Bethel Middle School

School Name: Bethel Middle School
School Address: Whittlesley Dr
                             Bethel CT 06801
School Phone: 203-794-8663
School Fax:
Principal: Dr. Kevin Smith
Principal email: smithk@bethel.k12.ct.us

Demographics

Number of Students: 800
Number Eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch: 9.5%
Percent of Limited English Proficient: 2%
Percent of Special Education: 9.7%
Racial/Ethnic Percentages:

• 82 % White
• 2 % Black
• 10 % Hispanic
• 6 % Asian/Pacific Island
• 0 % Other

 

Present Student Achievement Data in at least three points to demonstrate trends –

2000 – 2006

Connecticut Mastery Tests results of % making goal – Bethel Middle School – Grade 8

Bethel Middle School (CT results) [DRG B]

 

	Fall 2000	Fall 2003	Spring 2006** (DRG D )
Reading	75 (67)[83]	79 (54)[76]	81 (67)
Writing	66 (60)[76]	73(66)[82]	77 (62)
Math	64 (55)[75]	68 (58)[77]	73 (59)

**DRG = Demographic Reference Group. School districts in Connecticut are grouped into similar groups, depending on demographics.

DRG’s rank from A (most wealthy) to I (urban centers)

 

Please feel free to comment on any aspect of the data that you feel is particularly significant. 

I left the principal position in 2006. The gains made in grade 8 in the five years in which we instituted the PLC concept are included above.

Please present any additional information that indicates your efforts to build a professional learning community have had a positive impact upon students and/or teachers.

This We Believe, first published in 1995, listed at the characteristics of a successful middle school: commitment to young adolescents, a shared vision, high expectations for all, an adult advocate for each student, family and community partnerships, and a positive school climate. Our middle school had been organized to reflect each of these important components, and our focus as a school had been to move toward attainment of each. As most schools are, we are a work in progress.
     PLC’s also have a set of attributes. These, as stated by DuFour (1998) are the following: shared mission, vision, values and goals, collaborative teams, collective inquiry, action orientation, commitment to continuous improvement, and results orientation.
     We compared these two lists of attributes and found similarities in the lists. When put side by side we arrived at a striking conclusion. We could find common themes in each list, with the exception of two in the PLC column: focus on results and the action of collective inquiry.. We knew we had to incorporate those two key attributes into our efforts..

• When you enter every school in our district, a banner proclaims, “Our primary purpose is to improve student achievement.”
• Our school mission statement is displayed in every classroom and in the main office: “We believe that all individuals can and will learn in an environment that meets their academic, social, physical and emotional needs.” 
• There are three questions that drive a PLC: What do we want students to learn? How will we know if they learned it? What will we do if they don’t know it? My teachers added a fourth – what will we do if they already know it? These questions are found on the cover of each teacher’s handbook, on the meeting notes template that each team uses and on the agenda for each month’s faculty meeting.
• One hallway contains banners displaying all of the character traits we value: respect, trustworthiness, fairness, responsibility, tolerance, caring, honesty and citizenship. Each month we focus on another character trait, and one team creates a bulletin board with a theme of the trait.

Surrounding ourselves with these visuals and talking about what we value remind us of our purpose every day.

Establishing a Professional Learning Community means the school culture is changed in a manner that supports the success of every student in the school.  Vocabulary changed – we now talk about PLC meetings, about our pyramid of intervention that describes the sequential steps we follow when students are struggling, and our pyramid of recognition, which addresses all of the ways we publicly acknowledge the successes of our students and teachers.  Each monthly faculty meeting is devoted to a discussion of some aspect of a professional learning community. Teachers reported back on workshops they attended related to PLC’s. Our parent newsletter contained articles about the pyramid of intervention, and the strategies we have in place to assist our students. Teachers improved their expertise in the writing of SMART goals, since administrators reviewed each team’s meeting reports and provided feedback on ways to refine the SMART goal.

 

Please elaborate upon strategies you have found to be effective in any of the following areas:

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

Providing time for meetings does not necessarily insure that meeting time is used effectively. Now that we had time for meetings, we wanted to be sure that time was used efficiently and that the meetings focused on goals. We adopted the use of SMART goals to structure the meeting times. Each cluster, as well as each grade level department (grade 7 math, grade 6 reading/language arts, etc), established several Smart goals during the course of the school year. Following the acronym for SMART, these goals are strategic, measurable, achievable, results-oriented and time-bound. (Conzemius, & O’Neill, 2002) 
     During meetings, we reviewed each SMART goal and the progress made toward that goal. For example, one of the goals of the sixth grade math teachers was, “All students will master the unit on exploring numbers as measured by the common assessment given at the end of October.” The teachers administered the common assessment that they created, shared results in their PLC meetings, and looked for common strengths and weaknesses among their students. They shared instructional strategies that each one found effective during this unit - all during the PLC meeting time provided for this group.

 

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

We developed a pyramid of intervention with full participation by the faculty. We realized that we had to address a missing link – school support during the school day – so we added a student support center staffed by teachers as a voluntary duty assignment and by para-professionals. Students were pulled from electives for a short period of time to allow us to provide focused intervention in reading or math.

3. Building the capacity of teachers to work as members of high performing collaborative teams who focus the efforts of their team on improved learning for students.

In our school, we organize core subject teachers by instructional team as well as by grade level department. Meeting time is provided during the day for both groups to meet at least twice during the week. So, a seventh grade math teacher would meet three times with her instructional team of teachers and two times with the other seventh grade math teachers during a typical five day week. In addition, we provide time for the physical education teachers, the music teachers and the unified arts teachers to meet. This provides time for the math teachers to meet to discuss instructional issues, to share results of common assessments and to plan for future units of study. Instructional teams of teachers meet to discuss student concerns and interdisciplinary units of instruction.

Several times a week, teachers are able to meet in instructional teams as well as in grade level department meetings, i.e. seventh grade math, sixth grade reading/language arts, etc. All of these meetings are during the school day. Once each month, all teachers of each subject area meet in grade 6 – 8 meetings to address issues related to all as well as to insure that a smooth transition takes place between grade levels.

 

List any Awards and Recognition Garnered by Your School

The Rell Award, named for Lt Gov (and now Gov) Jody Rell, was presented to Bethel Middle school for its efforts to break down barriers between the regular ed. and special ed. populations. Regular ed. students serve as tutors and peer buddies to special ed. students in the school.