CHAMBERS PUBLIC SCHOOL
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT INFORMATION
Culture of Learning Narrative
A good institution nurtures and sustains a healthy culture of learning. In a healthy culture, learners, parents, and educators feel connected to the purpose and work of the institution as well as behave in alignment with the stated values and norms. The institution also demonstrates evidence that reflects the mission, beliefs, and expectations of the institution (e.g. student work; physical appearance of the institution; participation in institution activities; parents' attendance at institution functions).
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Evidence
Professional Development Schedule
The leaders and professional staff members of Chambers Public School continually work to create and sustain a culture of respect, fairness, equity, and inclusion. Communication is a key component of this process. The superintendent/principal maintains an open-door policy and the opportunity for discussion and input is available to everyone. An email is sent out every Monday informing staff of all upcoming events and responsibilities, and late-starts are scheduled at least once a month to provide time for staff meetings, committee work, and PLC time. Staff members are invited to be a part of all committees including school improvement, PBIS, safety, policy, etc. Every staff member is automatically a part of the Cognia process as our school seeks continued accreditation. In addition, staff members are continually asked for their input regarding matters such as scheduling, changes to the school handbook, school celebrations, and policies. Staff members have completed surveys regarding the climate and culture and the results have been analyzed and integrated into plans for the future. Speakers, such as Dr. Darrin Peppard and Lorie Smith (the National Elementary Teacher of the Year Award recipient) have been invited to speak as part of the staff’s professional development time. Finally, the superintendent/principal also utilizes the 5D+ Rubric for Instructional Growth and Teacher Evaluation to provide meaningful feedback regarding teaching practices and performance levels.
In order for all stakeholders to feel included in this culture of equity and fairness, the leaders and staff members of Chambers Public School have held monthly parent meetings to address the current needs and concerns of parents and students. Staff members also routinely share relevant information at the monthly board meetings. Community members have also been invited to join various committees in order to share their input on a variety of school-related issues. The school website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, and school app are all places where information is shared with the community. Important dates, upcoming events, and interesting activities are highlighted every day.
One of the most important changes Chambers Public School has made to bolster a positive culture is the implementation of the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) program. The mission of this program is to provide a positive and fair environment that encourages safe, responsible, and respectful behavior from all students. This program is still in its infancy at Chambers Public School; however, activities have already been implemented to celebrate students and their achievements. A Student Appreciation Day involved students, staff, leadership, and community members in variety of fun, outdoor activities. School assemblies celebrate students and student-athlete achievements throughout the year. Motivational speakers have been invited to speak to the students and staff over issues such as bullying, positive peer relationships, and overcoming learning disabilities. PBIS will eventually include consistent signage and language throughout the building, as well as behavioral documentation and data. Recently the Chambers Public School Student Council initiated the “Caring Coyote” program. This program recognizes students who have been nominated for positive behavior and acts of kindness. Students are honored with a Walk of Fame.
Staff members routinely demonstrate commitment to learners’ academic and non-academic needs and interests. The institution’s practices, processes, and decisions are documented and are consistent with and based on its stated values.
Staff members at Chambers Public School have been administering and carrying out several strategies and activities to best meet the needs of learners’ well-being. Staff and stakeholders have had significant involvement in attending students’ extra-curricular activities within and outside the school walls.
The district consistently posts live feed coverage of academics, organizations, and athletics through the school app, web page, and several social media outlets. Community members and family members may view the amazing things happening within our rural district.
District staff members are very passionate about the well-being of learners and step up to the plate on multiple occasions to assist colleagues. Staff members consistently sacrifice their plan time to help substitute for teachers who are out of the building for other activities. The administration has also set aside time for professional learning communities (PLCs) so teachers can meet and collaborate with their colleagues to continue to best meet the needs of each learner.
Staff continually has been documenting the practices, processes, and decisions the district has been making to follow its stated values within the mission and vision statements. Staff members construct lesson plans for classes and ensure instruction meets the state standards. Each month instructors document targeted improvement plan (TIP) strategies, multicultural learning, writing strategies, and social-emotional learning (SEL) strategies.
The district’s PBIS program has exceedingly meet the academic and non-academic needs of the learners’ well-being. Student Appreciation Day (SAD) helped bring all faculty, students, and community members together for engaging and entertaining activities. It was an enormous success and has assisted in creating a more positive school culture. Chambers Public School’s PBIS program has also begun to implement an electronic recording tool to document and track learners’ behaviors.
At Chambers Public School, the students’ well-being is of utmost importance to the institution.
Leaders establish and sustain conditions that regularly result in support and active participation among stakeholders. Leaders routinely collaborate with stakeholders to advance identified priorities. Chambers Public School chooses areas of focus based on analyzed data of learners’ needs and consistent with guiding principles.
The faculty and staff of Chambers Public School have been implementing many tools and strategies to increase stakeholder involvement. Chambers Public School has conducted several surveys in recent years to collect input from stakeholders on the state of the district. Surveys have focused on topics including the following: classroom activities, student opinion, school building culture, parental involvement, and community involvement. The data from these surveys have been presented at regularly scheduled staff and board of education meetings. The school has used data from these surveys to develop goals to improve the climate and culture of the school.
With the data and feedback from our stakeholders, the continuous improvement team developed a plan to have instructors present each month at school board meetings. In order to share positive news from classrooms with the community, one representative from the kindergarten through 6th grades and one representative from 7th through 12th grades attends the board of education meeting each month. Each member of the faculty is expected to attend one school board meeting per school year. It is this faculty member’s duty to collaborate with others and create a report to share with the stakeholders. This report contains notable lessons, milestones, accomplishments, and activities the classes have participated in each month. This attendance has provided our stakeholders with an opportunity to learn of classroom events for every grade level.
In recent years the school has held monthly parent meetings separate from the board of education meetings. These meetings contain much of the same information that is shared during the board of education meetings, but also provides parents with an opportunity to hear from the administration and share concerns. Many stakeholders’ schedules do not align with the board of education meetings, so parent meetings help make information more accessible. Much like the board of education meetings, instructors attend these meetings to share reports from the classrooms with parents.
Efforts to involve and maintain support from stakeholders have not stopped inside the classroom. A student appreciation day was held at the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year. Students and faculty participated in games and activities for an afternoon in mixed grade-level teams to earn points. Community members were invited to join the festivities and some organized activities. Stakeholders stay informed about school activities through our school app. Faculty and staff are encouraged to take photos and share what is happening in the building to provide more opportunities for stakeholders to connect with school events. The app is frequently updated, and the posts connect directly to the school’s Facebook page. Social media has been consistently active with the addition of the app.
A formal structure is planned and regularly implemented to promote a culture and climate in which learners receive support from adults and peers. Peer and adult interactions and behaviors routinely demonstrate respect, trust, and concern for one another’s well-being.
The faculty and staff of Chambers Public School have implemented several formal structures to promote a positive culture and climate in learners.
Evidence that learners, families, and educators feel connected to the purpose and work of the institution is evident through their continued participation in daily, weekly, and monthly activities. It has been the goal of Chambers Public School to regularly implement PBIS and MTSS to benefit learners and their relationships peers and teachers. As a result, this jumpstarted a recent program initiated by student council called Caring Coyotes. This program has led to positive behaviors in students as they perform caring and compassionate acts of service towards others. The students are then acknowledged for their positive behavior. The faculty and staff of Chambers Public School also regularly attend professional development opportunities that promote building positive relationships with students, resulting in less negative behavior.
The ongoing goal of Chambers Public School, in alignment with PBIS, is to document behaviors coinciding with the stated values and norms of the school in order to collect data. Although there are times when learners make mistakes, the PBIS team has been implementing natural consequences for some of those behaviors.
The PBIS team has also been designing specific expectations for areas outside of the classroom to be visibly posted. For example, expectations on the bus would be to sit in a seat, have your hands to yourself, and be respectful of the driver. Aside from the bus, expectations are also being created for the bathrooms, hallways, playground, and lunchroom. If certain expectations are not being met in alignment with the mission and beliefs of Chambers Public School, then the learners, their families, and educators are in communication with one another. If those expectations are still unmet after reaching out to those affected, then natural consequences are arranged (i.e., losing bus privileges for a specified amount of time).
Through social-emotional learning activities, students become more aware of their emotions and how those affect their subsequent actions towards themselves and others. Not only did the faculty and staff want to create this awareness for the learners, but also for the educators, too.
The institution’s documented operating practices cultivate and set expectations for collegiality and collaboration. Professional staff members regularly interact with respect and cooperation, often learn from one another, and routinely consider one another’s ideas. Professional staff members often work together in self-formed or assigned groups to review information, identify common problems, and implement solutions on behalf of learners.
At Chambers Public school the staff members meet regularly with assigned and self-formed groups and interact with each other respectfully to accomplish many tasks. The entire staff has regular meetings once or twice a month to talk about upcoming events, to help build community with all the staff members, and talk about expectations and collaboration opportunities that are available. In the elementary, staff members meet with professional learning communities to look at curriculum, talk about solutions to common problems that take place in the classrooms, and share strategies to help learners to be the most successful in and out of the classroom. The high school staff works in self-formed groups to find the best ways to help meet students’ needs, as well as talk about scheduling for the week and month. Other groups that meet regularly include the PBIS team, MTSS team, the leadership team, the support team, and the school improvement team. These teams collaborate on ideas about how to make the school a better place for students and staff members.
Staff members also often learn from one another in many ways. New staff members are given mentors. These mentors help guide them as they navigate classroom management, instruction, and implement strategies to help learners. Overall, Chambers Public School staff members work collaboratively to help make sure that all of the learners' needs are being met and are open and willing to listen to other’s ideas and work in a respective environment.
Professional staff members consistently receive adequate resources and assistance based on data and information unique to the individual. A formal structure ensures that professional staff members receive personalized mentoring and coaching from leaders and peers.
At Chambers Public School, members of our faculty and staff are consistently encouraged to expand their knowledge and expertise in their specific content and skill areas. This expansion of learning is often offered on an individual basis. However, professional development is also provided as a whole group learning opportunity. Each year, faculty members are required to add a minimum of six hours to their professional development profile. The school provides many of those hours of training in-house. Professional staff members who are new to the district participate in new staff training days prior to the beginning of the school year. They are also assigned a mentor teacher as a resource to guide them during their first year of teaching in the district. The district’s educational service unit also offers new staff training days that new team members attend.
Throughout the school year, the administration at Chambers Public School completes several formal and informal observations in each classroom with the intent of providing valuable feedback to every teacher. The data collected during these observations is logged into the Pivot 5D+ system and then discussed during a reflection meeting. Areas of strength and need for growth are identified. This data allows administration and professional staff members to pinpoint what resources or assistance would be most effective on an individual and whole-staff level. The district has taken the following measures: 1) Invested in LETRS training for a few staff members; 2) Incorporates late-start days in the school calendar for professional development opportunities; 3) Provides substitute teachers so teachers can attend training; 4) Naturally generates collaboration time to implement what is learned during these professional development opportunities.
Many of the identified areas of need have led to whole staff training from Dr. Darrin Peppard and Lori Smith, who have both presented information on school culture and how staff members can foster relationships within and beyond the doors of classrooms. Staff attends a winter workshop every year as a complete staff. This winter workshop, organized by ESU 8, provides a general session and then breakout sessions. These breakout sessions allow staff members the opportunity to collaborate with instructors from other districts. School administration consistently asks what instructional tools professional staff members need to be successful. The administration is very supportive of professional staff members attending professional development opportunities during the school year.
Data drives decisions when determining which professional opportunities are necessary and teachers are fully supported when they seek the appropriate resources or assistance needed to be successful.
Overall, Chambers Public School maintains a positive culture that demonstrates respect, fairness, equity, and inclusion. The leadership, staff, and stakeholders will continue to work together to continually uphold the values of the school and community.