September Update: Rigor, Relevance, Relationships, Results

My father was raised by a cattle rancher. Although they lived in the city during the winter months, in the summertime his family lived and worked on the Alberta prairie.

He told me that once when he was just six or seven years old his father asked him to take two large work horses to the trough for some water. These were huge work animals, Clydesdales, and my dad remembered looking at their hoofs, seeing that each one was as big around as his face. He was terrified by their size and power, and not at all sure that he could get them safely to water and back. But he also knew that his father knew his strengths and limitations, that he was a skillful rancher, and that he wouldn’t have given my dad the job if he didn’t think he could do it. He took those horses to the trough and back, still scared, but ultimately confident and proud.

I think of this often as I see our students and teachers at work. We ask our students to do incredibly challenging things each day—and if they are to be successful, they need to know that we know their strengths and needs, that they can trust us as teachers, and that when we ask difficult things of them we will create the conditions for their success.

As we continue to develop our services for students with special needs in Seattle, we adults need to each day remember that our core work is to build and reinforce a system that challenges and supports our learners. We need to daily recommit ourselves to the non-negotiable of inclusive practice; each and every student is a full member of our community. We the adults need to adjust our practice in order to make this a reality.

Last week I visited schools in the West/Southwest Region with Supervisor Amy Briggs. This year as a department we are targeting key areas where we know we need to focus:

1. Do ALL students have access to the general education curriculum (including materials, standards, instructional practices, and well-trained teachers), and

2. What are the clear supports in place to help students navigate social and behavior challenges?

At both Roxhill Elementary and Gatewood Elementary we saw tangible evidence of both indicators of best practices.

• Students at Roxhill could tell me, at a moment’s notice, about “CARES," their school-wide community expectations:
  

  C ome ready to learn.

  A ct with compassion.

  R espect adults, each other, and property.

  E xcel at everything you do.

  S tay safe
  

• At Gatewood we saw students with behavioral challenges fully included in a class that was doing Reader’s Workshop, reading “just right books” and conferring with teachers and with one another.

At both schools students were able to experience success because expectations for behavior were explicit and academic structures were carefully designed to provide structure, individualized learning, and true rigor. Thank you Roxhill and Gatewood staff!