Building an Engaging Community: Practices and Interventions that Support Students in Schools

C H A P T E R

23 Building an Engaging Community: Practices and Interventions that Support Students in Schools Anne M. Beaton1 and Andrew Beaton2 1

Robbinsdale Area Schools, New Hope, MN, United States 2Edina Public Schools, Edina, MN, United States

OUR WORK The purpose of our chapter is to describe our efforts to build engaging communities within our schools. We are practitioners who have worked in urban and suburban school districts always with an intention to engage students since the beginning of our education careers over 20 years ago. Anne Beaton began her career as an English teacher in an alternative school in Minnesota where she learned to problem solve in an attempt to engage every student and find ways to create environments that get students to think. Anne earned her PhD in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota where her research focused on the experience of teachers working to engage disengaged students. She has written about her work with students and interventions in Schools and Educational Leadership and teaches high school English and as an adjunct professor of education. Andrew (Andy) Beaton began his education career as a high school social studies teacher. He is the currently the head principal of Edina High School in Edina, Minnesota. Andy’s work on intervention programming was featured in Educational Leadership, and his work on engagement and the graduation gap was profiled on Minnesota Public Radio. Under his leadership, Bloomington Kennedy High School reduced its achievement gap and improved the graduation rate, which earned multiple awards for innovation in high school programming. His approach to school leadership is focused on high expectations for all students, research-based instruction, and school-wide support where all students can meet their potential. In this chapter, we describe our experiences inside the classroom and within and across buildings teaching students, supporting teachers, and creating and managing support systems that bring practical insight to applying theories of engagement and success in schools. We recognize the “multifaceted nature” of engagement as involving aspects of students’ emotions, cognitions, and behavior (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004) and argue that if students are not buying what teachers or the school is selling—no matter how students are demonstrating their disengagement—the system and adults need to change to meet the needs of every child. Interventions that work are those rooted in the belief that it is the adults who must intervene in the traditional school system to better meet the needs of students. The work begins with building community and deepens by designing culturally relevant systems and instruction. Finally, it is through establishing system-wide supports that change is made sustainable.

The Need for Engagement There is a growing sense of urgency to meet the needs of our current students who no longer sit quietly compliant in our classrooms, serving time until they earn a diploma. Many students today face significant barriers to learning, such as poor attendance, homelessness, and substance use. Research is clear that student engagement is a key to student success (Bowen, 2005; Shulman, 2002), and educators are encouraged to make positive connections Handbook of Student Engagement Interventions. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813413-9.00023-1

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with youth in the hopes of increasing student engagement (Easton, 2008). Barkley (2010) stated, “teachers must find ways to engage students,” suggesting that much of the work of engagement falls to individuals who are left to problem solve on their own (p. 3). Yet, schools continue to have more added to the proverbial plate, such as building teacher capacity, cultural competency, and teacher collaboration, all while resources continue to dwindle. Elementary teachers watch kids bounce through the door at Kindergarten Round-Up only to lose them between third and fifth grade. Middle school teachers know that disengaged students do not learn and get easily sucked into a behavioral whirlpool that pulls them from the classroom, keeping them from essential content and skills. By high school, some students have been disengaged for years, posing a unique challenge to teachers to reignite a passion for learning. Engagement is seen as clearly associated with successful learning. Bowen (2005) argued, “If a student is engaged [. . .] then learning of some kind would seem assured” (p. 7). Yet, not all students are learning because we know not every student is engaged and some have detached altogether. If we look closely, we recognize that disengagement can look like a student sleeping in the back row beneath a hoodie or swearing at a teacher as they storm out of class. Disengagement can also look like doing the bare minimum on an assignment and parroting back the most basic information to earn the necessary points to pass. Research offers us potential solutions to changing behavior and increasing learning, yet these findings can be hidden in journals or accessible at a workshop where we send two people who do not share what they learned until the next staff meeting. Students cannot wait until all the research is completed or a school has 100% adult buy-in. Our best teachers respond to students and recognize that an ineffective strategy can be adjusted and improved in the next period. This realtime teacher response is a result of the teacher observing, reflecting, and taking action—all components of action research. Sagor (2000) defined action research as a “disciplined process of inquiry conducted by and for those taking the action” that focuses the practitioner on one aspect of student learning and gives them the agency to make impactful change with students (p. 3). Action research can be conducted formally across a building with teams of teachers examining common assessment data, or informally, within the classroom when a teacher adjusts a fullclass discussion that has gone silent by using a turn-and-talk strategy to reengage each student. Although there is no panacea to engagement and student achievement, educators and schools that use action research as a means to try, test, and intervene can improve in real time. We agree that what we are currently doing is not working for all students. What interventions can we implement in the current system to better connect with our students emotionally, behaviorally, and cognitively to support their learning? The first challenge to implementing interventions is the word, “intervention.” For many, it means, “please take this child out of my classroom and fix them—and then send them back to me ready to do what I asked.” A similar definition exists at the school-level, resulting in tracking or suspensions where students lose more learning time and are kept from essential skills and content. Often inertia maintains the status quo where significant gaps exist among learners and where many do not reach their potential. Consider the impact one intervention can make in leveraging an entire system. More than a packaged curriculum or program, interventions are new ways of thinking that interrupt the status quo and allow teachers and schools to change course. Interventions begin at the Tier I level within the classroom and across the school for all students and then become more directive and intensive for a smaller number of students at Tier II and, finally, for individual students at Tier III. To be effective, interventions must be timely, directive, and systematic (Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2012). When selecting and implementing interventions that work, we keep the student and learning at the center, and it is the teachers, administrators, and support staff who must change or shift in their practice. In order to agree to shift focus, draw in every student and try to figure out what will work, teachers and schools need to see each students’ potential. Rather than expecting students to engage on their own, the vision of teaching becomes about relationships first and content or scope and sequence later. It is not out of the ordinary for some students to struggle. The best teachers and schools recognize and plan for students who may not initially have all of the prerequisite skills and aptitudes required for success. Teachers and schools must recognize that despite our best efforts, some students will continue to struggle. It is also important to recognize that continued student struggle often has nothing to do with the quality of teachers or schools. The only true failure comes when schools blame students for their own disengagement and refuse to take action.

BUILDING COMMUNITY Before we can ask students to engage with rigorous coursework, we need to consider how we might draw students into our community of learners. There are a variety of reasons why students engage. Some do for the love

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of the content, parent expectations, or trust of a teacher. But, others need us to reach out to them. These students come into our schools and classrooms asking, “Why should I connect with this place and these people?” The question, then, for us becomes, in what ways will we build community with all of our students? We know that building relationships is important, which starts with the environment itself, leaving us to question how we can work together to provide a safe space that equips students with the tools they need to be successful, yet holds them to the highest expectations. Being intentional about building community causes us to examine ourselves, systems, and practices in order to recognize where and how we need to change. As adults, we choose to spend our time and energy on things we enjoy and where we feel most confident and avoid those activities where we feel less competent. However, in schools we often make it challenging to build community because we focus on addressing student deficits and failures rather than strengths (Jackson, 2011). Building community requires teachers to shift into a facilitator role and give space to students as cocreators of the learning, which asks schools to validate and affirm what students bring to the classroom and build bridges to greater competence and confidence (Hollie, 2011). At a system level, schools need to think more in terms of pathways, which offer many ways to success, rather than a pipeline, which forces every student through the same inflexible route. In classrooms, teachers may offer multiple ways for students to demonstrate their competency on the standards. In schools, if the end goal is to have students prepared for their postsecondary lives, greater flexibility, and choice must be available for students to demonstrate their college or career readiness. In this section, with a focus on student strengths, we outline how we work to welcome students, build connections with students, and help students fit in to our schools and in classrooms in an effort to build community, which is essential to forming the relationships necessary to engage students in learning.

Welcoming All Students From the first moment students approach the building, they get a message from us. Considering whether the buses drop students off in the front or in the back can help students to either feel a part of the school or less valued (Relerford, 2007). Are students welcomed into a clean space decorated with student-created artwork, national flags representing our students’ many places of origin, and signs of school pride? Do administrators and support staff make themselves visible in the morning before school starts making sure to greet students as they enter the school? Welcoming students into the building at the start of the day communicates a message of care to students. Here are additional interventions we have used to welcome students into our schools (Table 23.1). Teachers who greet each student as they enter the room make a human connection that helps students transition from home or the hallway into the learning environment. Standing by the door, making eye-contact and saying, “Good Morning. It is so good to see you today.” matters to students. When asked about the practice, our teenage son reflected on his own teachers and commented, “All of the good teachers say hello. It shows that they care. The bad teachers just sit on their computer until the bell rings or have a note written on the board telling us what to do.” In what ways do we say hello as a building to help our students transition from home to school? Our nonverbal actions communicate to students whether or not we care about them and encourage them to connect to us and our school, which is especially important to students who may not have all of the prerequisite TABLE 23.1

Selected Practices for Building Community.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

Link Crew

Junior and senior Link Crew leaders, along with teachers, facilitate large and small group activities for incoming ninth graders to orient them to the school and to build community (What is Link, 2011)

More intensive

New student advisory

Late enrolling underclassmen meet weekly with a teacher, counselor, and administrator to support their transition to the new setting

Mentor program

High school juniors pair with struggling eighth graders to provide academic support and social connection. As seniors, the mentors continue the relationship with the now ninth graders in planned school social events

Greeting students

Teachers say hello to each student as they enter the classroom build individual connections that matter. Moreover, teaching and learning greetings from other cultures can help to validate and affirm students (Hollie, 2011)

Pronouncing names correctly

Teachers make effort to learn the correct way to pronounce a student’s name show the respect necessary to build a relationship

Classroom

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skills or behaviors that we want. Students communicate to us nonverbally as well by coming tardy, missing assignments, or skipping class altogether. These actions are all statements that scream, “I am not connected to this class!” and are often misinterpreted as misbehavior. Educators must ask: In what ways are we showing our most disconnected students that we still want them to be a part of our learning community? Rituals and routines, such as greeting students, can build community quickly. Pronouncing names correctly is a simple way to do so and make the learning environment more inclusive. Teachers who give nicknames to students whose names they cannot pronounce or continually mispronounce a student’s name send signals to not bother connecting with this place and these people (McLaughlin, 2016). When administrators and support staff learn and use the names of students they see in the hallways, lunch room, and classrooms, they reinforce that every student is noticed and valuable in the community. When students feel welcomed into the school and learning environment, they begin to connect with teachers, staff, and each other, which prevents isolation and promotes growth. These connections can work to engage students first in the space and community and then in the learning. Even in the most welcoming environment, however, there will still be students who do not immediately connect and further work is needed.

Building Connections with Students Students rarely own any part of a school. In fact, they borrow their locker and they enter different teachers’ classrooms throughout the day. Finding spaces where students can be human alongside their teachers and explore their passions helps to build connections, which in turn can increase engagement. Here are specific interventions we have used to build connections with students in our buildings (Table 23.2). There is value in every staff member seeking ways to reach out to students. A paraprofessional might lead a music group or a principal could host open soccer before school in the gym. Creating opportunities during the school day to give teachers a chance to build relationships with students outside of the classroom and for students to get to know their peers in nonacademic spaces can help build connections. Administrators can also connect with students by stepping out of the office and into hallways and classrooms to draw them into the community. For some students, a directed support that meets more frequently, may provide the chance for deeper conversations and trust-building. These connections form a stronger building and classroom culture, essential to engaging students in learning. For some students, however, fitting into the classroom is not as important as fitting into a group that shares their interests. Connecting students with school-sponsored groups within the school can help promote interest in learning.

TABLE 23.2

Selected Practices for Building Relationships.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

Advisory

Teachers meet weekly with a small-group of students assigned by grade level or other designator (new students, girls’ group, etc.). Advisory curriculum can support academic progress, social/ emotional health or college and career readiness

Teachers attend afterschool events

Teachers voluntarily, or through a paid duty, attend games, concerts, and other student events to connect with students outside of the classroom build relationships with students

Check & Connect

Assigns individual students to check-in weekly (or more frequently) with a mentor: teachers, student advocates, administrators, or other staff members who have deeper conversations with students oneon-one and build trust

Peer tutoring

Upperclassmen work with other students as math/science tutors, in the school writing center, or, students participate in unified physical education courses to support inclusive environments for special education students

Cocreating class norms

Teachers cocreate classroom norms with students that serve as a community agreement guiding behaviors and ways of being in the classroom community. For example, “We celebrate mistakes.”

Incorporating student interests

Teachers learn students’ personal interests and incorporate those interests into assignments. For example, “Vocabulary with Kitties” slides that carefully pair cat images with words to help teach definitions

More intensive

Classroom

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TABLE 23.3

349

Selected Practices for Helping Students Fit In.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

Rigorous course offerings

Advanced placement courses position teachers alongside students to prepare for the AP exam. Students quickly become family as they learn to rely on one another to survive the challenge together

More intensive

AVID

A program designed to support first-generation college students with critical thinking skills as they navigate AP courses and the college application process (AVID, n.d.)

Coteaching EL or SPED

Pairs a content-licensed teacher with a special education or English language teacher. Classes include mainstream students and a higher concentration of SPED or EL students

School clubs and groups

Students join clubs such as Trap Team and Art Club, or become members of groups such as GLBTQ, or Activists for Change to connect to classmates with similar interests

Discussions

Partner, small group, and whole group discussions that require every student to speak and listen, for example, “speed dating” where students partner for 1 min before switching, or a pilot/copilot circle, where student speakers sit flanked by two copilots who listen and provide them support

Intentional group work

Teachers design activities that require students to work collaboratively. Unlike cooperative groups, where students work alongside each other, intentional group work requires students to rely on each other to complete the task

Classroom

EL, English learner; SPED, special education.

Helping Students Fit In A teacher or administrator connecting with individual students is powerful, but alone does not achieve community. Instead, it is about creating an environment where every student sees themselves in the fabric of the community and has opportunities to foster friendships and connections with fellow students and adults in lower stakes environments. Here are examples of opportunities our schools have established to help students fit into the school community (Table 23.3). In each case, a program, club, team, or group provides many ways to emotionally connect to more students and more adults within the larger school community. Each opportunity serves as a small microcosm helping to support the health of the whole school, which is especially valuable to those schools boasting over 2000 students. As we make spaces to connect to each student by offering clubs, teams, courses, and groups, we are also providing places for the adults in the community to engage with students around common interests. If the school as a whole works to be a welcoming space, students and staff can engage emotionally and create ties to the school and to each other. In addition to the school level, teachers need to foster opportunities within classrooms for students to connect with one another as well. Meaningful connections can be made by intentionally teaching social norms of introductions and providing regular opportunities for movement and connection. Taking time to create meaningful partner or small group activities can work to draw in students who feel like outsiders. Without intentional group work, some students move through an entire school day without talking with another person, which can be isolating. Even after using these strategies and interventions to build community, there will be some students who still do not feel welcome. Within the classroom, spending valuable time building community through games, activities, or group work can help students to learn more about each other and stress the importance of every hearing voice in the room. When teachers focus solely on learning targets and standards, they miss the work of engaging students in the learning. As students enter into our buildings and classrooms, they continually seek ways to fit in. By providing connections to student interests, we can increase student sense of belonging, which can impact learning, but we need to be purposeful with resources when designing these experiences.

OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO BUILDING COMMUNITY What threatens our ability to build communities that emotionally engage our students? One barrier to leaders is resources. If the data show that many students need mental health support in regards to anxiety and depression, for example, leadership needs to determine how to allocate resources to help remove this barrier for students. With limited resources, administrators may need to evaluate priorities and make careful, purposeful decisions regarding resources. Putting student needs ahead of adult needs when making these decisions requires courage.

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Teachers who are not themselves emotionally engaged or available to the community due to stress or lack of preparation can hinder the work of building community. When learning the details of the new advisory program in one of our schools, for example, a teacher said, “I was hired to teach math, not counsel kids.” Some see relationship building as taking too much time out of class and not related to learning the content. Administration can help to underscore the importance of changing school culture by modeling community-building practices at staff meetings. Including support staff on professional learning days and tapping them to share their expertise with the staff can show the collective effort that is needed to do the work necessary to engage with students. An instructional coach is a helpful resource to support both veteran and new teachers as they attempt to shift their work to engage students (Knight, 2011). Coaches can partner with teachers to help brainstorm, coteach, or model new strategies for those who appreciate seeing how something works prior to trying it themselves. Another threat to building communities is when roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined. As we work to disrupt the current system, the administrators take on more of an instructional leadership role asking far more of them than managerial duties. Support staff are no longer on-call or on the fringe of the system, but instead play a more integral role within the tiered system of supports. Having a clear focus or shared vision and goals to work toward helps to unite the place and people making the community more tangible to students.

Designing Relevant, Responsive Systems, and Instruction For some students, the question of “Why bother?” rings loud enough to keep them from cognitively engaging with an assignment or showing up to class without their work completed and seem unfazed by the potential consequences of their lack of action. For other students, “Why bother” keeps them from investing any more energy than it takes to hold memorized information until the test. But, really, why should students bother to engage with material that does not challenge them or does not make any sense? What is the point of completing an activity that has no purpose? When we ask students to become a part of our community, we raise our expectations of ourselves as educators to provide a rigorous and relevant learning environment that challenges each student to think. The part of the question of “why bother doing any of this” that the adults have control over is the this. The adage that we should be most concerned with what we can control is never more true than for educators. One intervention is to redesign systems and courses that both push those students who are bored with the current pace and support the learning of those who are falling behind. The key to designing relevant and culturally responsive systems and instruction is for adults to be responsive to the dynamic needs of the students, which means that we need to incorporate ways to connect students to the learning. We can begin by examining the systems, assignments, activities, and assessments we are asking students to engage with. Sometimes, we get stuck thinking of things for students to “do” to keep them busy, so we can tally points in the gradebook, so that we have something to show as evidence of learning. Pink (2011) suggested that people are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose. He explained that rather than a carrot (such as points and grades), people want the ability to choose. They have an urge to continually improve on something that matters to them and want their efforts to contribute toward something bigger than themselves (Pink, 2011). In contrast, traditional schools and classrooms mark time with a standard bell schedule, and stand teachers up front with all of the power, knowledge, and control, leaving students to sit waiting to be told what to do until the period ends. Robinson (2010) described the current school system as doing what it was designed to do: to sort people and prepare them to work in factories. It is no wonder then, that our students are questioning whether or not to invest in this type of learning. The fundamental purpose of schools is shifting to high levels of learning and engagement for all, which does not necessarily mean learning the same way or at the same time. In this section, we outline best practices we used when redesigning systems and courses to engage students.

Student Voice and Choice Jackson (2011) named amplifying student voice and choice as a way for students to become a part of the learning community. At the school level, we need to break from a one-size-fits-all model, which can sort students by a narrow definition of “successful student” and ultimately exclude certain groups or individuals. Rather than offer equal or “same” experiences for every student, instead we need to create equitable environments where students can access unique ways to find success. Providing students the freedom to direct their own time and access opportunities to complete assignments or receive support during the school day encourages students to engage in their own learning. Here are ways in which we sought to amplify student voice in our buildings (Table 23.4).

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TABLE 23.4

351

Selected Practices for Incorporating Student Voice.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

Course redesign

Teachers team to examine data on prior practice and curriculum to identify what is and is not working. Teachers seek to find culturally relevant texts, create engaging lessons, and work that invites student choice and voice

Student prep

Students choose where and how to study during a scheduled study hall period. Options include supervised quiet, collaborative, and tutorial spaces to work alone or meet with peers or teachers

Student senate

A diverse group of students selected from every grade representing various groups within the school who meet with and advise the principal on school-wide issues throughout the year

More intensive

Senior Capstone Project

Driven by students’ unique, individual interests, Capstone projects align with state competencies built around communication, research, civic engagement, innovation, motivation, and health

Classroom

Offering choice

Teachers offer a choice of topics, texts, seating, or summative assessments to match student interests and needs rather than always teach to the full group

Surveying students

Teachers use Google Forms to survey students and get information about personal interests or areas of difficulty and respond to feedback by incorporating interests into lessons or tailoring instruction

TABLE 23.5

Selected Practices to Promote Rigor and Relevance.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

Detracking

Eliminate course levels that in name raise rigor, yet in reality serve to separate students by behavior

More intensive

Support class

Elective classes designed to support students with reading or math skills to build competence and confidence to foster success in grade level or even AP courses

Classroom

Authentic audience

Teachers create assignments that have a real audience within or outside the classroom, for example, writing children’s books to read to elementary students or analyzing neighborhood data to present to the school board

NY’s

Rather than giving a D or F, teachers assign an NY and indicate where the student needs to revise their effort and resubmit to demonstrate proficiency. Teachers may reteach during this cycle

NY, Not yet.

When teachers listen to students, they can discover student passions and design the learning to tap into those interests. Jackson (2011) advocated for challenging students to high intellectual performances and proposed that we need to start with student strengths rather than teach from a deficit model. She identified “Situating the Learning in the Lives of Students” as essential for a successful lesson, which challenges the teacher to create a connection between the course material and the student (Jackson, 2011). It is by listening to students that we can first begin to raise the rigor in student learning and draw students in to more complex thinking. On a larger scale, examining systems and courses and instruction further increase the rigor in learning causing many students to buy in to what they deem worth their while.

Rigor and Relevance Systems in place in a school can foster high expectations or perpetuate low expectations. Left unexamined, systems can unknowingly impact a school’s effort to engage students by separating students into tracks that allow only some students to access more rigorous learning or leaving some unsupported in the effort. Here are ways that we have worked to increase rigor and relevance in our schools (Table 23.5). Detracking students by eliminating lower level classes can raise the rigor of pathways to graduation and places more students on grade level and on track to graduate. Students in one of our buildings initially had four levels of core classes from which to choose and, as a result, students were segregated, sorted, and had behavior issues. Students in the lower, skills-level, classes faced lower expectations, and many were not introduced to grade level content, which negatively impacted state test scores. Offering only two course levels, forced students to choose instead between an Advanced Placement level course or a regular high school level course, which

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raised expectations and decreased behavior incidents and racial isolation. Within classrooms, creating strategies that interrupt the old practice of sit and get can cause students to wonder, examine, question, and reflect. Class time in rigorous courses includes purposeful activities that offer opportunities to talk with classmates and unearth a variety of perspectives tapping every voice in the room. We have seen students step up and meet the challenges of more rigorous courses. In one of our buildings, when lower level courses were eliminated, the graduation rate increased as did the number of AP Scholars and AP Scholars of Distinction. When students see that we are working on their writing, for example, and not just “doing” writing that was assigned, they grow more invested. When raising the rigor and making learning more relevant, however, administrators and teachers need a way to coordinate their efforts and keep students at the center of the change. Through monitoring results, schools and teachers can make adjustments students need to be successful.

Monitor and Support Purposeful staff development, multitiered support approaches such as response to intervention (RtI), effective use of professional learning communities (PLC) time, leveraging resources, application of common formative assessments, analyzing effective grading practices, and viewing data with an equity lens are all essential components of effective school improvement. Each of these practices call for an ongoing, collaborative effort requiring administrators, teachers, and support staff to follow an action research cycle of planning, doing, studying, and taking action to identify needs and coordinate a response in real time. Here are examples of interventions we have used to monitor and support student learning (Table 23.6). As a system, effective schools attempt to remove any barrier, real or perceived, that prevent students from meeting their potential. Student support teams (SST) can become a key factor in the RtI process, increasing communication between staff, students, and families resulting in fewer students falling through the cracks, and closing achievement gaps. Monitoring and supporting prevents those students who appear quietly compliant from slipping by undetected. It is easy to spot the students who are not attending class, or have missing assignments, but for those who earn enough credit to pass, but are not understanding fully the material, formative assessments, and examining data are a helpful exercise. Once the challenges are discovered, however, the solutions do not often fit within our current design of traditional seven-period days marching students from class to class where they sit in rows. Being intentional about designing flexible environments can offer support to intervention efforts.

TABLE 23.6

Selected Practices for Monitoring and Supporting Learning.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

PLC Common Formative Assessments

Teachers write authentic formative assessments to check for student understanding during the learning and determine next steps with instruction (Black & William, 2010)

Student support teams

Teams (counselor, social worker, school psychologist, administrator, and other support) regularly collect and examine teacher, discipline, and failure data and assign interventions to foster improvement. Academic, social, and behavioral needs are considered

More intensive

Sectionals

Teachers request a licensed teacher or instructional coach to “push in” to provide flexibility with a lesson allowing them to reach more students individually or in small groups

Classroom

Partner teachers

Two or more teachers teach the same class during the same period. They regroup students across the classrooms to provide more individualized choice or support

Red, yellow, green light

Teachers ask students to self-assess their understanding during the learning and provide a different mode of learning for each group in response. Green 5 independent; yellow 5 partner; red 5 teacher support

Reflective debrief

After a learning segment, teachers lead a reflective activity where students can think metacognitively about their own learning and self-evaluate their progress. Teachers use the feedback to inform next steps with instruction

PLC, Professional learning community.

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TABLE 23.7

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Selected Interventions for Supporting Learning.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

Interdisciplinary teams

Teachers are placed in interdisciplinary groups that share students. Teachers meet weekly to coordinate lessons, conference about student concerns, and design supports to implement

Modified block schedule

A modified block schedule creates different lengths of time on different days allowing for lab-based or project-based learning. Teachers plan for 47-min periods and 85-min blocks. This schedule opens a time for a flex intervention block

More intensive

Flex intervention block

Teachers, counselors, and administrators use assessment, behavior, and attendance data to select students that need reteaching or additional instructional time. Flex block, scheduled weekly, supports students as well teachers by providing them extra time together during the school day

Classroom

Hybrid learning

Technology gives students more control and independence and unbinds learning from a bell schedule. Teachers meet face to face or with small groups of students while the remaining students work virtually. In addition, teachers can capture lectures for students to view later; art teachers can record demonstrations for repeated viewing; and students can complete independent study segments of a course

Redesigning spaces

Teachers rearrange furniture to signal different ways of being in the classroom. For example, circles invite dialogue and rows keep eyes forward. Movable furniture allows students to determine their own purpose in seating as it ties to learning

Intentional Environments School leaders can restructure the master schedule to dictate how teachers use time to respond to the needs of learners. When administrators think about flexible time, teacher teaming, and PLC work, for example, they can remove barriers and create opportunities for both students and teachers to be successful. Here are examples of interventions we have used to create intentional environments to support learning (Table 23.7). When students can flexibly move classroom furniture to suit their needs or utilize technology to flip their classroom experience, they find new ways to engage with learning. Simply offering these flexible spaces does not work, however, with all students and being flexible with our environments and our thinking brings its own challenges for administrators and adults.

Overcoming Barriers to Designing Relevant, Responsive Systems, and Instruction Redesigning systems and courses is challenging work and requires administrators to see time differently and teachers to know their content well enough to be creative and flexible with their thinking about how to help students learn. Some teachers may not have been adequately prepared to teach a particular subject, which adds stress when teaching alongside those with more content knowledge. Other teachers may struggle to create lesson plans that adequately scaffold the material for students. Rather than prereading with students and priming a lesson, they hand out an article for students to read cold or spend every class period repeating the same routine of reviewing two questions from the previous night’s homework before launching into a lecture about the next portion of the chapter. Gaining experience in a content area and experience with instruction takes time and the willingness to make mistakes. Adults need to take risks and to be vulnerable when trying new lessons (especially with technology) and to potentially fail in front of students when redesigning courses, which underscores the need to create a healthy learning environment where the teacher and students can support one another. For teachers who believe that they are the lone expert in the room, the risk may prove too great and even the most well-intentioned teacher will push revising their course off for 1 more year. Instructional coaches can potentially lessen the risk by offering to coplan, coteach, or model a lesson for the most reluctant teachers. Another challenge when raising the rigor of our courses is to meet the needs of a wide range of learners who are together in one room. Interventions within and across classrooms can serve as a scaffold for students. For example, having students self-assess their understanding using an exit slip or red, yellow, and green cups can signal the teacher to reteach, clarify, or extend to the whole class or small groups. Using formative assessments to check for student understanding takes practice and an ability to anticipate where students will struggle and to prepare multiple ways to respond, which is considerably more work on the front end—work

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that many teachers do not recognize will impact students’ engagement emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally in their classrooms. Redesigned courses may be challenging for support and after school staff who mentor students, because they may not have traditional daily assignments to track and make up. Instead, courses may be project-based or offer choice for students. The flexibility provided to students in redesigned classes increases the need for communication between teachers and support staff as it may be more difficult to assess which students need additional supports. As classrooms and schools shift their practices, professional learning is a valuable resource for teachers and support staff to help build capacity as a community.

ESTABLISHING SYSTEM-WIDE SUPPORTS Behavioral disengagement is the most visible of the three types of disengagement to educators and ranges from the student who simply does not complete their work or silently protests by hiding one earbud in their ear during class to tune out the teacher to the more overt displays of yelling across the room or violently refusing a teacher or administrator’s request. Implementing successful building-wide interventions that influence behavior is about listening to students, parents, teachers, and staff at the site to uncover perceived barriers. Teachers will say, “If only students would get to my class on time, then I could teach without interruption.” Or comment, “If only students would stay after school, then I could help them with questions and missing work.” The “if only” statements express real barriers to teachers and staff that steal the focus away from students and get us stuck feeling like success is outside of our control. Meanwhile, students questioning whether to engage ask, “Why should I do it this way?” or exclaim, “This is so extra!” and consistently push against boundaries to test the limits. These statements and student actions also expose places to intervene in the system. It is through removing these barriers by way of structural or systemic changes that we can help both students and teachers meet their potential. In this section, we outline factors to consider when setting up system-wide supports in schools.

Team and Classroom-Based Action Research Action research asks teachers to examine their own practice and requires data gathering and purposeful reflection. Rather than enacting a predetermined lesson plan, teachers who are action researchers plan the lesson with a specific learning goal in mind, then during and after the teaching they study the student response to the lesson through observations and by examining student work in order to gain insight into how to improve the lesson to better engage students or develop reteaching that will support student learning. Students may struggle when faced with increase rigor and action research positions teachers to create interventions that may remove a barrier for students and make teaching easier. Here are examples of interventions we have used to focus on action research (Table 23.8). For students, interventions become chances to learn. Instead of feeling like the class has moved on, interventions can reach back and grab students to reengage them. When teachers are supported with the time to work together as action researchers, they benefit by learning from each other new ways to differentiate their instruction and give additional time and support to those students who have not yet learned the material. TABLE 23.8

Selected Action Research Interventions.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

PLCs

Through collaborative PLC work, teachers and support staff examine student data to expose gaps in learning and determine next steps with instruction and tiered supports (DuFour & Eaker, 2009)

Teachers in classrooms

Teachers visit other teachers’ classrooms to see for themselves what is working and find inspiration for what might be effective in their own setting (Beaton, 2017)

More intensive

PLC poster sessions

PLCs are placed in groups and present their research question, data, and findings to one another. Sessions are held on professional learning days and facilitated by an administrator

Classroom

Four-day test cycle

Students take a baseline test. If they earned lower than a C, students remediate the learning with the teacher. If they earned a C or above, students keep the grade or enrich their work for up to an A

PLC, Professional learning community.

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Within the classroom, teachers who design their own interventions must consider who is available to support their ideas. What spaces are available within the building that might be useful? Considering the time of year— where we are in the semester (or within the calendar year) and even the time of day can help to dictate the potential success or failure of possibilities. Another key aspect to consider when planning is the students within the context. An intervention that works well in a second period class might not in seventh period due to personalities, energy level, or closeness of the community. As teachers discover what works, they can begin to build intentional interventions into the structure of each lesson and day to not only respond to student needs, but predict where the needs will be.

Systematic Approach To change behavior, interventions need to be timely, directive, and systematic to provide the right amount of support to each individual student (DuFour, 2004). There are several things to consider that help to establish context before designing interventions that work. First, who are the available adults within the system? What are the talents and skills each person brings? Some adults have gregarious personalities that fill the room, while others are better working one on one with students. Knowing which adults are strong with math or have a good sense of humor helps strategically match people to interventions. Identifying what procedures and structures are currently in place challenge some “ways of doing.” When actions come from a lack of procedure or structure, it causes an ineffective response to student needs and unnecessarily taxing the energy of the adults. Here are systems that we have put in place in our buildings (Table 23.9). Once interventions begin to take hold and the system begins to change (e.g., more students begin to bring their drafts on time), there is a temptation to slip back to the previous ways of doing. Upon seeing early success with an intervention in one of our buildings, a teacher commented to her administrator, “It will be so great when the kids have got this and we don’t have to do it anymore.” To which he replied, “No, sorry. This is forever.” Like parenting, consistency helps to change the behavior.

Reaching Families Just as phone calls home during tardy sweeps (listed above) helped to reduce the number of tardies by 20,000 in 1 year at one of our schools, establishing systematic ways to engage parents can help to signal to parents the importance of partnering with the school to support their child’s education. For example, implementing a policy that requires a teacher to call parents prior to giving any student an F increases teacher awareness of the number of students failing their class, which can cause a teacher to pause and reflect on their practice. Teachers who question the number of students failing can begin to question grading practices, number and quality of assignments, and reteaching cycles. In addition, communicating with parents can help to generate a partnership in an effort to help the student. When buildings reach out to parents in a systematic way, it dictates the expected engagement behaviors of families and students to ensure a healthy learning environment. Here are ways in which we have reached out to parents in our buildings (Table 23.10). TABLE 23.9

Selected Building-Wide Practices.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

Tardy sweeps

At the bell, teachers close and lock the classroom door. Administrators and support staff sweep hallways for stragglers. Students contact a parent/guardian by phone right then in the hallway. Staff speaks with the adult to explain the importance of timely attendance. Students are quickly sent to class. Uncooperative students are assigned a consequence

More intensive

Grade report parent contact

A tiered approach to grade reporting distributes grades every 4 weeks and coordinates who calls home: one fail 5 teacher; two fails 5 counselor; three or more fails 5 administrator

Classroom

Bell-ringer

Teachers begin class at the bell with a provocative question, prompt, or activity, signaling to students the importance of getting to class on time

Data patterns

Examining data to find patterns help teachers question their practice. Noticing that students score high on tests, but fail to turn in homework, can point the teacher to examine the type of learning (or doing) expected to be completed at home

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TABLE 23.10

Selected Practices for Reaching Families.

Type

Intervention

Description

Buildingwide

Newsletter

The principal authors a weekly newsletter to draw attention to current events, alert parents to upcoming family engagement opportunities, and highlight student achievements

School messenger

The principal sends a phone blast reminding families of an upcoming event, or alerting parents about a student’s failing grade or work with a teacher during a flex intervention block

Social media

School web pages, Twitter, and Facebook serve to inform parents about school events, academics, family resources, student academic help, and more

Coffee with the principal

Group meetings where the principal can share new initiatives happening in the school, answer parent questions, and get parents into the building, so they can experience instruction and the building climate

Engagement events

Hosting engagement events that tackle relevant issues within the community like race relations, raising teenagers, or chemical health sends the message of inclusion and interest in students and families that extends beyond academics

Group messaging

Using the messaging features of a learning management system like Schoology or PowerSchool allows teachers to update parents proactively with classroom highlights, explain important deadlines, or introducing upcoming topics to bring parents into the learning and establish a positive connection.

More intensive

Classroom

In a time when programs like Schoology and PowerSchool serve to keep parents appraised of their student’s progress, a phone call home from a teacher helps to clarify and make a human connection that is sometimes missed when relying on technology to communicate. Conferences are not as well attended now that parents can check student grades online. Yet, for those teachers who used conferences to talk about the students and not only grades, the phone call can establish a personal connection that welcomes the parent into the learning community.

Overcoming Barriers to Establishing System-Wide Supports Being a part of a system can make it difficult to do the necessary work of stepping outside the daily routine to observe how the system behaves and recognize which elements are potentially causing it to function in a way that detracts from the goal. The inertia of the system keeps people doing the same thing, which may unknowingly be causing the problems we see (Meadows & Wright, 2015). Student behaviors often result from the way the system is set up. For example, teachers take attendance at the start of class because it has always been done that way. Using the first 10 minutes of class to take attendance signals to students that the beginning of class is not worth their time. So, why get to class on time if nothing is happening? Instead, starting class with an opening activity that gets students moving, talking, or writing and then taking attendance lets students know that it is important to be there at the bell. It takes a keen eye to identify leverage points within the system that will break the inertia and shift people from unexamined patterns toward routines with a better purpose and greater impact. Key in this effort are building leaders that have vision and an understanding of instruction. It is no longer sufficient to have leaders who focus solely on management. With shrinking funding, today’s administrator needs to find ways to shift or better purpose existing resources to have a greater impact on student learning. For example, raising class sizes by one student may allow the hiring of a student advocate, lunch lab supervisor, school-based general educational social worker, or instructional coach. Personnel decisions can provide momentum and support to make swift changes in a building. Not everyone within a system is comfortable with moving quickly to make the necessary shift that our students need us to make. Many organizations attempt to wait for everyone to get on board before taking action and get lost in a prelaunch cycle. Strong leaders recognize that there are no risk-free alternatives. Taking action may lead to mistakes, but waiting to take action means that there are students who are currently disengaged and not learning. Leaders need to build a culture that supports innovation and an action research mentality where administrators, teachers, and support staff work to try something and get better. A culture built from system-wide supports invites teachers to revise lessons in real time and allows the school to turn on a dime when needed. It is difficult to build capacity with staff turnover. Teachers need regular professional learning that like a rigorous course is planned backwards from a clear endpoint. Sessions are purposeful and model best practice instruction, which gives teachers and support staff access to new learning in a practical way. Making time for teachers and support staff to meet in PLCs supports a culture of collaboration necessary to move forward as a learning community.

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IMPLICATIONS OF BUILDING AN ENGAGING COMMUNITY Many children are thriving today in our schools, yet others walk through the front door each morning only to sit passively in classrooms or actively disengage themselves from learning. Whether it is digital media that pulls their attention away, mental health issues that cloud their interactions, or stresses from home that exhaust them, some students are disengaging emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally from school, which is impeding student success. When students disengage from our schools, we need to view their actions as feedback that tell us what we are currently doing is not working. Educators need to recognize how we might intervene and disrupt this pattern of disengagement by creating a more welcoming environment that offers rigorous courses to draw students toward learning and intentionally supports them in this effort. It is the adults who need to shift their practice to one that responds to student needs and works to build our schools into engaging learning communities. Simple steps like welcoming students with a greeting at the doors of our classrooms shows students that we see them and want to connect with them as individuals. Creating intentional relationships through mentoring or advisory programs establishes a consistent interaction outside of the classroom to build relationships among students across grade levels and between students and adults in our schools. Building community is essential to engaging all students and includes the work of helping students find a place to fit in by offering rigorous courses, school clubs and groups, or even through class discussions that invite students to lead. The emotional connection that students make with other students and adults can serve to engage them as an individual within the larger community. Administrators, teachers, and support staff who meet students where they are as people, and work collaboratively to nudge them each toward high expectations, have the potential to build engaging communities. Students often question the purpose of school and withdraw from cognitive engagement. Taking steps to listen to and honor student voice by responding to students’ interests and beliefs can show that we trust students and value their perspectives. Redesigning a course to adopt culturally relevant texts or reworking the master schedule to create a flex time for students draws them toward more complex thinking. Detracking courses to eliminate the lower levels that essentially separate students by behavior raises the rigor within the whole learning community. Creating systems like SST or sectionals provides the monitoring and support necessary to successfully engage students in a rigorous environment. By offering choice, we celebrate individual interests, challenge students to think, and invite them to discover new ways to engage cognitively in learning. Examining current systems to discover key leverage points to lean on can remove barriers and accelerate the shift necessary for students to stay engaged instead of tuning out—or acting out. Rather than work in isolation, teachers and support staff can use PLCs to examine data and collaborate to anticipate student struggles in order to create interventions like coteaching sessions to support students when learning gets more difficult. Administrators can take a systematic approach to supervision with tardy sweeps to garner support from parents and ensure that students do not miss valuable class time. Establishing systems to engage parents by sharing information via newsletter and Twitter or more intimately through engagement events where schools can tackle relevant issues alongside parents and students works to pull people together as a community in support of all students. Educators need to nurture the interventions and structures they create to ensure their sustainability and continued support for students to overcome behavioral barriers to learning. The work of engagement is difficult. We expect teachers to engage all students without ever questioning what it is like for the teacher to do this work. Classes push past recommended sizes and may destabilize as students enter and leave our buildings throughout the year. It would be nice if a teacher could engage students by simply flipping a switch, but that is not the case. There is a human element to this work. The tangible moment where the teacher offers and the student decides whether or not to engage is full of emotion, doubt, tension, questioning, action, inaction, and waiting. Teachers are looking to connect students to meaningful learning both as individuals and as a class—an effort that can be an intellectual challenge and emotional drain (Beaton, 2010). The work of engagement does not need to be tackled in isolation. Beyond the classroom, support staff, building administrators, school districts, and parents can work together toward creating environments where all of our students can find success. Imagine if teachers, administrators, and support staff focused less on changing students and instead reflected on how to change the environment and our practice to impact student learning. When students and adults within a learning community are engaged, the culture becomes positive and healthy boasting a certain energy that is supportive and creative. The school, then, becomes a place where people want to be. Students and adults within the community are challenged—but find success and have freedom within set limits. People feel cared for and

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hallways and classrooms are noisy with laughter, conversation, and questions of “What if?” and “Why not?” The hallways display student work and beyond the school day, the auditoriums and bleachers fill with students, parents, and community members who show up to participate in events. All students and staff deserve a healthy learning environment where they can make connections, take risks, fail, and learn from their mistakes.

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