work for

19:34

smooth by the way so but anyway it really we're

19:39

also looking for a one stop shop way needed We

19:43

want one log in for everything to make it easy

19:46

for parents to make it easy for kids so we

19:48

don't have to hire an entire i t person just

19:50

to manage everything that was going on And this also

19:53

serves that purpose so thank you Thanks graham You're hired

19:57

if you'd like tio uh charles Um well the story

20:02

with shmoop in indio high school actually goes back about

20:04

four years ago Um when california decided to push for

20:08

the race for top grant um my high school was

20:11

put on the chronically underperforming list We had an a

20:15

p i that was pretty much stuck around six Forty

20:18

and so were placed on this list and pretty much

20:21

we were given a year to turn it around Um and so were placed on this list and pretty much

20:21

we were given a year to turn it around Um

20:26

we came up with a bunch of plans One of

20:28

our plans was to start um we went from the

20:30

six periods scheduled to an eighth period schedule to design

20:33

more support classes for definitely are struggling students That left

20:37

us with a sort of a good problem and we

20:40

weren't exactly sure what to do with our top students

20:43

on And so i was assigned with the task of

20:45

finding some curriculum for low level students our middle level

20:49

students and are high achieving students I was up at

20:54

a conference and i happened to run into paul tailor

20:58

and he started telling me about what we could help

21:00

you with Cassie we could help you with the eels

21:03

We could help you with a p we cannot be

21:04

with us and we could help you with and i

21:07

said okay and i wouldn't talk to some other people

21:10

They were much more expensive so i came back to

21:12

paul tailor come on And that sort of began our

21:15

relationship Um he mentioned earlier the one thing that i

21:19

think was the easiest for me to sell my staff

21:23

was that it was one website want every student cause

21:27

i have students that are english learners that aaron ap

21:29

classes that are struggling to pass the math portion of

21:32

the exit exam and they have one log in one

21:35

website and a teacher that is they were able to

21:38

go to that one website and so we started using

21:41

the word shmoop shmoop points all over campus That is

21:45

like ninety five percent hispanic Um but i think because

21:50

of that i also was able to reach my staff

21:53

in a very easy way In the sense of there

21:56

was only one stop for pretty much all of our

21:58

problems Um with the support from the extra support classes

22:03

from going to the eighth period over two days blocks

22:05

get going we were able to raise their test scores

22:09

We would we didn't get fired Thankfully um but we

22:12

also have seen an incredible growth in our students on

22:15

our all of our higher tv in students in the

22:17

sense of a p a c t as they became

22:20

a priority and getting also the help that they needed

22:24

at a low income school Wonderful So to segway to

22:28

that let's talk about the results that i would like

22:31

for each of you to brag about You have seen

22:34

tremendous improvements with your test scores So let's we'll go

22:39

back around start with tracy i think their slides but

22:45

so they're okay All right so with shmoop and actually

22:49

what's up there right now has changed But i did

22:52

buy this district wide for all three of our high

22:55

schools and some middle schools if they would convince me

22:58

they had reason to be on it I said yes

23:01

i've essentially told no one know which is a fun

23:05

offend a fun thing to do but since this since

23:08

i did this alison came out and we did a

23:11

go visit the world and in february alone i've signed i did this alison came out and we did a

23:11

go visit the world and in february alone i've signed

23:16

up almost five hundred more students because of that push

23:21

and our number of hours on the program has increased

23:25

by in just one month i think by over three and our number of hours on the program has increased

23:25

by in just one month i think by over three

23:28

hundred hours So really this goes back to that goal

23:32

that i had in the beginning about students realizing they

23:36

can take responsibility for their learning and do things on

23:39

their own So even if they've signed up under even

23:42

if they joined a teacher's class they're still having to

23:44

do this most likely on a device that is not

23:48

school provided because we don't have a one to one

23:51

initiative and i just dropped everything and she's picking it

23:53

up for me So that is extremely exciting to know

23:58

that the students are on their own Realizing that prepping

24:03

for a p s a t s yeah can't be

24:07

done on their own and that is extremely exciting The

24:10

other thing i think there's another slide maybe are we

24:14

just talking about shmoop results or okay i only have

24:17

one life so there my my shmoop results are awesome

24:21

and to be determined on this year scores ah and

24:24

now elizabeth can you please brag about the wonderful results

24:29

that you've seen despite librarians counselors money anything so i'd

24:34

like to add that our student to computer ratio is

24:38

i was going backwards but it's one tonight so we

24:40

have nine students for everyone computer and if you really

24:44

break that down and think about the desktops that aaron

24:47

classrooms it's actually worse than that So when thinking about

24:51

how to implement shmoop we had to think about what's

24:55

feasible as i said before and what do all of

24:58

our students have access to Not all of them have

25:01

access to a smartphone but most do now and most

25:05

of them have access to a library down the street

25:08

and up until last june they had access to our

25:10

school library which has about forty computers So when we

25:16

talked about the change that we made in our program

25:18

it was about student autonomy students taking control of their

25:22

learning and we were just there to guide them and

25:25

provide them with opportunities so that's how we were able

25:27

to use shmoop so if you look at this bar

25:29

graph the bottom number shows the number of students involved

25:33

with our ap program in two thousand eleven you'll see

25:37

an increase in students and that's because we had an

25:41

increase in federal funding and so we were able to

25:43

have an eight periods school day We now have a

25:46

seven periods school day which limits the number of ap

25:49

course offerings that we can have and therefore the number

25:52

of students who can take them You can also see

25:55

on an increase in the number of exams ordered and

25:59

i'm happy to say that this year i will be

26:00

ordering about seven hundred exams so our numbers have stayed

26:04

the same but the number of student taking each exam

26:08

has or the number of exams each student will be

26:10

taking his increased i also have to add that all

26:13

of the data that i'm going to share represents all

26:16

of our students taking the exam because the school district

26:19

thankfully does pay for every student to take our exam

26:22

So when i show you our data it represents the

26:25

entire population of ap students Okay so this this graph

26:33

is the one i'm most proud of and seems to

26:36

be the most popular if you see the top line

26:40

It shows the number of one's our students scored over

26:43

the years so we were seventy six percent in two

26:45

thousand seven and now we were down to forty six

26:50

percent last year and so the middle number the middle

26:55

line represents the number of college eligible exams which is

26:58

threes fours and fives Our goal for this year is

27:01

toe have those lines flip flop so that we have

27:06

mawr college eligible exams than then one so that's what

27:09

we're working towards this year No and i just wanted

27:14

to also that we had zero ap scholars in two

27:16

thousand seven and twenty two last year so the number

27:21

of students getting a three or more on three or

27:23

more exams has also increased dramatically I'm our schoolwide college

27:31

going rate in terms of matriculation is sixty three percent

27:35

but for our ap students i just dis aggregated the

27:37

data and it's at eighty six percent and this year

27:42

if you see ccp is the largest so this to

27:45

the left you'll see where our students have been accepted

27:48

to and where they've decided they're not where they said

27:50

to go where they've been accepted to and ccp is

27:52

our community college in philadelphia Now if you go to

27:56

the slide with the college acceptances for this year these

28:01

air the schools to which our students have been accepted

28:03

to thus far as of last friday at northeast so

28:08

you'll notice some changes We have lots of local top

28:14

tier schools and our students are exploring schools other than

28:17

temple penn state lasalle drexel which our local university So

28:22

we're really happy about that We also have had students

28:25

this year with interviews to stanford m i t princeton

28:29

eso we're keeping our fingers crossed for them These are

28:32

our statewide standardized test scores there included simply because it

28:36

shows the school wide performance on our state test Our

28:40

state tests recently changed but it's about fifty four percent

28:43

so way have definitely have some work to do But

28:46

this is sort of teo give you an idea of

28:48

what type of school were coming from and i don't

28:55

know if there's anything else can you tell the story

28:58

about the ap computer science program that you're gonna put

29:01

together next year So this year we have five students

29:06

I probably shouldn't say their names going to be difficult

29:08

Who approached me in the beginning of the year in

29:10

said ms fernandez if we teach ourselves computer science and

29:14

put together of course and we teach it ourselves um

29:19

can we take the test at the end of the

29:20

year And so i said well if you prove to

29:23

me that you have the content knowledge to do that

29:25

then sure because the school district pays for the exam

29:29

so they've been saying after school teaching themselves a p

29:33

computer science and actually using shmoop to help them along

29:36

the way because we don't have a teacher to help

29:38

them and i just gave them their practiced us and

29:42

they will be taking the exam So then some underclassman

29:45

approached me and said miss fernandez can we get a

29:48

p computer science next year And i always like to

29:50

say yes so i said yes but you have to

29:53

put together a proposal and get thirty three Signatures Because

29:57

that's the number of students that we need to have

29:59

in a class to be able to have a teacher

30:01

for them on each of those students needs to write

30:04

Why computer Why they want to take this So last

30:08

week i got a proposal on my desk with thirty

30:10

three signatures And now i have to figure out how

30:13

to actually approach my administration to get this class But

30:16

i think what this story shows is that not only

30:20

are teachers taking initiative in our school but students are

30:24

to make things happen And when you do have a

30:26

grassroots culture like we haven't northeast things can happen Change

30:31

can happen despite everything that's going on both locally on

30:37

dh also nationally in terms of of the political scene

30:41

So this story's just telling about how our school culture

30:45

has changed and how student ownership is really important when

30:49

thinking about making change in the school Thank you and

30:54

that's what Six snow days already that you've accumulated at

30:57

six snow days Yeah we no longer have spring break

31:01

on now on tio tustin and grant way we have

31:07

expanded now so all of our high school students have

31:10

access and now all of our middle school students have

31:13

access so they're using it that's new this year our

31:18

best data on shmoop use comes from tustin high so

31:23

i have that information right here Um and you can

31:27

kind of see the longitude no results of this but

31:29

this is with a fairly stable number of kids involved

31:34

with the school but our number of test takers hasn't

31:38

changed dramatically but the number of scores three or above

31:42

have gone up dramatically since the start of on shmoop

31:47

use at this particular school also i think that's the

31:52

biggest thing is that it's not hard for us to

31:55

convince kids to take ap classes or take on dh

32:00

and this is our lowest From a socioeconomic perspective this

32:03

is our lowest socioeconomic high school thea other too two

32:07

are considerably higher from a socioeconomic perspective there especially the

32:12

one that's located in irvine they have many many more

32:17

students that are taking ap and many more people who

32:20

are um who are taking multiple ap tests but the

32:27

biggest growth has been with closing that achievement gap in

32:30

providing a level playing field and jonathan has done an

32:34

excellent job of of utilizing this and his and making

32:38

this known to his teachers and you can see that

32:42

here jonathan i know i'm putting you on the spot

32:45

but is there anything i'm missing about your school in

32:47

particular I think most importantly with us for shmoop it

32:52

in one of these is that we dealt with was

32:54

was the hole issue of equity and access for our

32:59

students and we do have a very very large avid

33:02

population We did it we we encourage our avid students

33:08

to take advance placement courses especially their eleventh and twelfth

33:12

grade year We also used the ap potential program identified

33:16

ap students and and encourage them to enroll in advanced

33:20

placement So knowing that we're taking students that have you

33:24

know historically not not taken a college preparatory course load

33:28

that they don't have help at home they're going to

33:30

be first generation college students when they go to college

33:33

What could we do to help them and make the

33:36

curriculum accessible for them And that's really where Shmoop has

33:38

bridged the gap for our students and it's Our students

33:43

have become drivers of shmoop and they drive the teachers

33:47

especially ap teachers especially within our abbot program especially within

33:50

our honors and ap courses The teachers are the students

33:54

learn it is quickly or more effectively And then they

33:57

go back and teach the teachers which has been a

33:59

really really great transformation for us Can we go to

34:03

the side That was right before this really quick something

34:06

that i know jumped out at me specifically this year

34:09

And i'm really anxious to look at scores about it

34:13

We have never used this in our continuation high school

34:17

before on dh this year our continuation high school principal

34:21

was became aware of it on dh They put it

34:24

in a really heavy use with casey and passing the

34:29

high school exit exams and s oh it's a high

34:32

heel population very low socioeconomic typically and we had i

34:39

think we only had fifty students who needed to pass

34:41

it this year in forty three kids Were some of

34:45

the heaviest users of shmoop in the casey prep area

34:49

forty three of the seventy two kids that we had

34:51

that were really focusing in that area they spent something

34:54

like nine hundred hours on casey prep on shmoop and

34:59

i think nine hundred hours might be more hours than

35:03

they have gone to some of these kids have gone

35:05

to school onda and that is kind of a funny

35:08

statement to think about but you don't end up at

35:11

continuation by having stellar attendants and s so it's really

35:16

amazing it struck a chord with that particular group of

35:19

kids where they believe in it it's entertaining it's kind

35:24

of funny and they get immediate feedback those air all

35:28

things and they get shmoop ants they get all of

35:30

these little extrinsic things that they may not get with

35:33

somebody else they don't have to connect with the teacher

35:35

they don't have to show up on time they can

35:37

pull it up wherever they want to it's just it's

35:40

available on bits quality and i can't wait for scores

35:45

to go up so i can say that's why so

35:48

it's kind of ah ah cool thing But i'm really

35:51

anxious to see what those forty three kids that spent

35:53

that alone of time I know that they passed the

35:56

exit exam So that's a good thing Yeah but i

35:59

can't wait to see you know whitmore Quantifiable data on

36:02

those forty three kids right And that's Ah great segue

36:05

way over to charles because charles dunn has done a

36:07

fantastic job video being all levels within test prep In

36:13

increasing the key see rates increasing the ap scholars as

36:16

well as a city and

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