Co-Taught Classrooms, Math Support Discussed In Elementary School Budgets

Staff members that support classroom teachers, co-taught classrooms, and  programs to help at-risk students—while helping teachers track those students' progress—were highlights of the Melrose elementary principals' budget presentation to the last week.

Principal Kerry Clery said that the addition at her school of behavior specialist Lindsey Mitchell—who also works in other Melrose elementary schools as needed—was the biggest budgetary addition for the current school year. Mitchell's primary role is undertaking assessments of students so teachers can target those students' specific needs.

Mitchell's addition is a "fantastic investment," Clery said, as having her in the school on a permanent basis allows her to get to know staff members and students, as opposed to previous years, when those assessments were contracted out to outside experts who would come in, conduct the assessment, present the staff with plans and leave.

"What Ms. Mitchell can provide is follow through coaching in the classroom," Clery said, adding that sometimes plans for a particular student need "just a little tweak" and that behavior-based problems have diminished at the Roosevelt School. Mitchell also works as a "data guru," helping teachers analyze data and use it to help students improve.

"Teachers have been taking all this data that they don’t know what to make of it," Clery said. "They're spending too much time trying to collect data, losing time trying to analyze. Her expertise is going to help us collect data on individual students, which then builds out to entire school in easy and manageable way."

In another example of additional staff helping at-risk students, Principal Brent Conway said that for years his school's site council would ask the School Committee for a school social worker. A few years ago with funding from the federal stimulus package—and working with the Melrose special education department and the —the Lincoln School finally brought on board that social worker, who works with the school psychologist and staff to address the needs of at-risk students and, sometimes, families.

The social worker's presence and work allows the classroom teachers "to be part of that process, but not driven by it," Conway said.

"People do their jobs. We’re free to attend to the teaching and learning of students while still staying in the loop," he said.

Principals push for co-taught classrooms

, principals spoke about either continuing or implementing—depending on the school—co-taught classrooms, where a general education teacher and a special education teacher work jointly to teach the whole class.

At last Tuesday's meeting, the elementary principals spoke about continuing to pursue the co-teaching model in their classrooms. Principal Dr. Dennet Sidell mentioned something as simple as buying horseshoe-shaped tables, which allows the teacher to stand in the center of a small group and have easier back and forth with the students.

By shifting around personnel over the last two years, Sidell said the Hoover is using a fully co-taught model this year and is anecdotally seeing positive results.

"Really, the cornerstone is small group work, tying regular and special ed together," he said. "We covered IEPs (students with Individualized Education Programs), but also children at-risk as well as gifted and talented, depending on the population of classrooms. Even though we're in the first year, we think we’ve seen several positive movements forward. There's a strong connection now between special ed and regular ed ... it doesn’t look like it’s benefiting just one group of children."

Principal Bryna Davis said her "big ticket item" is to add an additional special needs teacher, so that the co-taught classroom in the first grade will have that same support next year in the second grade, while also keeping a co-taught classroom at the first grade level for current kindergarteners who have "significant" special needs.

"We're seeing some great gains by having the full time co-teaching model in place," Davis said. "After we’ve had a little more time, we’ll be able to have the data to show the growth that these kiddos are making. Not just special needs students, but at-risk or struggling students."

Computer-based math intervention program sought by all schools

With intervention programs in place for reading and garnering positive results, Principal Jeff Strasnick said his school is focusing on math next year, which he said is "consistently" identified as an area of concern.

"Specifically, we’re seeing that in the general ed population we’re doing pretty well, but when you really look at students with special needs, they’re not progressing as quickly or as far as we’d like them to," Strasnick said.

So next year, the Horace Mann will pilot the Symphony online math program, Strasnick said, in hope of reaching those students with special needs who are struggling to make gains in math. The Roosevelt School is piloting the program this school year and the Lincoln School already purchased the program through Title I funding.

When asked by School Committee member J.D. LaRock if they all wanted to use the Symphony program, each principal nodded yes, but Strasnick pointed out that piloting the program comes with a set of rules from the program's company—such as which students can use the program—and Conway added the site licenses purchased to use the program limit the total number of students who can be using the program at any one time.

"We’ve had that discussion, how we’d coordinate a district purchase of that," he said.

Conway added—harkening back to Clery's comments about the behavior specialist helping with analyzing data—that one of the benefits of programs such as Symphony is how they quickly analyze data for teachers.

"(Teachers) can’t be overwhelmed in breakdown analyses of student data," he said. "These programs do that for you. Secondly, the company comes out and does professional development on using data and making it work. They do it with their own program—the same process as us—looking at information and having it drive instruction."