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| | Creating a Community for Learning
Director of Curriculum and Instruction:
Janice Eckola, Ed.D.
District:
Lake Geneva Area Schools
Location: Lake Geneva, Wisconsin
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The Challenge
Three years ago, educators from the Lake Geneva
Area Schools in Wisconsin attended a conference led by Richard and Rebecca
DuFour outlining the benefits of creating professional learning communities in
schools. The concept provides teachers with a framework for collaborating with
one another and specific ways to boost student achievement. Inspired,
educators in the Lake Geneva Area Schools decided to take what they had
learned and establish professional learning communities in their district to
create a top-notch academic environment. In addition, they implemented a
variety of academic and co-curricular programs to help students in reading and
mathematics. To date, the Lake Geneva Area Schools have made great strides in
student achievement on state tests and within their schools.
About the District
The Lake Geneva Area School District
educates 3,324 students and is composed of two smaller districts: Lake Geneva
Joint #1 Elementary School District, which includes three elementary schools
and a middle school, and Lake Geneva-Genoa City Union High School District,
which comprises one high school. Each smaller district has its own school
board, but shares one administrative team. The district itself is located in
the popular resort town of Lake Geneva, and most families are employed by the
seasonal hospitality and tourism industries. Additionally, 25 percent of
students are Spanish-speaking, and an average of 34 percent of students
qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Developing Professional Learning Communities
Creating an
exceptional academic environment within the Lake Geneva Area Schools is a high
priority for administrators. In fact, the Lake Geneva Joint #1 District is a
part of Wisconsin's Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program,
an initiative to improve student achievement through four main channels: small
class sizes (no more than fifteen students per classroom in grades K–3);
increased collaboration between the schools and their communities; a rigorous
curriculum to spur academic achievement; and strong professional development
and staff evaluation practices.
District administrators believed that developing professional learning
communities in their schools would be a way to further these goals. "As an
administrative team, when we learned about professional learning communities,
we were in awe and felt this was really what we wanted to do," explained Dr.
Janice Eckola, director of curriculum and instruction for the Lake Geneva Area
Schools. "We began by learning about it—reading about it and visiting places
that use it." The concept requires educators to examine the ways in which
students learn, and identify how schools can respond to students who have
difficulty learning. It also recommends educators set specific goals and
create precise steps, with timelines, to accomplish their goals.
As part of the development of professional learning communities, the Lake
Geneva Area Schools instituted a range of programs to bolster achievement and
took steps to foster a collaborative learning environment. Last year, with
full school board support, the elementary schools began a monthly
early-release schedule for students to allow teachers to convene and work on
ways to increase achievement. In addition, the district introduced a
four-year-old kindergarten, along with a full-day kindergarten, as well as a
wide range of supplementary programs for students in reading and math. To
accommodate the district's growing Spanish-speaking population, the Lake
Geneva Area Schools ramped up its English as a Second Language (ESL) program,
hiring additional teachers for support.
To foster collaboration and parity across the district, the Lake Geneva Area
Schools post the curriculum online so that information is readily available.
This gives teachers easy access to curriculum for all grade levels. "To us
it's like giving a teacher a giant file cabinet of materials that they can use
and adapt," said Eckola. Incoming teachers, no matter where they are in the
country, can access the documents online, become familiar with them, and see
what materials are used.
The district also created its own literacy assessment models. Kindergarten and
first grade have their own standards, while grades 2–9 employ measures of
academic progress as benchmarks for assessment. These scores are used to
determine which students will receive supplemental help. "Our focus has really
changed to instruction and improvement," said Eckola. "There's been a real
mind-shift to looking at assessment, using data, and with the data, setting up
appropriately focused interventions."
Focus on Reading
The Lake Geneva Area Schools are focusing
specifically on literacy to position students for success both in and outside
the classroom. Each elementary school has at least one reading specialist who
assists teachers, providing training and working with students. In addition, a
community volunteer program called Reads pairs children with a reading mentor
to work on a mini reading lesson plan one to three times per week either in
the morning or afterschool. "We're hitting reading across the board," said
Eckola.
Last year, Central-Denison Elementary School implemented a program called
Reading Camp for kindergartners to work on beginning reading skills. Students
are divided into groups to work intensively on a literacy skill until they
have mastered it; then they progress to the next skill. The students are
assessed every two weeks to determine mastery. Skill groups include ESL,
phonetics, rhyming, patterning, and letter identification. Because the program
has been so successful in increasing early reading proficiency at
Central-Denison Elementary, it will soon be replicated in all of the Lake
Geneva elementary schools, and eventually at additional grade levels.
Jumpstart, another program implemented in the Lake Geneva Joint #1 Elementary
School District, is geared toward students entering second grade who need an
additional boost in reading. Ten days before the school year begins, children
identified as struggling attend class for approximately four hours per day of
intensive reading instruction. They meet in small groups with a ratio of five
students to one teacher. "We look at their literacy assessment test from the
previous spring and retest them at the end of the session," explained Eckola.
"It's difficult with children when they haven't been reading during the
summer. They've had a break in instruction and usually their reading scores
will have dropped a little bit, but we've been able to get them back to where
they were at the end of the previous school year, or even ahead of that.
What's really great is that when we do our January assessments, those students
are still ahead of the game."
At the middle school and high school levels, schools are focusing on
content-area reading in a variety of subjects to help students further develop
their reading proficiency, which underlies success across all curriculum
areas. This strategy helps students learn how to better read and understand
their textbooks. "The idea is that every teacher is a teacher of reading and
that we are also responsible for teaching students how to read a math or
science book," said Eckola. "The other night at a high school math meeting for
incoming eighth-graders, the teacher held up their new textbook and said 'I am
going to teach you how to read this book.' The students giggled at the line,
but that is exactly what happened the first day of school because it works."
Focus on Mathematics
In addition to a strong reading focus, the
Lake Geneva Area Schools have developed programs to help students achieve
higher in mathematics. One intervention program targets first- and
second-graders who need additional mathematics instruction, practice, and
skills mastery. Students are placed in the program through teacher
recommendations. They work on skills that need improvement, as determined from
assessment data, receiving support by learning concepts in new ways.
Instruction is held during school hours.
XMath (Extended Mathematics), another math intervention program, targets
students in middle school who need to strengthen their math skills, and it
allows those students to move in and out of skills-based intervention and
practice. They receive additional time with instructors to work on the
particular skills with which they are struggling. "Once they have mastered
that skill, the student can return to their regular instruction," explained
Eckola. "We are trying to give students opportunities when they need them." In
addition, teachers encourage accelerated students to move ahead, allowing
eighth-graders, who perform exceptionally well on standard assessments, to
attend high school classes for algebra instruction and additional challenge.
Conclusion
All of the efforts educators at the Lake Geneva Area
Schools have made in the past few years—from developing special academic
programs to creating an atmosphere conducive to productive learning—has paid
off.
"The most powerful thing came at the end of the year when we looked at the
scores from our district's kindergarten literary assessment," said Eckola. "At
the beginning of the last school year, 31 percent of kindergartners were
advanced or proficient in phonemic awareness. The following January, that
bumped up to 76 percent, and by May, 97 percent of those kindergartners were
advanced or proficient. With literacy knowledge, students started the year at
39 percent proficient and ended the year at 92 percent. In letter
identification, they began the year at 52 percent proficient and ended at 98
percent. With adult word lists, they began the year at only 4 percent
proficient and ended with 89 percent. That's pretty incredible. We are
absolutely pleased with those results."
In addition, test scores for the 2006–2007 academic year show high-schoolers
performed well above state averages. Also, out of 251 AP tests administered,
71 percent of students achieved a three or higher—a score high enough to
receive advanced standing credit in college.
"Our biggest support at the Lake Geneva Area Schools is having a school board
that is open to suggestions and recommendations," said Eckola. "It all starts
with a community that believes in, advocates, and financially supports
education. The community elects the school board, the school board appoints a
superintendent, the superintendent hires the principals, the principals hire
the teachers—and along the way, it is ensured that everyone shares our belief
in education," explained Eckola. "Everyone's focus is ultimately on the
children—the children always come first."
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