By Lisa Simms

A Plan in Place

When we opened our doors to 9th graders one year ago, we had a plan in place to meet our vision: To empower ALL students to own their learning, shape their dreams and create a better world. Embedded within our personalized model was a strategy to give ALL students access to high value opportunities, such as Advanced Placement classes and a concurrent enrollment. To reinforce this instructional vision, we created two student support structures as part of our college and career programming: a pilot course focused on college and career readiness, and advisory.

Our pilot course, Career Survey, launched in the fall. During this course, students learned about different career clusters and jobs through the lens of social entrepreneurship. In the second semester the class switched to Advanced Academic Achievement 109 (AAA 109), a college skills class through a partnership with the Community College of Denver (CDE) that would allow 9th graders to earn three college credits upon passing. The units for AAA 109 would build students’ skills in organization, time management, learning styles, reading, writing, test-taking, and planning for the future. As an additional component of the Career Survey and AAA 109 courses, students would also develop their Individual Career and Academic Plans (ICAP) facilitated by our counselor.

In advisory, the second prong in our approach, we provided a curriculum for teacher mentors to lead lessons on our Habits of Success competencies, such as Growth Mindset and Work and Time Management, in three week cycles. Teachers also got professional development on these lessons, with the goal of consistent delivery at scale as a means of creating our school culture and supporting students with developing the habits and mindsets necessary for academic and personal success. Mentors were also expected to facilitate one-on-one conversations to support students with progress monitoring, relationship building and goal setting.

A Plan in Action

Throughout the year, we were confronted with many challenges within elements of our overall school design. We had some students opt into AP classes, who, while highly motivated, lacked the literacy skills necessary to keep up with the rigorous course content. The Personalized Learning Plans and students’ individual learning time did not naturally lend itself to supports for students in becoming self-directed learners as we had hoped it would. For students who struggled, the greatest cause was a lack of agency, as it felt unnatural for them to be self-directed. Teachers tried with varying results to support students in goal setting and planning. Students who had a strong sense of agency thrived, while those who didn’t struggled to navigate the curriculum and expectations.

We were also met with specific challenges in our student support structures themselves. For instance, we wanted to expose students to the AAA 109 competencies at the beginning of the year as an onboarding experience. However, we were not able to access the curriculum until December, and by then much of the content was a redundant mirroring of the Habits of Success students had already touched on in advisory. Additionally, the reading and writing strategies were not aligned to strategies already being taught in Language Arts class.

In advisory, the success of the lessons varied. Some teachers delivered them with ease and nuance, while others stumbled through the content. Advisors didn’t have time to balance case conferencing with the additional responsibility of facilitating curriculum around the Habits of Success. Further, there was not an intentional plan to communicate the goal setting and planning students were doing in Career Survey/AAA 109 back to their teacher mentors.

In mid-year surveys conducted for both teachers and students, the feedback was clear: there was not sufficient time for teacher mentors to do both case conferencing and the planning and facilitation of the provided advisory curriculum. Also, students wanted advisory time to be less structured so they could do work and build community through fun and engaging activities. We responded by removing curriculum facilitation responsibilities and focusing on quality conferences instead, as well as making Fridays fun culture building days.

Year 2 Pivots

During Year 1 we learned a lot and identified the following needs:

• Strong additional agency and literacy skill support
• Coherent and consistent lesson delivery and accountability systems of our Habits of Success competencies
• A dedicated class for students to conduct career exploration, set postsecondary goals and engage in intentional academic planning
• An advisory time that is dedicated to quality 1:1 and peer-to-peer conferencing with clear connections to college and career planning

To meet these needs, we decided to create a new and separate class called Design My Future (DMF) to replace College Survey/AAA 109. DMF, along with our Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship design thinking pathways, will serve as a means of preparing 9th, 10th and 11th graders for college and career.

In 9th grade, DMF will have the same content as the previous Career Survey/AAA109 pilot course, but we have optimized the timing and pacing of the content. We are spreading the Community College of Denver curriculum units over the course of the 9th grade year to support students with the appropriate Habits of Success they need as freshman entering high school in a college readiness context. The career exploration will be the embedded content students navigate through as they develop and apply the DSISD Habits of Success competencies.

We will be very intentional and transparent about teaching and fostering agency for students. In 10th grade, beginning at the end of the first hexter (six week period), students who have demonstrated mastery of Habits of Success and agency in their DMF class will have the opportunity to earn self-directed learning time in our Raven’s Nest, a community space with innovative furniture and workspaces, after demonstrating mastery of Habits of Success and agency in their DMF class. Students who need more support in agency and Habits of Success, such as organization and time management, will continue to go to DMF after those initial six weeks and will receive additional 1:1 support from their teacher. Additionally, 10th graders will go deeper into career explorations and begin to explore job shadows. This will help them prepare for 11th grade internships that will serve to further narrow down their career interests.

DMF teachers will also work closely with the Language Arts teachers in ensuring consistent school-wide literacy strategies and providing PD for staff. They will support students in conducting peer-to-peer tutorials – a strategy borrowed from AVID – which will engage students in an inquiry process about their own learning. Peer-to-peer tutorials will also serve to cultivate a soft competency, Investing in Others, as students have the opportunity to mentor each other.

The creation of the DMF classes will also free up advisory time in which mentor teachers can provide more quality conferencing and relationship/community building. Students will have more dedicated time from their mentor teachers to help keep them on track, foster agency, and envision and create the whole picture of their high school experience and beyond.

Lisa Simms designed and taught the pilot career survey class, and AAA 109 as a CCD adjunct instructor. She serves as Assistant Principal and a key member of the team that designed and launched Denver School of Innovation and Sustainable Design (DSISD), a mastery-based high school, in summer 2015 with generous funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and support from Springpoint. To learn more, visit their website and check out this video about the school.