[BHS Etree] Principal's Welcome: 2013-2014

[BHS etree]

Please do not reply to this post; reply to  pasqualescuderi at berkeley.net

Inline image 2
*@BHSinfo*


Dear BHS Families:

Wednesday begins another year at one of the most dynamic, creative, and 
diverse high schools in the country. With an innovative faculty and some 
of the most creative and energetic young people you will find anywhere, 
Berkeley High School has to me always been a sort of vibrant bazaar of 
arts, ideas, and sciences. It is an energetic and youthful collective of 
perspectives, experiences, and, best of all, possibilities and 
potential. In fact, this last stop on the K-12 continuum, particularly 
here at Berkeley High, can often be the /first/ place where the lifelong 
passions, interests, causes, and purposes of our kids begin to emerge in 
some detail. We look forward to sharing another year of growth with all 
of our students and families.

This year, in the areas of curriculum and instruction, we continue to 
build on the priorities established in our 2011-2012 self-study for the 
Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Most notably, we 
continue to deepen our school-wide efforts to increase the proficiency 
and performance of all students in academic language development with a 
current emphasis on academic writing. We believe that these skills 
generalize to all content areas, build skills and competencies that will 
position students for success throughout high school as well as in 
college, and effectively align our efforts with the depth and demands of 
the new Common Core State Standards; standards that in fact include 
literacy components for science, social studies, and a variety of 
technical subjects.

Through increased training for teachers in the area of lesson design, 
and with multiple opportunities for students to practice writing across 
content areas, our work aims to both generate increased academic 
language production and proficiency for students who are learning or 
struggling with those skills, and to also help focus and bring increased 
clarity and command to the skills of those students who already have a 
strong foundation. A more detailed explanation of these efforts and 
their rationale are included below for those who are interested.

While I am clearly in favor of developing and sustaining common and 
coherent sets of curriculum, instructional fundamentals, and lesson 
design elements, I am also cognizant that in order for curriculum and 
instruction to really come alive and be engaging, the individual 
creativity and tailoring of a teacher must be in the mix; however, I 
believe that that creativity is most effective when applied to the 
pursuit of some common and collective student outcomes. This helps 
create a culture where collaboration is /focused/ and where teachers can 
more readily build their capacities, and more importantly the capacities 
of their students, by supporting each other through peer observation and 
by learning and borrowing from the expertise of one another.

Optimal efforts for kids in the education setting require/both /the 
clarity and coherence of universal student outcomes /and/ the creative 
and tailored marks of individual teachers who make the paths to those 
outcomes both colorful and enlightening for our kids. The proverbial 
"sweet spot" of instruction combines both of these elements, dispenses 
with the notion of "rigor" as being synonymous with simply being hard on 
kids, and does not confuse creativity or creative teaching with a 
complete absence of structure or thoughtful planning.

A school's success is obviously and ultimately measured by the success 
of its students, /all/ of its students, and I look forward to the 
continued work with our faculty and with our parent community on meeting 
both the instructional and intellectual challenges that are the 
gatekeepers of that success.

Welcome Back,

Pasquale Scuderi
Principal
Berkeley High School


*_Cell Phone Policy_*

As always, please review the cell phone policy with students. 
Familiarity with and adherence to this simple community agreement makes 
for fewer distractions and fewer staff/student conflicts over something 
that students should actually see as a basic courtesy to others.

Cell phones should always be out of sight, stowed away, and preferably 
turned off or silenced except for before school, during lunch, and after 
school.

Cell phones then should not be visible or in use whenever class is in 
session. It does not matter to us whether /you/ an individual student is 
in class but whether classes for the whole school are in session.

Parents, please support us by limiting any texts and/or calls to 
students to only absolutely urgent or genuine emergency matters during 
class time. Our clear preference is that you call the office and allow 
us to contact students on your behalf when classes are in session.

With over 3200 students, it only takes a tiny percentage of folks in 
classrooms or hallways checking phones and otherwise violating this 
agreement to create distractions from what students are supposed to be 
focused on; namely, their coursework and getting to class on time.

*_Course Descriptions_*

For each class during the first week of class, students should receive a 
Course Description/Syllabus.

The Course Description/Syllabus should include the following components:

1.           Description and objectives of the class including content 
standards covered

2. Instructional materials used

3.           Units of Study

4.           Evaluation and grading system

5.           Course Goals

6.           Make-up work policy


*/NOTE: The following section of this letter is directly excerpted from 
our opening internal staff bulletin around instruction. While I normally 
would not include this level of technical detail in a mailing to 
families, we decided to include it any way for those who might be 
curious or interested in more specifics on what we are working on 
instructionally. It contains some of our instructional expectations for 
teachers, students, and administrators, and some of the ways we are 
planning to build both capacity and accountability into those efforts. 
If you are happy with the summary provided above you can simply skip the 
next few items and scroll down to the Campus Safety section below. /*

*_Academic Language Continues: Constructed Response, Constructing 
Meaning, The Common Core, and a School-Wide Focus for Professional 
Development_*

Continued efforts to create positive and productive academic outcomes 
for all of our students are taking a very actionable turn this year at BHS.

Teachers will be supported in building their capacity to plan and 
structure lessons that integrate explicit language instruction into 
their teaching. We plan to couple that increased capacity with 
structured and consistent opportunities for students to write multiple 
times during the year and believe that through the combination of these 
efforts, we will begin to see increased growth for students on 
everything from grades and in-house common assessments to higher passing 
and proficiency rates across the board on CAHSEE, as well as increased 
participation and success with endeavors like the SAT and ACT or the 
composition of a compelling and competitive college essay.

This effort is also aligned to support the depth and demands of the new 
Common Core State Standards that include explicit literacy standards not 
just for language arts, but also science, social studies, and a variety 
of technical subjects.

Teachers will be supported in this effort with ongoing training in 
Constructing Meaning, a process for planning and lesson design that 
emphasizes the critical role language plays in content area teaching and 
supports the infusion of explicit language instruction into content 
teaching. Over half of the BHS staff as well as the administrative team 
have now been trained in CM and the remainder of the staff will be 
trained during the October and November PD days.

Progress toward these goals will in part be measured by three pieces of 
writing we will ask students to compose over the course of the year. 
These Constructed Response exercises will, this year, be given in 
English, History, and Science Classes and then anchored, assessed and 
collaboratively scored by multi-disciplinary teams from all departments. 
Throughout the year, there will be teacher training provided during PD 
time in pre-reading, close reading, and persuasive essay writing.

In brief, academic language and literacy is now the responsibility of 
every teacher and administrator at Berkeley High School.

This current focus reflects the logical evolution of our previous work 
on academic language, and is driven in part by new content standards 
and, more importantly, success with comparable models elsewhere.

Harvard University's Achievement Gap Initiative chronicled, among 
others, the exemplary work of Brockton High School in Brockton, Mass, in 
the report, /_How High Schools Become Exemplary_/. 
<http://www.agi.harvard.edu/events/2009Conference/2009AGIConferenceReport6-30-2010web.pdf><http://www.agi.harvard.edu/events/2009Conference/2009AGIConferenceReport6-30-2010web.pdf> Lead 
teacher Susannah Bell and I traveled to Brockton last winter and were 
immediately impressed with the outcomes and work being done. Our visit 
confirmed what the Harvard study reported : "The work at Brockton has 
shown that when students improve at non-fiction writing, that skill 
generalizes to every other subject: they get better at math and science 
and it makes sense if you consider the thinking and self-organization 
skills required."

_A PBS video chronicling the Brockton work can be found here. 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zONaQeAMFMc>_

On Monday, teachers will get an overview of the related Berkeley High 
School PD plan for 2013-2014.

The work of Graff and Birkenstein in /They Say I Say/, a book provided 
to all staff, provides further rationale for our instructional efforts 
and deeper background on this type of work. They acknowledge the obvious 
fact that critical thinking and writing go deeper than templates, 
frames, and rhetorical formulas, but note that for struggling, emerging, 
and developing writers, "deeper habits of thought cannot be put into 
practice unless you have a language for expressing them in clear, 
organized ways."

Anticipating the concerns that the strategies and tools found in their 
book as well as Constructing Meaning relegate young writers to the 
formulaic, Graff and Birkenstein contend that, "Even the most creative 
forms of expression depend on established patterns and structures. Most 
song-writers depend on a time honored verse/chorus/verse pattern and few 
people would call Shakespeare uncreative because he didn't invent the 
sonnet or the dramatic forms that he used to such dazzling effect. Even 
the most avant-garde cutting edge artists (like improvisational jazz 
musicians) need to master the basic forms that their work improvises on, 
departs from, and goes beyond."

*_Linking Assessments to Instruction and Common Assessments_*

Continued focus and emphasis will be placed on linking assessment to 
instruction.

Our continuing professional focus on assessment is, again, /not/ a focus 
on testing, but actually a focus on student /learning /wherein we are 
working to improve the tools and products we use to gauge or assess 
whether students have learned what we want them to learn or not. A 
concurrent, and very much equal concern, is becoming effective at how we 
link the information those assessments yield to deliver more effective, 
responsive, relevant, and creative instruction.

Elsewhere on the subject of assessments are the common assessments being 
given in the following subjects this year at BHS:

·       English Grade 9

·       English Grade 10

·       IMP levels 2,3, and 4

·       Algebra 1 and Algebra 2

·       Geometry

·       Biology

·       Chemistry

·       10th Grade Social Studies

·       Spanish 1/2 and 3/4

·       French 1/2

·       SPED CLC

·       Physical Education

*_Learning Objectives and Agendas_*

In the fall semester, we expect all BHS teachers to include a visible 
daily agenda that includes a content learning objective and the 
activities for that period. The agenda should be clearly visible from 
all vantage points in the room and remain posted the whole period.

Teachers who have been trained in Constructing Meaning, and understand 
how to incorporate academic language objectives in their agendas, should 
have lesson objectives that reflect that capacity as well. With all 
teachers being trained in Constructing Meaning by the year's end, our 
expectation is that most classrooms feature language objectives as well 
by the spring.

Schmoker, Marzano, DuFour, and Bambrick-Santoyo, among other 
researchers, have demonstrated that consistent use of agendas and 
learning objectives school-wide is an effective way to increase the 
learning of all students, in particular English Learners and students 
with learning differences.

Attached to this e-mail is a very useful tool providing examples and 
counterexamples of the caliber and quality of posted learning objectives 
we are looking for in classrooms. The attachment is labeled /Learning 
Objectives with Counterexamples./

*_Classroom Walkthroughs, Observations, and Teacher Evaluation_*

*Guiding Questions for Walkthroughs and Observations*

In an effort to be responsive to teacher suggestions and 
recommendations, as well as our ongoing reflections on and revisions 
/to/ our own practice, the administrative team will continue to work on 
ways to make walkthroughs and observations effective tools for 
supporting lesson design and classroom instruction that yields the best 
outcomes for students.

One of the ways in which we will be calibrating our walkthroughs and 
evaluations is to use a common set of broad instructional questions to 
frame our observations and conversations with teachers around 
instruction. Consistently leading with questions increases the 
probability that the conversations between administrators and teachers 
about instruction begin with genuine inquiry and work to encourage 
productive and continuously improving dialogue around instructional 
practice.

1. *What would a proficient student say, write, or do to show that they 
got what you wanted them to learn during the lesson? *

2. *How did you, the teacher, model the skill, product, thinking process 
or outcome you wanted for students? *

3. *How did you provide explicit language instruction or supports for 
kids learning standard academic English?*

4. *What tools, templates, frames, or structures did you use to ensure 
all students were able to contribute equitably to the learning?*

5. *What modeled, guided, or collaborative instruction led up to or 
supported the independent task students were performing?*

6. *How did you assess or measure which students learned or understood 
what you wanted them to learn during the lesson?*

*Walkthrough Tool*

We are currently developing an electronic walkthrough tool to collect 
snapshot instructional strategy data throughout the school during 
walkthroughs and observations. The data collected will not be used in 
individual formal evaluations; it will rather allow us to gather large 
samples of what instructional strategies and learning tools are being 
used and implemented in classrooms throughout BHS.

The Google-based form will allow administrators to take note of things 
like posted learning objectives, mode of instruction in use, number of 
kids engaged in speaking and writing, where the observed lesson segment 
falls on the Gradual Release of Responsibility arc of lesson design 
(reviewing objectives, teacher modeling, guided practice, collaborative 
lesson, or independent practice), and where the lesson segment falls on 
Bloom's Taxonomy (Remembering, Applying, etc.) The components of Gradual 
Release of Responsibility follow the phases of a lesson arc outlined by 
Dutro and Levy's work on Constructing Meaning. The form will have no 
more than 10 questions and again is for the purposes of collecting large 
scale snapshots of the types of instruction and elements or tools of 
practice we are seeing school-wide.

Our goal is also to add an email function to the tool so that forms 
submitted by administrators after a walkthrough or observation are also 
sent directly to the teacher being observed. This will also have a small 
section for notes/comments in the hopes that we can be responsive to the 
requests of several teachers who advocated for quicker turnaround times 
for communication and comments following their classes being observed. 
Additionally, the question and focus areas on the walkthrough form are 
another way to convey the frame and questions by which administrators 
will be guided in their observations and walkthroughs.

*Use of Video and Film in the Classroom*

While we have mentioned this before, the administrative team plans to 
pay particular attention this year to how we use film or video in the 
classroom. Our consensus is that while we have seen some improvement, 
there are still too many instances on campus where the use of film or 
video appeared to be a completely passive experience for students.

Too often we have not observed a clearly defined critical perspective 
for the viewing, seen little teacher interaction with the film or video 
(chunking or sectioning it like you would text during a class 
discussion), or no tools like organizers and note-taking strategies in 
use with a pre-articulated purpose for interacting with the viewing. 
"When film or video is used in this way," says Rene Hobbes' of Temple 
University, film or media use in the classroom may then simply 
"replicate the ways that television, video, and other electronic media 
are used in the home, as a passive form of recreation, amusement, or 
escape that is increasingly a dominant, normative dimension of leisure" 
rather than learning.

We are in no way saying that you should not use film or video, simply 
that as a mode of instruction it should be used with the same planning, 
chunking, and interactive components or supports you would afford a text.


*_Campus Safety Issues_*

/*Post office protest/camp at Allston and Milvia*/

An ongoing concern over the proposed federal sale of the post office 
across the street from BHS has seen a protest formed and over the past 
several weeks a camp has developed. Our current understanding is that 
individuals, most likely unaffiliated with those folks who are lawfully 
and peacefully protesting, have generated a number of criminal incidents 
and subsequent calls to the police.

While it appears as of tonight that the number of individuals has 
diminished somewhat, we do have some notable concerns given the nature 
of the incidents reported to BPD and the encampment's proximity to our 
school. On the eve of the first day of school I have spoken with our 
partners at BPD and will be meeting with our Dean of Students and Safety 
Staff tomorrow to ensure that we closely monitor the situation in the 
interest of student and campus safety.

/*On the Subject of Rally Day*/

Many have characterized the indefinite cancellation of Rally Day as a 
controversial decision of sorts. For myself, and the team of 
administrators and teacher leaders who made the decision, characterizing 
the decision as "controversial" is to us, confirmation of a perspective 
uniformed of just how negative, divisive, inappropriate, and in many 
respects dangerous last year's event became.

It's certainly not my preference to dot this opening letter with a 
litany of graphic details regarding the event, but some are, I believe, 
necessary, so that students, staff, and parents can discuss this 
decision with some honest perspectives and simple facts.

An event that has historically been justified as a "unifying" 
school-spirit experience has over the past several years looked far more 
mean-spirited and divisive. Last year saw the usual groups of students 
shouting at each other representing their classes (juniors v seniors, 
sophomores v. juniors, all v. frosh) actually result in multiple 
physical altercations and suspensions. Elsewhere groups of older kids 
chanted and shouted insults and obscenities at groups of younger 
students. I'll spare you some of the chants and their uncreative and 
demeaning specifics.

Physical safety was another massive concern last year and the number of 
students we sent home and/or suspended for intoxication on that day 
reached double digits. Some groups of students were so brazen that we 
confiscated open containers on campus. Groups of zealous kids created 
massive and volatile congestion throughout the building and in hallways 
often blocking doorways and creating unsafe situations without outlets 
for those students who simply wanted to move on. Police were called by 
neighbors and local businesses to deal with students who were walking on 
cars, some occupied and some parked, while traffic backed up after 
school at Milvia and Kittridge and the possibility that staff and police 
officers might need to physically and forcefully remove kids from the 
street nearly became a reality.

Administrators and security staff spent hours monitoring bathrooms (a 
deployment of instructional leadership resources that is in my view 
ridiculous) and yet, having to respond to constant radio calls in all 
areas of the campus all day, custodial staff still had to deal with the 
unpleasant biological aftermath of a number of students who made bad 
decisions, drank too much, and got sick. Again, if this all sounds over 
the top we agree, and I'm not simply being graphic just to be graphic, 
but rather in an effort to be very honest and open about the facts so 
that merits of this decision and the /actual /culture of this event can 
be understood and evaluated in the context of school climate and student 
safety.

To debunk rumors, the event is not being cancelled simply or exclusively 
because significant members of last year's sophomore class disrupted 
performances and caused huge delays by running on the field during the 
rally. That incident was actually one of /many /individual and 
collective behaviors that required staff to evaluate and ultimately 
decide to cancel the event indefinitely.

During my time here we have seen helpful efforts and attempts by student 
leadership to reframe the event. I personally went to several classes 
the year I got here as principal to discuss concerns with students that 
I had been hearing since I first came to BHS as a Vice Principal in 
2006. Yet despite these types of efforts, and despite significant 
expenditures on added security, administrative time, and on logistics 
and planning, things have simply gotten worse and in our estimation have 
become increasingly inappropriate for a school setting and unsafe in 
general.

Each year we have attempted to increase positive messaging, and coupled 
that with tighter enforcement and guidelines, and yet each year we have 
been proven to have underestimated how deeply embedded the "party at 
school all day" culture of the event is and so, by continuing to support 
it, we would be offering our tacit and indirect approval of several 
behaviors that we in fact do not feel are even remotely appropriate at 
school.

It is not a decision we make lightly, and while it may be unpopular, it 
is one that we are very, very happy to be making /before/ rather than 
after even a single student gets hurt.

Pasquale Scuderi
Principal
Berkeley High School_____

Marguerite Fa-Kajiand Catherine Ference are the parent-volunteer 
facilitators of the etree; please direct any questions to them at 
bhs-owner at lmi.net <mailto:bhs-owner at lmi.net>. To post a message, send 
to: bhs at lmi.net <mailto:bhs at lmi.net>; BHS etree archives: 
http://lists.lmi.net/pipermail/bhs/ <http://lists.lmi.net/pipermail/bhs/>

To _unsubscribe_ from the etree, send an email to bhs-request at lmi.net 
<mailto:bhs-request at lmi.net> with one word only in the subject line: 
'unsubscribe'; To _subscribe_ to the etree, send an email to 
bhs-request at lmi.net <mailto:bhs-request at lmi.net> with one word only in 
the subject line: 'subscribe.' http://bhs.berkeleyschools.net/ 
<http://bhs.berkeleyschools.net/>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lmi.net/pipermail/bhs/attachments/20130828/af96af51/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/png
Size: 125187 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.lmi.net/pipermail/bhs/attachments/20130828/af96af51/attachment.png>