Self-Motivation and Staff Learning: Beasley Elementary School Free

One of our efforts is to educate our parents and community members about our “high five” expectations and how they can partner with us to reinforce and support students. Parents can fill out “High Five From Home” recognitions for their children to highlight Beasley’s corresponding high five core values of being respectful, responsible, cooperative, kind, and safe at home. This reinforces the same values at school and home so students receive more feedback and practice. We want students to understand what the words mean and how to show the core values, not just say the word. Practicing the words at home helps students understand a variety of concrete ways to exhibit these core values. The High Fives from Home are shared in class meetings and displayed at school. Beasley feels character education is important especially as more of our students experience trauma filled lives, poverty, and stress. This too will continue to be a focus as our school and staff move forward.

To build and strengthen our home school relationships, we have started a partnership with Home Works! (https://www.teacherhomevisit.org), a teacher home-visit program. All families are invited to a family dinner at school, where we talk and encourage families to sign up for a home visit. Of Home Works! parents surveyed at family dinners, 97% said that attending made them feel welcome and more connected to their child’s school. Home visits with two staff members occur the first few months of school and stress the importance of daily attendance, reading and talking with children at home. We want this to be a time for us to get to know the child in an environment of comfort and for the parents and students to be able to make a connection to our staff outside of school. Home Works! helps make that connection to build trust, so parents and teachers become partners in students’ education. Notably, 95% of surveyed Home Works! teachers believed that home visits improved students’ motivation and attitudes toward school. When Beasley parents were asked if they had seen any changes as a result of the home visit, parent Jennifer Spence stated, “It made me engage more with them in learning activities. It gave me ideas of other games to do with them.” Tricia Cash said, “It reinforced that teachers really care like family.”

Another part of this program is parent-teacher learning partnership team meetings. Parents are invited to school for a hands-on parent learning event focused on math, reading, or summer learning loss with activities. Parents spend an hour to two hours learning about curriculum standards, attendance regulations, and the achievement of their student. Charts are shared that show the attendance and assessment data of every student in the class randomly, and parents are given a code to locate which one is their child so they can see how they are compared to same-age peers. Teachers share power standards and how parents can help students achieve the standards. Parents also make and take things to help their child learn at home. This has been a positive educational experience for parents and teachers. Teachers learn what else parents need to help their students, which type of communication works best to contact parents, and suggestions for future learning partnerships. Teacher growth is fostered by these experiences through their attending professional development before the event, planning together for the event, and then debriefing after the event. We gather feedback to continually improve our practices. Transportation, interpreters, dinner/refreshments, and childcare are always offered to increase parent attendance. Helping parents grow motivates them and their students to set goals and spend more quality time together. Events like these increase engagement as a total school community.

Due to our ever-changing population, our schoolwide professional development and staff learning has focused on providing support for the social emotional well-being of all students. We utilize a comprehensive approach, which blends character education and positive behavior supports in developing strong character and accountability for contributions to our community. Our school improvement plan emphasizes our commitment to strong academic achievement, student engagement and developing citizens of character. Our school improvement plan has evolved by being more evidence driven with greater student focus. Beasley has implemented Zones of Regulation (http://www.zonesofregulation.com/) as a universal strategy for our students. The Zones lessons and activities designed by Leah Kuypers, licensed occupational therapist, have helped our students develop an understanding of emotional regulation and social awareness. The lessons and learning activities are designed to help the students recognize when they are in the different zones as well as learn how to use strategies to change or stay in their zones. In addition to addressing self-regulation, the students have gained an increased vocabulary of emotional terms, skills in reading other people’s facial expressions, perspective about how others see and react to their behavior, insight into events that trigger their behavior, calming and alerting strategies, and problem solving skills. Staff have also been trained in trauma awareness, staff self-care, and trauma classroom interventions.

Kagan Cooperative strategies have been implemented in our building to promote higher student engagement and cooperative learning. Kagan Cooperative Learning provides structures to use as a part of a lesson to increase achievement, engagement, positive student interactions, thinking skills, and to create a kind and caring classroom community. For example, structures such as Quiz-Quiz-Trade, Numbered Heads Together, and RallyTable (https://www.kaganonline.com/) hold all students accountable for their learning and foster social development with their peers. Cooperative learning creates mutual support between students, increases student participation and motivation to achieve. Since 2016, the entire staff has received ongoing training in Continuous Classroom Improvement and teachers implement those improvement strategies (https://www.jimshipley.net). Continuous Classroom Improvement is a systems approach used to improve academics and character, that fosters student and teacher partnerships, clear direction for learning requirements, class goals, and Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles whereby students establish learning goals, select learning strategies to implement, collect and analyze performance data, and modify their plans as needed.

Staff promote academic and behavioral growth by encouraging students to set personal goals. These goals are graphed in order for students to reflect on their growth. Beasley Elementary School reviews and monitors performance and reports progress to all. Teams and data meetings continue to take place on a weekly basis to focus on shared collaboration. During our meetings we clarify essential outcomes, set goals, analyze data, and determine instructional strategies that challenge each learner.

Teachers and students develop a class mission statement and set class learning goals. Teachers also guide students in the continuous cycle of improvement using the Plan-Do-Study-Act model. This model is not only used for academic goals, but also for behavior goals, such as for time on task or emotional regulation (see, for example, https://www.edc.org/sites/default/files/uploads/primer_for_continuous_improvement.pdf). Teachers and students also utilize high quality tools, such as consensograms and affinity diagrams (Tague, 2005). Consensograms can be used by the class as a preassessment/post assessment tool to gauge the students’ understanding, knowledge base, or feelings before and after a task over time. Affinity diagrams can be used by the class or individual students to brainstorm information and ideas which are then organized into categories. These high quality tools cultivate self-reflection and goal setting.

Many students also maintain personal data folders, tracking individual performance data and setting personal goals to improve learning and behavior. For example, students set goals to read at higher levels, increase scores between pre- and posttests, and become more fluent and proficient with math. One fourth-grade student, Megan, noted, “I have learned different ways and strategies to read fluently. It has helped me to take ownership, and I am more confident.” Fourth grade student Maison said his learning folder “has helped me stay focused. It has made me study more instead of sitting on the couch. I am trying harder.” Fifth grade students Gabby, Ethan, and Kaci say that setting goals and tracking their progress has helped them focus, and they really know what they are learning. Kaci stated, “I have more ownership of my learning and participate more.” Students are also encouraged to adopt a growth mindset where mistakes are seen as learning opportunities. Ethan explained how they get second chances to improve over time. Students look at pre- and posttests to see where to focus their learning. “I get detailed feedback on what to improve on with individual comments and coaching. I am encouraged to do better. It helps keep me organized”, said Ethan. Gabby said, “We are going to need this in our jobs one day.” In fifth grade, students participate in creating wind turbines. They use a design engineering approach where they create and test designs while constantly learning from mistakes and faults in their designs and/or thinking the first time. Students and teachers say FAIL stands for “first attempt in learning.”

Beasley has implemented new programs to help foster intrinsic student self-motivation. This has been an area of growth. Instead of extrinsic, tangible rewards, students are working on being the best they can be. It is an inner desire to do better. Extracurricular activities also encourage student goal setting and intrinsic motivation. For example, in 2014, Beasley started participating Girls on the Run to help girls reach their goals of running a 5K. Through this program, girls develop positive self-esteem and healthy lifestyle habits. In 2018, Beasley introduced a similar program for boys, Let Me Run, that encouraged boys to set individual and team goals to improve their physical fitness while working toward an end of the season 5K. Both of these programs focus on intrinsic motivation for improving character and fitness. We have continued to place an emphasis on building relationships to help student set goals to make positive behavior choices. For example, our check-in check-out process is used to partners students who need additional behavior support with a staff member in the building who can help that student reflect and set personal goals. Fourth and fifth grade students are also peer mentors in this role for young students. These examples show Beasley’s commitment toward developing students’ internal motivation.

These programs and examples are the highlights of Beasley’s journey to help students to be self-motivated and ready to learn each day. Our staff has had to learn and adapt as student need has changed. Our students need the school and parents as strong partners in order to be successful. Students spend less than 14% of their year in school. The rest is spent with family and friends at home or in the community. What we do at school and at home matters! Our children deserve the best in learning both academics and character. Beasley Elementary is committed to this each day!