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

Here's the best practices panel from our very own 2014 interSECT conference down in LA, California.This is the first half of the conference, to wat...

Shmoop interSECT 2014: Best Practices Make Perfect Panel Second Half
225 Views

Here's the best practices panel from our very own 2014 interSECT conference down in LA, California. This is the second half of the panel, to watch...

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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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