It's just super: Polson schools' 'Big Three'

In case you haven’t noticed, our world is changing dramatically and the landscape of future jobs that will be available to our children is also dramatically changing. The world of work in the future will demand 21st Century Skills beyond the routine and manual skills found among assembly line workers, waiters, maids or janitors. We have evolved as a society to “knowledge based” work where the jobs of the future will demand that workers innovate to meet needs and solve problems and be expected to participate in a global society.

Therefore, students transitioning from high school to college or careers will need, not only need critical thinking and problem solving – skills business recruiters identified in the 1990s – but also will also need skills in:

1) complex communications;

2) creativity and Innovation;

3) information and communication technologies literacy;

4) flexibility and adaptability;

5) initiative and self-direction;

6) social and cross-cultural interaction;

7) productivity and accountability;

8) collaborative working in teams from a variety of locations in the world ; and

9) leadership and responsibility.

Along with these skills students will need values and behaviors such as curiosity, caring, confidence and courage to learn these new skills. (Wagner, T: The Global Achievement Gap, 2008)

With the future in mind, Polson School District’s highest priorities are to 1) ensure that all students demonstrate achievement of these 21st century skills and 2) graduate career and/or college ready equipped to contribute to our world in meaningful ways.

In order to fulfill our mission, we have set in motion for 2014-2015, the “Big Three” in Polson School District.

• Big Three No.1: We are holding ourselves accountable to teach grade-aligned curriculum in Reading and Mathematics. To accomplish this, we have put into place an English Language Arts and Mathematics curriculum K-12, that is coordinated from grade to grade as students master reading, writing and mathematics skills. We know that effective reading, writing and mathematics skills enable students to access and develop advanced skill sets in Science, History, Technology, and other curricula.

• Big Three No.2: All teachers in all curricular areas are working in teams called Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to plan curriculum, use common assessments and to monitor each and every student’s learning. When teachers meet together, they focus on four questions: A) What do we want each student to learn? B) How will we know when each student has learned? C) How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty? And D) How will we respond when a student already knows it?

With these questions in mind, the work of teachers involves planning for instruction, assessing students to make sure they are learning, intervening with students quickly when they fall behind and challenging students who are advancing. The example of teachers and administrators working as a team will also encourage the teaming of students within disciplines and across disciplines.

• Big Three No. 3: Our goal is to accelerate the learning of each student. With teachers regularly meeting in Professional Learning Communities monitoring the learning of students, we have specific interventions for those that fall behind as well as interventions to challenge and expand the learning of students who have already mastered grade level skills.

We use interventions in K-8 such as Phonics for Reading for students with phonic gaps and Junior Great Books for students who need extended challenges in Reading. For Mathematics, we are using Math Facts in a Flash and Accelerated Math for students who have math gaps. We use the advanced libraries of Accelerated Math to provide greater math challenge to students who have already mastered grade level skills. You should also expect to see an increase in the amount of writing that students are doing—“process writing” for example to develop a research paper, and “response writing” to help students summarize what they have learned or to defend a point of view.

Additionally this year at Polson High School (PHS), we have launched several options to accelerate students.

1) PHS offers Advanced Placement (AP) History, English, Physics, and Calculus for college credit;

2) PHS offers two Dual Credit courses in collaboration with Flathead Valley Community College (FVCC). PHS students can earn both high school and college credit simultaneously. The courses being offered are College Math (3 credits in fall) Statistics (4 credits in spring) and Western Civilization (4+4 credits fall and spring) at a cost of $49 per credit;

3) Montana Digital Academy (MTDA) also offers students the opportunity to take specialty courses in foreign languages such as Chinese, French, Russian as well as advanced sciences, mathematics, art and others.

4) PHS has initiated CORE-FLEX, a period within the school day where students can work with teachers to complete missing assignments or work on advanced projects.

Working consistently and collaboratively on these goals is one way to begin preparing students for 21st century skills. We fully expect our students to make substantial gains this school year. In summary, we are committed to helping our students in Polson become the best and brightest problem solvers as well as innovators for the future.

(Contact Reksten at lreksten@polson.k12.mt.us)