As we head into a holiday weekend, and as I think about the work I have seen in classrooms during the last two weeks, I wanted to reach out to all Adams 14 teachers to say thank you. I want you to know that we are making progress together. While student achievement results are likely to improve more slowly, the improvement I have witnessed in instructional practice in our District in a few short months is staggering.

Today I want to take a moment to remind you how we got here. After a year of strategic planning and developing the Adams 14 strategy that relies on your dynamic and effective classroom instruction, we began a systemwide approach to improving the quality of classroom instruction in the fall of 2009. It seems like yesterday that we welcomed all new teachers to a week of professional development in early August. When school began later that month, we implemented weekly walk throughs. It was clear early on that we needed to provide solid professional development and strong communication to all staff to clarify our expectations for best practices around classroom instruction in Adams 14. While the process evolved for the first few months of school, all staff were eventually trained in the expected classroom practices. And I know our communication has improved throughout the year.

Walk throughs aren’t a silver bullet, and they aren’t disconnected from our overall strategy of high quality instruction. To me, it is clear that walk throughs are connected to all instructional elements of the strategic plan. They are a critical part of improving effective instruction in Adams 14. Here are the pieces of the puzzle as I see it:

• Quality professional development for teachers and leaders;
• Collaborative school culture that provides planning time for school teams;
• Assessment and data evaluation to monitor and adjust for student needs;
• Communication, feedback and coaching for teachers and leaders.

The walk throughs fit into each of the above categories, which means they are not disconnected events. They are one way that we communicate and establish dialogue throughout the District to advance the quality of instruction.

In some of my recent research about walk throughs, I have learned that our District is in the midst of addressing what’s categorized as an adaptive problem. That means that challenge of improving instruction won’t simply be solved by one expert; it will require our whole instructional community to learn to work in new ways. Often times, such a problem requires us to adapt to new beliefs. The results I have seen thus far are evidence that you are adapting well.

When you have a few minutes, take some time to watch Chief Academic Officer Lynn Heintzman’s November presentation to the Board of Education on effective instruction. It’s a great explanation of the work we are doing in Adams 14 schools. In this video, the data from walk throughs is from November. At the Board meeting on January 12, Dr. Joe Miller gave a mid-year report on the success of our strategic initiatives. Through December, we have seen an increase in implementation of all elements of effective instruction, as defined on our walk through form.

• Alignment and display of objectives – we are nearing our target of 80% at all levels (elementary, middle and high school). The greatest improvement has been at the high school level, with improvement from 60% in September to over 80% in December.
• Directs 85% or more students to be engaged – we are meeting the 80% target at the elementary level. Improvement at the middle school level went from 50% in September to 70% in December; and at the high school level, improvement went from 15% in September to 60% in December.
• Making engagement mandatory – this is an area that demands our continued focus. This is a difficult task that requires teachers to use every strategy in their toolkit. It is important to note that we are seeing improvement across all levels, but we are not yet near our target of 80%.

Our steady improvement trends translate to fantastic news for our students, because the work you are doing will yield long term results for their achievement.

I recognize that we all deal with constraints on a daily basis. These constraints are real: we have limited funding and limited time. But we must also consider that our commitment is real: we are improving instruction and student engagement, which means we will improve student success.

I hope you all have a restful holiday weekend. Our walk through teams look forward to seeing you in action again on Tuesday. I know I speak for all of the walk through teams when I say that Tuesday’s are the highlight of our week. Nothing makes us happier than seeing great instruction with engaged students in your classrooms.