Out of school. Out of work. Underemployed.

These are phrases that, all too often, represent the post-secondary experience of New York City’s 15,000 over-age, under-credited transfer high school students.

Today’s labor market requires that students entering into the world of work be equipped with some post-secondary training or credential.

The problem: Only about half of New York City’s transfer high school students graduate with a high school diploma. Of those students, only about 30% move on to college, in many cases attending two-year schools that have low graduation rates, especially for low-income students of color. Even those students who reached college too often leave without the credential necessary to be competitive in the job market.

On January 30th, New Visions celebrated the launch of a partnership with JobsFirstNYC that aims to provide students with better options. 

Leveraging JobFirstNYC’s expertise in workforce readiness and New Visions’ long-time role as a laboratory of education innovation in New York City, the two organizations have teamed up to form the In-School Sectoral Employment Project (ISSEP), a three-year project that will embed a work-based learning model into school experiences in order to connect students to the workforce while still in high school.

As part of the partnership, a successive learning model will help students build knowledge and experience required for future employment. Students familiarize themselves with college and career options, learn academic concepts through real-world application, gain paid job experience, and expand their professional networks. These opportunities help students make informed choices about careers and postsecondary education and training options, select and enroll in credential training, and, ultimately enroll in college or obtain employment.

The project also relieves schools of a burden. Focusing on multiple growing sectors of the economy, JobsFirstNYC and New Visions will facilitate relationships between schools and workforce development training providers; identify partner employers; collaborate to design the project; and help design and implement the successive learning model.

“There’s a lot of work involved in being a principal. Building post-secondary relationships is a job in and of itself,” argued DezAnn Romain, principal at Brooklyn Democracy Academy, a New Visions network school. “Your job as a principal is not to think about a student as someone who needs to receive a diploma, your job is to educate a child so that their life can change after they receive the diploma.”

To launch the collaboration, New Visions and JobsFirst brought together over 100 educators, philanthropists, representatives from community based organizations and workforce readiness advocates for a dialogue called “Stem the Flow: Reimagining the School-to-Work Experience for Transfer High School Students.”

Over the course of three hours, guests exchanged ideas about the structural and systemic barriers that transfer students face in getting jobs. Panelists, including transfer high school principals and administrators and experts in the workforce readiness arena, brought diverse subject-matter expertise to the conversation.

“The nature of work has changed,” shared Marjorie Parker, JobsFirstNYC President and CEO, as she opened up the evening’s dialogue. “Young adults increasingly need more skills, more experience, and the market is demanding more.”

New Visions President Mark Dunetz added, “All students should have the opportunity to be exposed to work. The question becomes, ‘How can we make this happen consistently at scale?’”

Over the next three years, working with 12 New Visions transfer schools, ISSEP hopes to answer just that question.

“The lives of our young people are tremendously unpredictable,” commented Dr. Dunetz, as the panel discussion drew to a close. “The systems that support them should not be.”

To learn more about New Visions transfer schools, click here.

To learn more about JobsFirstNYC and workforce readiness, click here.

Brendaly Torres is currently an ENL teacher and instructional coach at East Bronx Academy for the Future, a small 6-12 public school in the Bronx.  After completing “Teaching ELLs: A Literacy Instruction Toolkit," a New Visions MicroCert course, she went on to teach the course! Registration for our Spring 2018 MicroCert semester is now open. Check out Brendaly’s course, as well as the other course offerings and register now!

"Miss, tu háblas español?” That question was the one that changed the course of my future. 

Ten years ago, when I was working as an in-class math tutor, a student who had been in my class struggled for days to understand his assignments, because he didn’t speak English. He overheard me explaining something in Spanish to another student and excitedly approached me. “Miss, tu háblas español?”

I’m grateful that he was brave enough to ask me if I spoke Spanish. In an instant, I became his bridge, and my passion for a teaching career serving Multilingual Learners (ML) was born.

Coming from a Spanish-speaking household, language was my barrier too. At my Catholic school in Yonkers, there weren’t any language supports in place for a Puerto Rican and Dominican girl like me. I found a friend who spoke some Spanish and she became the bridge I so desperately needed. In fact, I excelled in math because it was the only subject that didn’t require me to speak English. The numbers were my haven, the place where I felt safe. All I’ve ever wanted is for my ML students to feel that safety, regardless of the subject.

I’ve been at East Bronx Academy for the Future for 11 years now. There, I work as an English as a New Language (ENL) specialist and a coach for another ENL teacher. My work is extremely rewarding. Not only do I get to work directly with ML students, both helping them in their core classes and teaching them in my ENL class, I get to work with other teachers, helping them to make their materials more accessible for Multilingual learners. 

Joe Schmidt is retired analyst/programmer, who spends his free time helping people more effectively leverage online tools to improve their job performance.  His primary focus is collaborating with those in education and the nonprofit sector.

Below you will find a Q&A with Joe on how he is supporting educators with their use of Google Apps Scripts and Add-ons:

Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I started my Information Technology journey in the mid sixties working with IBM cards.  I was promoted to analyst/programmer and used various languages on IBM mainframe computers for a major corporation.  After I retired, I missed working regularly with technology and became interested in many areas of the internet.  When Gmail came out, I was an early adopter.  As Google created more collaborative products, like Drive and Hangouts, my interest only increased.

Several years ago, I was invited to give a talk to 7th and 8th graders at a local school.  During the talk, I enjoyed telling the 7th grade about the history of computing and sharing with them an online programming language called Scratch from MIT.  For the 8th graders I talked about cloud computing using Google Drive.  I really enjoyed being on the teacher side of the classroom.  These talks were the beginning of my journey into technology in education.
 

Q: How did you first learn about Google Apps Scripts and Add-ons?  What led you to start supporting educators in their use?

Several years ago I started watching YouTube videos about Google Apps for Education. I became fascinated with how Google was being used in the classroom.  I watched many videos and Flubaroo, a Google Sheet Add-on developed by Dave Abouav, was mentioned multiple times.  I found the Flubaroo Forum and answered a couple of questions and I discovered that I could use my experience and skills to help others.  I saw this as a win-win situation.

In following the Flubaroo forum, I saw postings where folks were using Autocrat and FormMule when Flubaroo wasn’t able to meet their needs.  I just had to learn about these new scripts, and now I actively help support all three.
 

Q: Which Google Add-ons do you currently support and what does each of them do?  Can you provide a couple of examples of how teachers are currently using them?  What are some of the more interesting or unusual applications of these tools that you've seen?

To give you a sense of these tools, please see my comparison of Flubaroo, FormMule and Autocrat for grading and reporting a quiz.  Flubaroo is the easiest to use and can meet the needs of many teachers.  The teacher completes the quiz to establish the correct answers and then follows the Flubaroo menus to grade and email the results.  There is no need to understand formulas or other parts of a spreadsheet.  Flubaroo can provide instant results via a feature called Autograde.  There is also a summary sheet created to provide useful information for the teacher.

FormMule and Autocrat are mail merge scripts. The grading and reporting are managed using formulas created by the teacher who has much more control.  In the above comparison, I have some links that allow you to see samples of simple quizzes graded by each script.  I have developed some shortcuts that will allow the teacher to report the results with a minimum of <<merge tags>>.  Documenting the shortcuts is a work in progress for the comparison sheet though. 

I am amazed at the many ways FormMule and Autocrat are used.  In addition to grading quizzes, there seems to be an endless list of opportunities to use these scripts in connection with a Google Form and Spreadsheet.

As for applications, WOW! There are so many ways that I see people using FormMule and Autocrat.  If the data can be collected on a Google form it seems that there is no end to what people can do with the data.   It seems that the school administration are big users of these tools. 

I have seen quizzes used in ways I would never have imagined. While most of the questions are from those in education, I see nonprofits and businesses using the Add-ons as well.

Q: What motivates you to volunteer your time to help teachers using these Add-ons?

Realizing that my skills could help teachers and other educators, I became hooked on the Flubaroo Forum.  I then discovered that some teachers were using FormMule and Autocrat and joined those communities as well.

It is funny, but over fifty years ago when I was in school, I wasn’t the best student.  Maybe I’m trying to give back to teachers now.

I enjoy volunteering my time and talents.  The longer I’ve helped, the more I’ve learned about the scripts and how they are used.  Supporting these tools has allowed me to meet some very nice folks from around the world from the comfort of own my home.  I’m also thankful to my wife of over fifty years for letting me pursue this latest hobby.

Q: In your experience, how do you think these free tools have changed classrooms?

I certainly hope they have made the classroom more exciting for students and life easier for teachers.

I remember in grade school, when we saw the film projector setup in the room that the teacher had something special to share and hope that today’s students feel the same way when they use Google tools and add-ons. 

Providing “real-time feedback” for students seems to be popular with teachers.  Teachers can quickly assess student's knowledge of core areas and the students can receive feedback on areas they may need to improve.

Q: What advice do you have for educators who are new to Add-ons and want to try using these tools in their classrooms?

Read the documentation to gain an understanding of what the Add-on can and cannot do.  Try the Add-on in a test environment, using all of the recommended steps, to be sure it is capable of doing what you need it to before you create the Form and collect live data.  Don’t be afraid to ask questions and to try out new things.  Join forums and communities to become acquainted with what others are doing.  Don’t forget to read the Help or FAQ sections of the documentation.

When asking a question, be as specific as possible.  It isn’t a game of Clue where those trying to help should have to ask twenty questions.  Share the spreadsheets so others can see the problem and find a solution.  I know there are security reasons for not sharing data, but create the problem in a test file, if possible using anonymous data.

When a problem seems extra difficult, I will ask the person if we can do a Google Hangout where they can share their screen.  It is amazing how much faster we can solve the problem as a result.  I love Google because of the collaboration it allows.  A Hangout is the ultimate collaboration.

Q: What online resources do you recommend for the use of GAFE tools?

Besides joining the Flubaroo, FormMule and Autocrat forums, I would say that Google search is your friend.  Watching videos was the way for me to get started in my journey.  For sure, look at the Add-ons at New Visions CloudLab.  Check out  the Add-ons that can be found in the navigation to see what is new and what might be helpful.


Q: How do you think these tools will look in five to ten years? Any other predictions about the future of edtech?

I think that technology will continue to become more powerful and useful in the classroom.  The term bookbag will no longer be understood.  What physical books will there be in the future?  Technology will make life more exciting for both teachers and students.  As for more concrete predictions, I struggle to keep up with the present rate of change, so I wouldn't dare attempt to predict the future.

Q: How can readers get in touch with you if they have questions?

The best method of reaching me is via the forums and communities mentioned earlier.  I can also be reached at Google Plus. 

Q: Anything else that you would like our readers to know?

Don’t let technology pass you by.  Embrace technology!  Don’t be afraid of it.

I have not directly used these Add-ons in any of my projects, however, there is a small piece of of me in the many projects where I have helped others.

I probably get more enjoyment out of helping others than they realize.

Each year, New Visions is privileged to award exceptional high school seniors with scholarships of up to $20,000 to offset the cost of attending the colleges of their choice. 

Nominated by their principals and teachers at New Visions schools, these scholars excel academically, serve as leaders in their school communities and care deeply about social justice issues impacting the world and the communities in which they live. 

Learn more about this year's ten New Visions scholarship recipients below!

New grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support network of public schools focused on reducing disparities in postsecondary readiness and success

New York, NY (August 28, 2018) - New Visions for Public Schools announced today that it has been selected to receive a five-year, $14 million grant to increase postsecondary readiness and reduce disparities between the academic readiness of black, Latino, and low-income high school students and their peers in New York City high schools. The grant, one of eight multi-million dollar grants announced today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will support the creation of a network of high schools working on the common challenge of equitable postsecondary preparation. The network positions New York City principals and school teams to lead improvement efforts, ensuring that those working most closely with students, families, and communities play a central role in developing workable and scalable solutions.

The focus on improving academic opportunities and postsecondary achievement of black, Latino, and low-income students reflects the shared prioritization of equitable outcomes by the Department of Education and New Visions for Public Schools.

“I congratulate New Visions for Public Schools on this grant, and I’m excited to work with them to make our vision of College Access for All a reality in New York City,” said Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza. “Our goal as educators is to graduate students who are ready to succeed in college and careers, and address historic disparities in college access and success. I thank New Visions and the Gates Foundation for their partnership towards that goal.”

In the last five years, New Visions has helped partner schools improve on-time graduation rates by more than 10 percentage points and college readiness rates by more than 25 percentage points by focusing on the basics: establishing student-level goals, monitoring progress towards those goals, and ensuring that students reliably receive support when they are at risk of falling off-track.

Over the next five years, New Visions will build on this approach, focusing more intensively on academic indicators of postsecondary readiness. Schools will measure progress based on whether students are maintaining a competitive grade point average, succeeding in advanced coursework, and achieving college-ready scores on state Regents exams. While postsecondary success is the ultimate goal, by focusing on indicators measurable while students are still in high school, schools and New Visions will be able to set rigorous goals, understand barriers to higher student achievement, and measure the impact of changes in school practices and student supports.

"We are thrilled with this opportunity to work with schools and the Department of Education to ensure more students are prepared for their choice of college and career," said Mark Dunetz, president of New Visions for Public Schools. "Despite much progress, many low-income students and students of color leave high school unprepared for what's next. Changing this is essential to achieving more equitable outcomes in our public schools. As a former principal, I deeply believe that school leaders and teams of school based educators must play a central role in changing the status quo. This effort secures the resources for them to do that."

New Visions will launch this work during school year 2018-19 with a group of schools that applied to participate in this improvement effort. This inaugural cohort includes multiple district high schools along with charter high schools managed by New Visions, representing a unique partnership between district and charter schools working to address shared challenges. Over the following four years, New Visions aims to expand this work to a larger number of schools.

"Working with New Visions and a network of peer schools has been critical to the gains we have made in recent years," said Carl Manalo, principal of Queens High School for Information, Research, and Technology (QIRT). "QIRT's improvement has been the result of large and small changes. Partnering with a group of colleagues dedicated to achieving more equitable outcomes is critical work, and understanding what has and hasn't worked for peer schools will help all of us learn faster and work better."

School teams, working with New Visions coaches, will build deep understanding of their students’ current levels of postsecondary readiness, develop and iteratively test changes to improve those outcomes, and regularly collaborate to share knowledge gained. To catalyze these efforts, New Visions will make further investments in its suite of school management tools that help principals and other school leaders make and monitor high-stakes decisions in their schools. These common tools will help provide the data necessary to validate improvements. As schools identify improvements, other network members can adopt and adapt these approaches, accelerating their own improvement.

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New Visions for Public Schools, originally called the Fund for New York City Public Education, was founded in 1989. The organization is dedicated to ensuring that all New York City public school students, regardless of race or economic class, have access to a high-quality education that prepares them for the rigors of college and the workforce. New Visions pioneered the model of small high schools in New York City, creating nearly 140 new district high schools and eight charter high schools; produces free open-source curriculum used by thousands of teachers in New York State and across the country; and runs a nationally-recognized Urban Teacher Residency program to train new teachers.

For additional information, contact: 
Jefferson Pestronk
Vice President, Strategy & Development
jpestronk@newvisions.org

At the start of last school year, I received an email encouraging me to apply to a new initiative called the New Visions Student Advisory Network. At that time, I really did not know what New Visions was or how it helped support my school. As I pondered whether to apply, I decided to Google “New Visions for Public Schools” and gained a better understanding of the nonprofit and what role the Advisory Network could play in helping fulfilling their goals. Upon further reflection, my decision became clear as I saw how much of a difference I could make in my school. I began drafting my application that night.

The Advisory Network was created in order to listen to what is often a neglected perspective in the quest for school improvement: student voice.  It also provided an opportunity for students to gain research, problem-solving, and leadership skills by conducting a semester-long research project.

After applying and being selected, I joined twelve other students from nine schools in the New Visions Affinity and Charter network.  This student-led initiative initially evaluated different research project proposals that New Visions staff members proposed to the group. Among the proposals we received were: “how internet and social media usage affects students” and “assessing the efficiency of restorative discipline practices.” However, two proposals stood out and were ultimately selected.

The first of the two tasked us with investigating how conversations about current events take place in schools. Our aim was to create resources to encourage more productive conversations in the future. This project was ultimately split into two -- one project group would develop a toolkit for students and faculty to assist with planned conversations about current events, while the other project group would focus on creating recommended actions a school could take when important news breaks. The third and final project group focused on what was working or not working in creating a more equitable environment for all students. All of these projects, we felt, were universal to our members’ schools and potential solutions could be scaled out to other schools in the New Visions network and possibly even beyond.

Over several months, my project group worked to understand what prevented students and teachers from speaking authentically about current events and social issues. In order to dive into this issue, we first needed to compile data on which social issues were most challenging for teachers to speak about in the classroom. We developed a Google Form Survey in which teachers could anonymously rank which topics they felt most comfortable speaking about and why. To make sure that our results were unbiased, we invited teachers from several New Visions schools and made sure to include teachers across a variety of subjects.

We found that a majority of teachers were in favor of introducing meaningful classroom conversations around current events, and reported themselves as being capable of facilitating discussions on a wide range of  topics, such as gender equality, LGBTQIA rights, racial equality, and gun control. Ultimately, educators were most concerned with time constraints, having enough accurate information available, and the possibility of miscommunication.

In order to gather student data and to better understand the teachers’ perspectives, we felt that it would be best to hold a focus group, which was comprised of teachers training to become principals through the New Visions - Hunter College CLASS program and students attending schools within the New Visions Affinity and Charter Network. In the focus group, small teams composed of both students and teachers brainstormed possible solutions and changes that could be made to school environments that would foster meaningful conversations. The amount of feedback we received from participants was incredible. Not only were there a ton of suggestions but they were all quite original as well.

After finishing the research phase, we were ready to start the process of organizing our findings and creating a presentation that we would deliver to New Visions staff members.  Within a month and a half, we had compiled several Google Docs with information from our surveys, notes from each part of our focus group, and developed a slide deck for our presentation. We then went over our slides with a fine tooth comb and made sure that we had our parts of the presentation committed to memory. Our efforts were made worthwhile by the warm reception, respect and feedback we received from dozens of educators who attended the presentation at New Visions.

Some of our recommendations were to ensure that classroom conversations be supervised by teachers who are trained in facilitation skills, which could be made standard through intervisitation and professional development opportunities. Others were made with students in mind, such as instituting classroom norms like QTIP (Quit Taking It Personally) and using sentence starters (I agree with your point about…. I understand you...) during the potentially heated or controversial conversations.

The New Visions Student Advisory Network showed me that my voice matters and that students can affect change in their schools. I am proud of the work I was able to accomplish and would highly recommend this program to any juniors who are in a New Visions school this year.

New Visions for Public Schools curriculum teams have adopted instructional routines, which are “designs for interaction that organize classroom instruction” because they are a powerful tool that can help support teachers at all stages of development in their careers. Below is a personal narrative from one of our instructional specialists, David Wees, who has over 25 years’ experience working in education, on why he and the New Visions math team have adopted instructional routines. David also highlights new videos and resources that New Visions has developed to help you get started using these routines in your own classroom.

The Challenge of Initiating Mathematical Discussions in the Classroom

When I first started teaching, I quickly developed procedures and routines for things like handing out materials, but my lesson plans were all over the place. I don’t really remember exactly what I developed except that usually my lessons were based on choosing example problems to go over, producing a worksheet for students to work on, and assigning homework questions.

Any student mathematical discussions that occurred were haphazard and almost always initiated by students. Even though my lesson planning evolved, not once in my classroom teaching experiences did I deliberately plan for student discussion.

At New Visions, we’ve seen that many teachers of mathematics are in this position. As I did, they value mathematics discussions and student thinking, but they are at a loss when it comes figuring out how to ensure that these are regular features of their classroom, accessible to all students. The New Visions math curriculum provides this support through the inclusion of instructional routines.

The Evolution of the New Visions Math Curriculum

Three years ago, the New Visions math curriculum team invited the authors of Routines for Reasoning, Amy Lucenta and Grace Kelemanik (pictured to the right) of Fostering Math Practices, to teach us two instructional routines. The entire team was amazed by what we experienced.

An instructional routine is essentially a well-defined set of moves a teacher makes to position students to talk to each other about mathematical ideas, surface student thinking, and then orchestrate a classroom discussion in order to focus students on a mathematical goal.

Instructional routines bound the scope of decisions a teacher has to make when planning a lesson. Decisions that are made ahead of the lesson focus on the thinking students will do and how one might respond. During the lesson itself, the routine allows teachers and students the space to think about and respond to each other’s thinking. The routineness of an instructional routine, if the same structure is used many times, allows thinking about roles, what’s coming up next, to fade into the background, so that more thinking can be focused on the mathematical ideas.

Shortly after Amy Lucenta and Grace Kelemanik taught the team about instructional routines, we decided to introduce instructional routines to teachers across our curriculum project through professional development. We developed a small number of tasks to help teachers get started using the routines. When we heard from teachers how classroom discussions flourished, we then decided to focus even more on supporting instructional routines. We added more tasks and supports for instructional routines to all three of our courses and also made instructional routines a consistent feature of our professional development.

Finally, the instructional routines that we incorporated into our curriculum include strategies designed to increase access to mathematics for all learners, including English language learners and students with disabilities. Rather than differentiating the tasks that students are given, teachers can rely on instructional supports that are built into the enactments of the routines to, over time, allow all students opportunities to grow and develop mathematically.

The Need for Real Classroom Documentation

Teachers who participated in our professional development series have shared that using routines increased student learning and access to mathematics across their classrooms. Only a small sample of teachers who participate in our professional development network, however, had the opportunity to see the routines in real classrooms.

We decided that our instructional materials needed to include video documentation to support teachers who cannot attend our professional development workshops. We recorded teachers from different schools and grade levels enacting the same instructional routines, but with different tasks.

How Can Teachers Learn Instructional Routines?

The videos that were produced capture not just the role of the teacher enacting instructional routines, but also the student-talk and whole-class thought process that make these materials so significant. Along with resources, like lesson plans and descriptive steps for enacting routines, the videos support teachers learning the instructional routines.

Below you will find two videos from classrooms in which teachers use instructional routines. Both instructional routines support students in making sense of mathematical ideas through mathematical structure (MP7) and having mathematical discussions with each other (MP3).

This first video to the right shows Contemplate then Calculate, during which students are given a quick flash of a mathematical object and asked to share what they noticed. From these noticings, students work together to create a shortcut to solve the problem. At the end of the routine, students reflect on what they paid attention to that might be useful in future problems.

This second video to the left shows an enactment of Connecting Representations in which students are given two sets of mathematical representations that on the surface may appear different but behave mathematically the same. Through their work together, students make matches between the given sets of representations, eventually creating their own representation. Finally, students are prompted to reflect on what they learned, coming up with a mathematical generalization they can use in the future.

Want to discover how your students could benefit from instructional routines?

Do Now: Try Out a Routine with Your Class

Try out one of these routines in your classroom. Get started now by visiting www.newvisions.org/math-routines where you can watch over a dozen videos of instructional routines from real classrooms and also access free guides and other helpful resources!

We’d love to hear from you as you start using the routines in your classroom. Tag @NewVisionsNYC or use the hashtag, #nvmath to share your successes and feedback!

Each year, New Visions is privileged to award exceptional high school seniors with scholarships of up to $20,000 to offset the cost of attending the colleges of their choice.

Nominated by their principals and teachers at New Visions schools, these scholars excel academically, serve as leaders in their school communities and care deeply about social justice issues impacting the world and the communities in which they live.

Learn more about this year's ten New Visions scholarship recipients below!

Argentina Campbell is currently an ELA teacher at World View High School, a small, New Visions Affinity network school, serving a large multilingual learner population in the Bronx. She is also a graduate of the New Visions Multilingual Learners Program (MLP). To learn more about MLP and apply for the final cohort, click here!

Six years. 

I have been a teacher for six years. Yet, it wasn’t until this year that I hit the reset button on my career. I never expected, at this point, to feel like I was in my first year of teaching, learning so much that I was going back to the drawing board on curriculum design and instruction; however, that is what happened when my school assembled a team for the New Visions Multilingual Learner Project (MLP). 

As a sixth-year teacher, I’m often considered a “veteran” or one who knows the tricks of this trade.  But, for 14 months, MLP challenged me to rethink and reimagine the ways I cultivate learning spaces and experiences, not just for our multilingual learners, but for ALL of our students.  With about 30% of our student population comprised of multilingual learners, we sought professional development that would help us grow and refine our practice to serve our students best— MLP helped serve that purpose.

Cross-Content Collaboration

The first thing the program brought to life for me was the power of cross-content collaboration. 

Classroom learning experiences for our students, especially our multilingual learners, do not happen in a vacuum. To teach the whole child means that all hands need to be on deck to co-create learning experiences, despite being teachers of different disciplines.  I knew this in theory, but found it rather difficult to find the time to carve a space intended to bring cross-content teachers together. 

MLP’s  team-based approach brings together teams of three to six teachers, often representing different content areas, to go through cycles of inquiry and project-based learning together on a bi-weekly basis, in order to address this challenge. 

This past year, I had an incredible time working with three other teachers in my school who worked in various disciplines: science, history, and special education. We collaborated to problem solve and strategize around student achievement. In addition, we engaged in horizontal alignment and thought about how our practices can feed into each other if we slow down and go back to the basics.

Cultural Wealth

More importantly, however, was the reframing that occurred in the way we think about and teach our students. As a team, we consistently found ourselves in conversations that questioned, challenged, or applauded the current practices we have in place at our school around instruction and equity. MLP provided an opportunity for me to think about the ways my team can leverage the cultural wealth our students already possess to maximize their learning. Because of this program, we have a more assets-based framework in the way we teach multilingual learners. We are encouraged to employ practices that validate our students’ experiences, and position them as experts, in order to promote independent learning. As we move forward in our journey, post-MLP, we are shifting pedagogical practices and beliefs in our school to help others see how they, too,  can use the cultural characteristics and perspectives of our students in the learning process. 

One-on-One Coaching

This component of the program-- personalized coaching-- that is catered to your experiences and expertise is truly a highlight. Because of this notion, I genuinely believe we need to find more ways to nurture our seasoned educators even more!

“There is no goal post in teaching where suddenly all of your stars align, each and every time; we are in a profession where the only constant thing is change and learning about our learners is an on-going, reflective process.”

The coaching I received this year allowed me to reset and think about the basics. Through observations and conversations, I found myself in a cycle of learning that forced me to think about the ways I empower my students, explicitly name instructional decisions, and create an environment that is equitable and inclusive.

My coaching experience affirmed my expertise, yet nurtured a growth mindset. 

This year allowed me to grow with others and grow on my own, simultaneously. MLP reminded me of the strength my students possess. As we continue to think about the ways we can move the needle, academically, we must think about the spaces we co-create with our students that honor their identities and language, in every capacity. 

It is never too late to take a step back and reassess your teaching, even as a veteran. MLP helped me do just that and I know that my students will benefit from it for years to come.

Few students can claim they went to Harvard, but now students from four high schools in the New Visions network can say just that.

During fall 2019, students from the Community Health Academy of the Heights, Morris Academy for Collaborative Studies, The Young Women’s Leadership School of Queens, and The Young Women’s Leadership School of the Bronx (TYWLS-Bronx) participated in a new program that provided free enrollment in Poetry in America, a course offered by the Harvard Extension School. New Visions for Public Schools connected schools to the National Education Equity Lab, which ran a pilot offering the course as an experiment in innovative ways to bring world-class college experiences to students who are still in high school. 

The college-level course was taught through a hybrid model, with video lectures by a Harvard professor and teachers in each participating school facilitating student activity and discussion. Harvard teaching assistants graded student assignments throughout the course. 

Thirteen of sixteen participating students from TYWLS-Bronx earned college credit through the course. They found it a rigorous alternative to more traditional advanced coursework like Advanced Placement classes at their school. Having to adhere to externally-imposed deadlines on coursework and assignments—ironically, no extensions granted—provided good preparation for what will be expected in college, and the hybrid video/live course structure pushed students to collaborate with each other in new ways. 

The experience was a valuable one for teachers, as well. The lead teacher at TYWLS-Bronx shared that completing a course delivered in such a new way pushed her to develop new ways of supporting students. It also exposed her to the world of Harvard Extension courses, which she is continuing even though this specific opportunity is done. 

And at the end of the day, there’s that name. Students showed themselves that they could succeed not just in a college course, but a Harvard course. It’s extraordinary learning for any high schooler. 

How do you move student learning forward in the midst of a crisis? 

Ever since New York City’s schools closed their doors in March, The Young Women's Leadership School of the Bronx (TYWLS Bronx), Bronx High School for Law and Community Service (Law & Community), and Fort Hamilton High School have wrestled with that question. The approach of each school: invest early in structures that support younger students for later success, and take time during this crisis to slow down and put student wellness at the center.

At first glance, the three schools seem very different. TYWLS Bronx is an all-girls small school serving grades 6-12 and focuses on empowering young women; Law & Community is a co-ed small high school specializing in criminal law and service; Fort Hamilton is a Brooklyn-based comprehensive high school with over 4,000 students, which is four times more students than TYWLS Bronx and Law & Community have combined. However, the three schools have a key thing in common: they’re part of the New Visions College Readiness Network for School Improvement (CR NSI), with school teams dedicated to ensuring students are academically and personally successful on the way to realizing postsecondary aspirations. 

All schools that are part of the CR NSI convene postsecondary success teams (PST) that focus on increasing the number of low-income students of color graduating from high school on-time and prepared for college and career. All 34 CR NSI schools are linked by a common focus on two early predictors of later postsecondary success: (1) ending freshman year with an 80 or higher grade point average (GPA), and (2) achieving the college-ready Regents math score that exempts students from taking remedial courses at the City University of New York, where two-thirds of NYC high school graduates enroll. Research has found that 9th grade GPA predicts a student’s likelihood of graduating high school and persisting in college, underlining the importance of creating school supports that foster early success in high school.

Developing structures that ensure students start high school strong is especially salient now. Without the daily routines schools provide, students can struggle to plan for their own day and organize their learning. It’s easy to become quickly overwhelmed in a remote learning environment and then disengage, and that risk is greater for younger students and vulnerable students. “It’s a challenge for everyone, and we especially see our ninth graders struggling,” explains Abby Hahn, a Special Education teacher at TYWLS Bronx and PST member. “Many of our younger students haven’t developed the executive functioning skills that allow them to navigate this new context.”

At TYWLS Bronx, the PST used 9th grade seminars at the beginning of the year - nicknamed “GPA Busters” by the students - to coach students on creating daily plans for courses. The structures that the team began putting in place prior to school closure are able to take on a new urgency now. From their homes, students continue to send to-do lists not just around academic planning but around their wellness - sometimes sending pictures of themselves in skincare masks as evidence. In follow-up one-on-one conversations, PST members coach students on establishing actionable personal plans for self-regulation, even down to setting alarms. The relationships that PST members established prior to school closure are still bearing fruit now, with students sometimes initiating their own one-on-one check-ins because they view their mentors as trusted adults who can give them the support they need. 

At Law & Community, student well-being is also at the center of the learning agenda. By the second week after school closure, Law & Community had begun implementing a wellness tracker that ensured an adult connected with every student weekly and recorded anecdotals on difficulties students were having. School staff then used the tracker to follow-up with emerging subcategories of need. This ranged from Google Classroom orientation to social emotional counseling for students who faced housing insecurity or who experienced losses in their family. The PST continues to act as an incubator team and is the first group in the school to begin drafting and implementing live lessons as the school transitions to some synchronous elements for the rest of the year.

Prior to school closure, the Fort Hamilton PST already was using Google Classroom to post advisory lessons for students. Now in the remote context, advisors are equipped to continue seamlessly with using Google Classroom for lessons, while also checking in with students synchronously via Google Meets. With many students facing challenges at home and struggling with the transition to remote learning, the PST has concentrated on ensuring every student feels supported and cared for, planning virtual college trips to institutions students are interested in as well as more engaging, celebratory events such as Digital DJ Dance Parties.

 "The relationships that we've built with our students matters most in times like these," said Kaye Houlihan, Principal at Fort Hamilton High School.  "Yes, we will always focus on making sure our students are moving forward academically, but right now, our first priority is making sure that they are OK, that they are taking care of themselves. Our first priority right now is compassion."

For these three schools, continuity lives on through the resilient relationships PST members made early in the year that still endure, both with students and with one another as teammates in a shared enterprise to achieve the CR NSI goals. Even now, the compassionate and student-centered efforts that teams are making to advance learning is an investment for the future to come: when school doors open again, staff and students won’t perceive a transition to an unfamiliar land, but instead can celebrate physically rejoining a community that has consistently made its presence felt through painful and uncertain times. 

This blog summarizes a case study. To read the full case study, click here.

As schools have shifted to remote learning, Google Classroom has become nearly ubiquitous in New York City’s schools. Google Classroom captures data about student engagement, in a way that isn’t always user friendly or actionable for educators. New Visions has worked with partner schools to turn data into actionable insight.

New Visions and our partner schools define “student engagement” in Google Classroom simply: a student “engages” on any day in which she submits an assignment in Google Classroom. This is a simple definition of engagement and a lower bar than any of our ambitions for remote instruction, but it follows the approach that New Visions has used in all our data work: to rapidly provide visibility into key student and educator behaviors and decisions that influence student success, then use that information to refine measures and improve practice in partnership with educators working in schools every day.

The Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) is a small high school in downtown Brooklyn. Carl Manalo became principal of KGIA in 2019. When New Visions asked for partners, Principal Manalo did what he always does: he raised his hand.

With access to Google Classroom data, Principal Manalo and his team took action: they identified students with low engagement rates, reached out to understand why they weren’t engaging and to reinforce the importance of completing work. Over a three-day period in April, the school saw improvement in engagement rates across all student cohorts, with school-wide engagement rates rising from 55 percent to 62 percent. Seeing an uptick of several percent is huge and has gotten more staff members invested in using these data, Principal Manalo reflected. Staff members feel more connected to students and able to support their needs, even if they are seeing students on computer screens rather than in the hallway.

The path that KGIA took to improve engagement in a remote learning world won’t work for every school, but that’s not the point. There are specific lessons to draw from the way they worked, that pop up again and again in the continuous improvement work New Visions does with schools. Briefly:

The predicate for all of this work is having some meaningful data available. Turning in assignments on a daily basis is not perfect data, but it’s much better than nothing. Once those data are visible, it’s possible to use them to guide decisions and action.
 

 “Student engagement” during remote learning is a novel metric for most schools, and it was for KGIA too. That didn’t stop them from using data they could see to set a goal. They looked at students who they had a reasonable suspicion were engaging in ways they wanted, and said, let’s work to get all our students there.

KGIA set a reasonable and achievable improvement goal: moving several percentage points in daily engagement, over a short period of time. It’s big enough to be measurable, and small enough to be achievable and testable quickly.

Before the brand-new Data Portal engagement features were developed (an MVP, in technology development parlance), Principal Manalo took screen shots of the engagement rate each day in order to track progress. KGIA didn’t let the absence of some features stop them.

Tracking data on a daily basis let KGIA make reasonable inferences about whether their actions were making a difference. When they saw improvement in the metric that mattered to them, they took a moment to celebrate hard work and improvement! That’s always important, but it’s critical during these challenging days. Mission accomplished? Not forever, but for now!

Principal Manalo incisively observed that once teachers could see the impact of their actions on something that mattered to them—student engagement—they wanted to improve even more. The data discussions that started in the Senior Success Team are now part of department team meetings, and all departments in the school are involved.

As KGIA educators got more invested and fluent in their data, they realized that they were using Google Classroom differently. Some were treating “Do Nows” as assignments in Google Classroom. When students didn’t complete them, their assignment completion rates looked artificially low. Do Nows are important, but for KGIA they aren’t actually assignments, and seeing the data helped them realize they were treating them as such. This realization let them norm on practice, while at the same time improving the quality of their data.

Real, lasting improvement requires lots of small experiments, accumulating into sizable gains for students and durable changes in practice at KGIA (and hopefully, over time, in other schools wrestling with similar challenges who can learn from the KGIA example).

The team at KGIA is working to change how their school works, in creative and disciplined and student-centered ways. The changes they’re making are critical now, but they’ll also change how the school works moving forward. Principal Manalo predicts that many of the teachers that have started using Google Classroom during this crisis will continue to do so once the crisis is past, and teachers that were using it before will use it in different ways. Gaining visibility into which classes are engaging students allows the school team to identify and learn from effective practices happening inside their school, using data for improvement rather than accountability.

Each year, New Visions is privileged to award exceptional high school seniors with scholarships of up to $20,000 to offset the cost of attending the colleges of their choice.

Nominated by their principals and teachers at New Visions schools, these scholars excel academically, serve as leaders in their school communities and care deeply about social justice issues impacting the world and the communities in which they live.

Learn more about this year's ten New Visions scholarship recipients below!

Last March, schools had to make a quick pivot to remote instruction and Google Classroom became the primary learning platform for millions of students. We know that most schools will continue with remote instruction this fall and we have an opportunity to develop a coherent approach to Google Classroom that will support administrators, teachers, students and families. 

New Visions for Public Schools has developed a Toolkit to support schools in making the decisions necessary to create a coherent approach to Google Classroom. As you approach the start of the school year, here are our top three recommendations for key decisions that administrators and teachers need to make in terms of how Google Classroom (or any other learning platform) will be set-up:

☆ See Classroom Naming Suggestions for guidance and Session 1: School Leadership Decisions for an agenda for a school leadership meeting to make these decisions.

☆ See General Settings image below and Grading for guidance and Session 1: School Leadership Decisions for an agenda for a school leadership meeting to make these decisions.

☆ See the Sample Hub below which can be used as a template and see Session 1: School Leadership Decisions for an agenda for a school leadership meeting to make decisions on this.

In addition to the above decisions, resources in the Toolkit will help teachers and administrators make decisions that will lead to a successful launch of the school year. For additional curricular resources please see the New Visions Curriculum Site and for additional Ed Tech resources please see our Remote Teaching and Learning Site.

Mark Dunetz, President

New York, May [24], 2021 – New Visions for Public Schools and Lazard Ltd (NYSE: LAZ) announced today the launch of the Lazard New Visions Academy, a signature initiative funded by the Lazard Foundation that provides New York City public high school students access to postsecondary readiness opportunities and social capital through a five-week summer institute and ongoing career development support.

In partnership with Lazard, the two-year pilot of the Academy (2021-2022) will serve 600 rising 11th and 12th graders, who are enrolled in public high schools that are part of the New Visions network. The program’s objective is to offer the participating students exposure to the financial services sector through Lazard and its employees and to develop career-readiness skills that will support their future success in a broad range of careers.

“Historically, high schools have focused on preparing students primarily for graduation and college. We believe it is just as critical to provide high school students chances to explore their career interests,” said Mark Dunetz, President of New Visions. “The Lazard New Visions Academy introduces New York City high school students to the world of careers in finance, one of our City's key industries but one which is currently inaccessible to most public high school students.”

“The Lazard New Visions Academy reflects Lazard’s commitment to creating opportunities and building social capital for students from under-resourced communities,” said Kenneth Jacobs, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lazard. “The Academy’s model is a replicable and scalable model for private sector partnerships with public schools, and we hope it will inspire other companies to launch similar programs.”

                                                                        ####

Watch Kenneth Jacobs, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lazard. discuss the Lazard New Visions Academy on Bloomberg TV. 

About Lazard 

Lazard, one of the world's preeminent financial advisory and asset management firms, operates from more than 40 cities across 25 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Central and South America. With origins dating to 1848, the firm provides advice on mergers and acquisitions, strategic matters, restructuring and capital structure, capital raising and corporate finance, as well as asset management services to corporations, partnerships, institutions, governments and individuals. For more information on Lazard, please visit www.lazard.com. Follow Lazard at @Lazard.
 

About the Lazard Foundation

The Lazard Foundation partners with nonprofit organizations in the U.S. that support education for children, adolescents and young adults. Established in 2018, the Foundation provides both financial and volunteer support to our nonprofit partners as well as employee engagement, team building, and leadership opportunities for our people in serving our education partners.
 

About New Visions for Public Schools

For more than 30 years, New Visions has been at the heart of groundbreaking, real improvement in New York City public schools. We have opened more than 130 new schools, launched a nationally-recognized teacher residency program, and developed student planning tools and high school curriculum in use across New York city. Our impact shows in improving outcomes for students: the high school graduation rate, less than 50 percent citywide when we were founded, now exceeds 85 percent in our partner networks. Today, we support more than 1050 schools serving 600,000 students, helping them tackle their toughest challenges and realizing a shared vision of a high-quality public education for all New Yorkers.

Every school is unique, but more than three decades of working closely with schools, educators, and students have taught New Visions for Public Schools that schools face common challenges supporting students’ success during their high school years.

We have also learned that schools working together and learning with each other to address common challenges can accelerate improvement, compared with schools working in isolation.

In 2018, New Visions launched a network of schools called the College Readiness Network for School Improvement (CR NSI), grounded in these learnings. The schools that make up the network are committed to collaborating to increase the number of Black and Latino students prepared to succeed in postsecondary education. Before schools closed down in 2020, many CR NSI schools had identified the strength of relationships between educators and students as a critical lever for improvement, especially for students transitioning from eighth to ninth grade. These schools began implementing structures like advisory programs or identifying point people for individual students, as a way to build relationships more consistently. 

Then Covid-19 struck, and educators rapidly had to rethink myriad aspects of their work. Building strong relationships between students and teachers, counselors, and school leaders was more important than ever, but now those relationships needed to be established and sustained in remote contexts. 

Changing contexts always have forced creativity and innovation, and the past two years have been no exception. While the resulting shifts have been challenging and exhausting and imperfect, they have catalyzed new practices and learning. During the 2021-22 school year, New Visions has been collaborating with a team from Teachers College, Columbia (TC), to capture the practices and learning from select schools that are part of CR NSI. Bianca Licata, a doctoral student at TC, supported by Professor Thomas Hatch, is leading conversations with educators in these schools to document the different ways they are approaching relationship-building, to help educators learn from each other’s work and to highlight the outstanding work that often goes unseen in schools.

Highlighting the approaches of different schools, the tools and resources schools are creating to support their work, and the lessons they are learning is one way to accelerate improvement across networks of schools, especially when schools are working to address similar challenges and using similar methods. In addition to their shared goal, all of the schools engaged in the CR NSI are committed to using continuous improvement (CI) methods. 

New Visions defines CI as an iterative and evidence-based process for improving key systems in schools, year after year, by deeply understanding challenges schools face, generating ideas for how to address these challenges, and testing ideas to identify those that work reliably across different contexts.

This process encourages us to pause before jumping to conclusions and to dig deeper to understand the full range of factors contributing to identified problems. It helps us avoid unintentionally relying on those solutions which are most familiar, whether or not they contribute to improvement against our goals. 

Continuous improvement recognizes how non-linear improvement can be. Educators are constantly deepening their understanding of what’s driving student outcomes or school practices. They uncover new challenges. They adapt and try new approaches. They learn what works and doesn’t, under what circumstances and for which students. Ideally, the things that they learn, joined with the resources and routines that they develop, are relevant and applicable beyond their single school; other schools struggling with similar challenges or seeking to improve similar outcomes can accelerate their improvement by adapting what peer schools have done. For this to happen effectively, though, we need to make what schools are learning more visible. 

Over the coming months, we hope to do just that. In summer of 2022, we will conclude the series by highlighting key ideas and themes from the stories, along with early thinking about how we build on these lessons as a network. 

We hope that the strategies we highlight resonate with educators and school leaders beyond our network. As importantly, we hope that stories of schools striving to adjust to profoundly different circumstances while maintaining a core commitment to student success is inspiring. We have the deepest respect for students, educators, and school communities that have not just endured the past two years but seen the time as a period of change for the better.

A far cry from rebuilding familiar structures that were ‘normal’ and ‘comfortable’ pre-Pandemic, the school is expanding the “Weekly Wellness Groups” they created during remote instruction last year.

Like ‘advisory’ groups, Wellness Groups feature one teacher who meets with a handful of students  regularly to ensure they are academically on track. However, the school’s Wellness Groups place a concerted focus on supporting students’ mental and emotional health, which requires teachers to learn about students’ self perceptions, personal struggles, goals and desires in addition to their academic needs. This support, Barakat says, is critical for incoming freshmen, who traditionally experience the multitude of social and academic challenges that come with entering a new school.

This attention to students’ wellness developed gradually over the pandemic as teachers discovered new ways to learn about their students’ lives, new communication strategies, and new ways to collaborate. 

When schools were forced into remote instruction in March 2020, Bronx Law, like many schools, was confronted with a sharp drop in student attendance online, assignment completions, and class participation, severely taxing the usual systems for following up on absences. In the past, when students missed a class or an assignment, or were failing in one course, the subject teacher would call the students’ guardians. However, because so many students stopped attending, when teachers continued following protocol, many families and guardians started getting multiple phone calls in a day, all describing the same thing: their child was failing. As Principal Barakat explained, for guardians who worked all day, who were trying to continue supporting their families, this was extremely disheartening.

Recognizing the ineffectiveness of and harm caused by teachers following a traditional accountability system now implemented in the new (and uncertain) space of online learning, Barakat and his colleagues crafted a new system that reduced the number of phone calls, and provided educators with a chance to check in on students.  In the new system, one teacher takes responsibility for hosting bi-weekly meetings with the same group of 12-15 students from their grade for one 49 minute period. Meetings focus on students’ progress, struggles, goals, and mental and emotional health, in addition to instructional strategies and modifications that worked best for them in their classes, all of which teachers would share with one another in order to support individual students more effectively. Teachers were given the option to use lessons provided to them through the QUESTion curriculum by the Open Future Institute, or to follow the students’ interests and concerns and develop their own. Wellness Group leaders became the main point of contact between the school, the students and their families.

Each Wellness Group teacher made sure students had access to technology, and knew how and when to log into classes and check their emails. Teachers were also responsible for encouraging students to advocate for themselves by communicating with their teachers, which meant in many cases, guiding students through the process of writing formal emails. To support teachers through the transition, Barakat provided them with differentiated support through one on one meetings and regular technology training.

At first, some teachers struggled with the new responsibilities; the Wellness Groups seemed like another task to complete on top of everything else they had to do to teach in the middle of a global pandemic. Nonetheless, teachers quickly began to create and share new activities to cultivate their relationships with students in a way they had not had the opportunity to do before.

For example, Barakat described how one teacher asked students to create “vision boards” to describe how they were surviving during the pandemic. Upon presenting their boards to their teacher, Barakat, and other educators, several of her Wellness Group students revealed issues they had developed with food and body image, issues that would ultimately be identified as eating disorders. Had this teacher not created this assignment in the context of these Wellness Groups, she, Barakat, and other educators who would later use the same assignment would not have known what these students were experiencing.

“The stories were very profound,” noted Barakat. “Kids were saying things like, ‘I don't want to leave my house anymore, because I gained weight over the pandemic,’ or ‘I stopped eating for a week because I gained weight over the pandemic.’ All of these things started to come out with the vision boards.”

Since face-to-face meetings were impossible, the teachers created text groups or What’s App groups with their grade teams and Wellness Groups to maintain constant communication and ensure everyone was on the same page. In addition to creating a continuity of communication unlike anything they had seen before, these text groups also provided emergent multilingual students and students who are reticent about verbal communication another way to express their thoughts and needs. For the 15% of Bronx Law students who primarily speak Spanish, this was a massive support.

Because Wellness Groups harnessed multiple modes of communication including texting on various platforms, emailing, and phone calls, teachers gained greater revelations about students’ social-emotional struggles. These understandings led Barakat and his colleagues to reflect on not only future methods of family communication, but a paradigm shift that they plan to cultivate in the coming years. 

“I feel like we've communicated with parents differently during this time in a much more empathetic way. Working in a socio economically depressed area with an underrepresented population always comes with issues of parent involvement, and we've pretty much consistently moved on an idea of we'll just do it without the parents, because they just get in our way. But that's arrogance, and it's disenfranchising. Because we all had global [Pandemic] fear, there seems to be a softening and a cooperation with parents that I did not see happening before, that comes directly from the Weekly Wellness Group structure.”

As part of the Wellness Group program, teachers also gained access to one another’s gradebooks because they needed to track their students’ progress and report to families. Initially a point of contention for teachers, this transparency forced teachers to critically and collaboratively examine how they score students, how often they should be entering grades, and how doing so helps every teacher, student, and family know how to respond and with what support.

Through this new, collaborative structure, teachers began holding one another accountable for entering grades, and started advocating for individual students regarding individual assignments and tasks. They also began experimenting with modes of communication, interpersonal development strategies, and identity-building activities to determine the most effective ways to support their groups. But most critically, teachers shared their successes with one another, resulting in what Barakat calls “cross-pollination of student-specific strategies rather than general differentiation strategies that most teachers have already heard of.” This teacher creativity led to new discoveries about students’ as whole learners, dramatically shifting the way Bronx Law would come to approach teaching and learning.

Barakat wasted no time in developing structures to sustain and further develop weekly Wellness Groups into the 2021-22 school year. The school conducted initial intake interviews with every student prior to the school year beginning in order to provide guidance counselors with a baseline understanding of their situations. Through a new process of communication throughout the year, the counselors will team up with teachers to address any concerning changes they see in students, and for teachers to report any challenges students report within their weekly Wellness Group. Barakat says, the changes have not gone unnoticed by students and their families.

In the coming months, Barakat and teachers will survey students to determine how much of an impact Weekly Wellness Groups had on not only their sense of academic progress, but their overall wellness and sense of self as a learner.

Following months of adaptations, adjustments, and innovations to navigate remote instruction and sustain contact with students, the Academy for Careers in Television & Film (ACTvF) continues to develop ways to maintain the closeness they developed with students virtually. Ninth grade teachers learned that one-on-one advisory and tutorial meetings were invaluable to building more intentional learning opportunities. Now that they are in person, ACTvF is seeking ways to sustain connections with students, including through empathy interviews, and individualized check-ins.

For the last 14 years, advisory at ACTvF has helped groups of students across all grades navigate the academic and social challenges they face in high school. However, the pandemic and school closures pushed ACTvF to prioritize one-on-one teacher-student meetings during advisory in order to more closely listen to individual student needs. Ninth grade advisors analyzed the content and frequency of those meetings, leading to new discoveries about their students’ learning,  prompting academic adjustments. And while in-person learning is less amenable to the one-on-one supports made during remote instruction, ACTvF has continued to work on ways to sustain those innovations.

ACTvF is a Title I school in Queens serving a rich diversity of students that, as Principal Rob McCubbin notes, “is reflective of New York City.” Although the school specializes in television, film, and production, students are not required to have a portfolio to apply, and all are welcome. Teachers and staff recognize that their students bring a variety of skills to campus, and also face a number of challenges – from friend group fights to food insecurity – that invariably impact their academics. Through their advisory program, educators at ACTvF are able to look for the root of each students’ struggles, and strive to address them individually, rather than apply blanket interventions.

ACTvF strives to align advisory with students’ backgrounds, academic and social needs, and takes into account existing relationships. Advisors spend anywhere from 30% of their contracted work time supporting their group of 13 to 15 advisees. They spend this time lesson planning, conducting advisory conferences and parent outreach, and leading parent teacher conferences. Advisees meet with their advisors even before the first day of their freshmen year when the advisors help them navigate their new terrain, through their senior year. Typically, pre-pandemic, advisory consisted of group meetings during a 30-minute scheduled class time four days per week, and once every two weeks for individual check-ins. Advisory groups discuss student issues, academic or social; explore colleges, and later complete college applications; and, provide students extra support on current classwork. Teachers share advisory experiences, and collaborate with one another and a team of social workers to develop lessons that respond to student-specific needs, during weekly meetings, through their Slack channel, and in group chats. For principal McCubbin, the investment in students’ interests, needs, home life, and dreams is the key to their success. 

ACTvF leaned into their tradition of listening and responding when the pandemic and school closures led to new challenges for students. In spite of bolstering Google Classrooms and providing students with laptops and WiFi, seemingly insurmountable economic pitfalls  including illness and loss of life made remote instruction as they had planned it impossible. Many students either did not attend class or kept their cameras off and were unresponsive, and it was challenging to provide support because students were also not attending or communicating during advisory. In a number of cases, students were responsible for watching siblings, caring for loved ones, or supporting their family financially.  

Hypothesizing that students might need more focused time with advisors, ACTvF adapted: They pared courses down to four 50-minute classes each morning followed by advisory, then an entire afternoon of asynchronous work and one-to-one office hours. Whole group advisory occurred once weekly via Google Meet, and in one-on-one sessions with advisors on the other four days, giving students the opportunity to share questions, thoughts, and concerns that they may otherwise not have shared with a group.

According to McCubbin, this one-on-one adaptation helped sustain students emotionally and academically. 

To ascertain the impact this new approach had on students, ninth grade advisors began recording the frequency and duration of their meetings. Through consistent analysis of their notes compared to records of students’ course marks, attendance, and assignment completion, advisors discovered that they were spending much more time conferencing with students than before the pandemic. According to New Visions coach Jon Green, some ninth grade teachers held over 400 advisory meetings by March 2021. Yet while numerous meetings increased student engagement and provided insight into students’ lives, the advisors also discovered that they were not meeting with all students equally: Teachers mostly met with students with identified disabilities and those identified pre-pandemic as having a "very low likelihood" of reaching a 80+ GPA by the end of their freshman year. Some teachers had spent up to 25% of their total time conferencing with a single advisee. Consequently, advisors were meeting far less with other students who needed their support but were falling under the radar. In response, advisors shifted their outreach in order to maintain contact with and support all struggling students, resulting in more engagement across the board.

Thanks to their change in schedule, the new advisory approach, and one-on-one tutorial hours, teachers could more accurately assess student learning in individualized meetings. For example, Algebra instructor Gerald Lee explained that, pre-pandemic, he and other math teachers typically pushed through the curriculum to keep pace with impending Regents exams, often leaving student misconceptions and confusions unaddressed. Lee said that for ninth graders this trend is especially problematic because many enter with misunderstandings around foundational math skills, number sense, spatial reasoning, and organizational skills. Thus, moving forward too fast amounts to greater gaps in understanding that impact learning in later classes. 

But through this new schedule, and with the Regents canceled during the pandemic, Lee and other math instructors were able to slow their pace and more deeply explore students’ misconceptions during class and in one-on-one tutorials. Lee tracked down as many struggling students as possible to review math concepts one-on-one, which he says translated to greater confidence working in a group and taking public risks solving equations. 

As a result, math teachers discovered that students who appeared “on-track” did not have the depth of understanding teachers had expected: Students knew formulas, but did not know how to apply them flexibly. In response, they created more time for students to play with math problems, and celebrated students’ different ways of thinking. They also constructed “a culture of error,” encouraging students to take risks and make mistakes from which to learn. And while these changes meant math instructors did not cover the entire curriculum, Lee believes these approaches critically informed his and his colleagues' teaching, and will prove beneficial for students’ long term.

ACTvF’s one-on-one adjustments to advisory helped stabilize students socially, emotionally, and academically through remote instruction. ACTvF is back to in-person learning, and striving to sustain the teacher-student connections borne from one-on-one sessions. However, maintaining what both McCubbin and Lee call the “sacred space” of one-on-ones has been nearly impossible due to a shortage of space and a shift back to their previous 75-minute class schedule, which extends whole-class learning and time for students to work on their media projects. Consequently, there is less time for one-on-one conversations in a private space. 

McCubbin notes that teachers nevertheless have continued exploring ways to create opportunities for those connections. For example one teacher put two chairs outside of her classroom to replicate the sense of privacy Google Meet had afforded them. But on the whole, as McCubbin pointed out, private conversations are still “happening in a room with other people now, so there is a diminished level of privacy and as hard as a teacher might try, there is also a diminished level of attention because you're going to keep an eye out for what the other kids in the room are doing.” So, taking another approach to learning about student needs, ACTvF conducted “empathy interviews” with freshmen at the start of this academic year: Advisors asked freshmen to free-write a response to three or four prompts from a menu of options. They then spent 15 to 20 minutes recording their responses in a recorded face to face interview with each student. The hope was that students would freely speak their mind, find comfort in the privacy of their self-expression, and reflect on their progress through another channel than in group advisory alone. 

Over the last two years, educators at The Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) have developed specific strategies to listen and respond to their multilingual, multiethnic, multicultural student body, simple but sincere strategies that have countered chronic absenteeism and low graduation rates. From opening a prayer room for students of any faith, to launching an advisory, to supporting teachers in becoming TESOL certified, KGIA has taken a series of steps to sustain students’ cultures and languages in support of both their academic and social-emotional needs. The result: KGIA saw its highest graduation rate ever, a 22% increase in students categorized as not at risk for absenteeism from 2019 to 2022, and and greater feelings of connectedness to the school community.

At the start of the 2021-2022 school, KGIA welcomed 54 Freshmen, 36 of whom are multilingual learners whose home languages include Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Fulani, Mandarin, Pashto, Spanish, Tadshik, and Urdu. Of those 36 students, 13 do not speak English and 12 are multilingual English speakers. Additionally, roughly 73% of students recently immigrated to the U.S. in the last one to two years. 

“We are so diverse linguistically this year, it's fantastic,” said Principal Carl Manalo enthusiastically. “It’s a good challenge to have!”  

Principal Manalo doesn’t see student diversity as a challenge, but rather an opportunity to prioritize getting to know new learners, intentionally and individually. 

Freshmen advisory grew out of two supports that put more students on track toward graduation and raised attendance with each successive year: an attendance team inspired by restorative justice practices, and what they call Senior Success Teams to help 12th graders name and navigate their obstacles, and ultimately reach graduation.

When KGIA saw over 50% of its student body chronically absent in the 2018-19 school year, KGIA’s assistant principal, dean, some teachers, and school social workers developed an approach, inspired by restorative justice circles, to support rather than penalize students and families for missing classes. Restorative justice circles can take different forms, but all essentially draw together members of a community to address the root of a conflict or challenge rather than leverage disciplinary measures, and create a plan that centers healing and support. Each attendance team member worked with two to three chronically absent students, or “focal students”, with whom they already shared a relationship and their families to identify the cause of their absences. 

By finding pockets of time outside instruction to chat with students and reach out to families, attendance team members found that to support their families, some students watched siblings, worked at family businesses, and attended to other family matters during school hours. And, according to teacher and former attendance team member Jennifer DeFelipo, many students also felt disconnected from the school, particularly as new students or students new to the country, and simply did not want to attend. The attendance team shared these findings in biweekly meetings, and collaboratively developed supports on a case by case basis to increase each students’ learning time. Additionally, the team along with other staff at KGIA created game nights, movie nights, and other community events to make students feel more welcome, more comfortable, more interested in coming to a school.

Then, in the following academic year of 2019-2020, Principal Manalo and a team of teachers formed Senior Success Teams in response to the low graduation rates. 12th grade teachers each met with a small group of 10 students every two weeks to review their goals, and support their progress. These small group meetings provided space for students to not only check in with an adult about their academics and attendance, but build community with their peers, and problem-solve any challenges they may be facing, including social-emotional. 

As a result of their attendance work and Senior Success Teams, KGIA saw students make strides: Last year the school celebrated an 81% graduation rate, something it had never seen before. Fewer students have been considered ‘at risk’ for chronic absences, celebrating an 86% attendance rate for the 2021-2022 school year, and even averaging above 90% attendance in one week. As Principal Manalo shared, their attendance work, Senior Success Team, and all other subsequent supports come down to the way KGIA educators invest in relationships, and take time to listen to students.

 

Recognizing the impact of their previous work, in September 2020, KGIA developed an advisory modeled off of the Senior Success Teams and attendance work in order to better learn about and support the 20 students that comprised their incoming freshmen class. KGIA also intended for advisory to inform and be informed by the College Readiness Network for School Improvement (CR NSI) team. Starting in the 2020-2021 school year, New Visions along with a team of ninth grade teachers collaborated to analyze students’ academic progress and refine their instruction, with the goal of raising students’ GPAs to 80% or higher.  

Cherlyse Alexander, a geometry and algebra teacher, and a CR NSI team member, volunteered to lead Advisory and meet with ninth graders five days a week. She framed advisory as a class to help students get comfortable not just moving from middle school to high school, but comfortable opening up to one another, and adults in the building.

Through this open approach, she created themes for each day of the week that were informed by CR NSI input, social emotional surveys given to students at the start of each semester, and the interests students expressed to her directly. While Alexander’s lessons were open to this feedback, she noted that keeping weekly themes helped her not feel overwhelmed, and helped students feel comfortable knowing what to expect.  

She devoted Tuesdays to “college and career readiness”, which included discussions around high school graduation requirements in the U.S., and study skills and strategies that work for them. They also researched colleges, learned how to write an email to teachers, peers, and others, and wrote “brag sheets”, or lists of their skills, assets, and accomplishments not only as students but as people, so they can, as Alexander noted, begin building the confidence to ask teachers for letters of recommendation to college. 

Alexander also created “Check-in Wednesdays” for students to review their Google Classrooms, and catch up on assignments. Additionally, for 8 weeks, Alexander invited other adults to visit the class on Thursdays to share how they organize their calendars, take notes, and maintain healthy routines (i.e. a healthy amount of sleep, time to spend with family and friends, time to learn, time to exercise). Students then created an outline of their own routines, and discussed them as a class. Alexander shared that these outlines provided her and other teachers with a wider picture of their students’ lives, and how some responsibilities at home intersected with school.

Alexander also dedicated the other class days to one social emotional area as outlined by CASEL: self awareness, self management, social awareness, building relationships, and thinking through and making decisions. Alexander rooted these lessons to students’ lives, cultures, and lived experiences with the aim of helping them feel comfortable and build connections. For example, over Spring Break, students created playlists, then shared their playlists when they returned. 

Alexander shared students’ advisory creations – like their routine outlines and playlists – with the CR NSI team, which helped them see and respond to individual students’ needs more fully, and provided possible explanations for their “noticings." During CR NSI meetings, Alexander shared that teachers discuss what they notice about students, analyze if there are shared noticings, discuss what they know about the students’ lives, then if necessary discuss how to best support if the noticings are, for example, a student showing signs of depression, or a student no longer engaging class. 

Additionally, each CR NSI team member acts as a mentor to individual freshmen, and checks in at least once per month with them for anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes to discuss how they’re feeling about school, learning, relationships, or any other topic (including Birthday celebrations!) students might want to talk about. To be clear, teachers are not assigned to check-in with one particular student. Rather, the team determines who should talk to a particular student for a particular situation, or teachers have casual conversations with students. In either case, they document that a conversation was had in a shared tracker so that the entire team can make sure they are keeping in contact with each student.  

Through Alexander and the CR NSI team’s model, advisory courses have supported a culture of belonging, and helped teachers more intentionally engage with students.

Now back in person, KGIA has extended advisory into the 10th grade, and has taken other steps to make students feel more welcome, seen, and heard at school, in response to their most recent form of outreach – a social-emotional learning survey. For example, Manalo shared that after noticing Muslim students use random places in the school to pray, and after seeing this challenge described in the survey, KGIA transformed an office space into a multi-purpose room that students of any denomination can use for prayer, meditation, or study. KGIA has also created a photography class in order to help students work through traumas they have shared and described in the survey. The class emerged from CR NSI meetings around students’ SEL needs, and is led by CR NSI team member Carrie Lynch, who has experience with photography as a form of self expression. 

Additionally, Manalo has started a boy’s group, working with 13 students who self-identified as needing more support and space to share and collaboratively address the pressures they feel as young men. And eventually, as Manalo shared, he would like to include students in instructional walk-throughs because he wants to understand, from a young adult’s perspective, how he and other educators can facilitate learning through more intentional instruction. Manalo attributes all of the positive changes they have seen in students to the concerted effort teachers have placed on listening to students.