York's Vision

This was sent to all staff members on Friday. I wanted to be sure to share it with our blog followers here. ......... Now that our second year together is underway, we wanted to take a moment to tie together some of the shifts that have taken place, the Daggett presentation, and the future direction for our community at York. Whether the shift was to impact relationships with students (i.e. smaller study halls), to address student balance and/or grit (i.e. our level change policy), or to open access for students (i.e. co-taught general education classes for graduation requirements), they all have one goal in mind--finding new ways to ensure that all students are prepared for any possible future before them. We--the administrative team--will be stopping by departments over the next few months to talk about our direction together; however, we also wanted to send it out to you, so everyone can take a look when the opportunity arises. In Bill Daggett’s book, The Daggett System for Effective Instruction, he states that “Organizational leadership must inspire the education community, create a culture for change, and do away with structures, rules, and practices that are impediments to effective and efficient instruction.” As we have centered our focus as a building (and also as a district) around student growth and student access to college, career, and life-ready skills; we have unified our efforts to enhance future-ready learning. Everything we’ve built over the 2016-2017 school year has come full circle into the opening Institute Day presentations. Rigor, relevance, and relationships are the underlying components of a successful educational organization. Here at York, we’ve embraced these concepts and operationalized them in different ways across the building in order to meet the needs of each individual student, to gauge their personal interests, and to help them succeed. Here are ways in which we see it at work: PLCs: Professional Learning Communities are taking hold across the building. Albeit in different spots on the continuum, all teachers are working extremely hard to effectively analyze student growth and effective assessment. This critical focus is how we are able to ignite interdisciplinary collaboration, pathways, and RtI by continuing to address the three R’s: how can we help students build relationships with us, each other, and between our content and their future? How rigorous is the level of critical thinking in which we are engaging our students? How are we offering experiences that bring relevance to our students’ lives? Interdisciplinary Collaboration: English, Social Studies, and Physical Education have come together to create meaningful, interdisciplinary experiences for students across content areas to enhance the relevance and engagement of those particular groups. Not only have staff members begun to take leadership with the upcoming Erin’s Law forum (September 14th) and a new constitution forum, we have asked staff to consider new courses that will help our students read the world in which they currently live, and staff members have begun to present us with possible interdisciplinary courses for the future. The leadership that’s emerging across the building as these opportunities take hold is commendable. We are truly embracing taking risks. Pathways: The purpose of career pathways is to truly peak the individual interests of students and guide them to a future that will prepare them for a competitive global economy in their post-secondary pursuits (college, two-year colleges, military, careers, and technical / workforce experiences). Currently, we have thriving pathways that offer certification in culinary arts, business, CTE, early childhood, and medical careers. Over the next two years, we will see a manufacturing and incubator capstone emerge for CTE and business. As we continue on this journey, we are developing an online, interactive course catalogue, and we are seeking ways to reveal a course of study that will best lead to preparing students for their future careers. RtI: The Reponse to Intervention team has been identifying areas of student need and working at processes that will put Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions in place for those student needs; however, we would like to continue to find ways of addressing student needs in the classroom (Tier 1) by asking the foundational question: how can we increase student access to a full, grade level curriculum while supporting the staff to help students meet that challenging curriculum?