School Improvement: Engaging Students during a Pandemic

1. Professional Development

1.1. Teachers and Staff will receive a professional development training on how to engage students in discussions that give insight into how well the new engagement techniques are working. They will also receive training on how to watch the body language of students to see if they are actively engaged with the technique the teacher is using.

2. Collaboration Opportunities

2.1. Teachers will be able to collaborate with their departments, weekly, to determine how their techniques are working. This will assist in vertical collaboration as all departments are grades 9-12. Bi-weekly faculty meetings will be held to allow teachers from all departments, and all grade levels, to discuss techniques and how well they are working or not.

2.2. A monthly parent night will be held for parents to come in and see techniques being used first hand and discuss any concerns or questions they may have.

2.3. Feeder schools will be able to work with the home school, monthly, to discuss progress within the project. Schools will collaborate to discuss new ideas and proven ideas in order to benefit not only the home school but the feeder school as well.

3. Budget

3.1. Professional Development: Trainer to discuss reading body language and communicating effectively with students.

3.2. Hosting feeder schools at home school.

3.3. Parent night refreshments, monthly.

4. Communication: Teachers Students Parents Community

4.1. Teachers: Communication will be done through school email and in person meeitings. This will include surveys, updates, resources, and more. This communication will be done weekly.

4.2. Students: Each student has a device, therefore, pushed through notifications and resources within their Google Drive will be sent out to each student, weekly.

4.3. Parents: Parents will receive bi-weekly communication via email. This information will be in the form of a newsletter giving them thorough explanations of the data of how the process is going.

4.4. Community: The community can check out the school's website, bi-weekly, for basic up-to-date information on how this process is going.

5. Curriculum Instruction Assessment Vertical Alignment

5.1. Curriculum: Feeder schools will work together to plan a curriculum map with the home school to utilize with the students throughout this project.

5.2. Instruction: Feeder schools will collaborate with the home school to discuss what worked well or not so well since March of 2020 (when the Pandemic began.) This will allow for better planning of instruction, including knowledge of what actively engages students.

5.3. Assessment: The home school will utilize the assessments that the feeder schools will utilize that are standard-based assessments throughout this project.

5.4. Vertical Alignment: The home school for this project will work with the departments within it to create egaging lesson plans that build upon one another throughout the different grade levels.

6. Data

6.1. Progress Monitoring: Based upon teacher observation, data will be collected using checklists on which engagement techniques worked and which did not.

6.2. Sharing Data: Data will be sent out to parents in detail via a bi-weekly newsletter. Data will be sent out to the community, bi-weekly, via updates to the school website.