Julia+D

Phase 1:


 * Slinger Middle School: Mission Statement: The School District of Slinger’s missions is to successfully educate all children and, thereby, to graduate high quality, life-long learners. To do so, the district is committed to:
 * Challenging every student’s educational potential
 * Hiring and developing a high-quality staff
 * Supporting, involving, and utilizing the community, and
 * Providing a friendly, safe, and clean learning environment. || Templeton Middle School Mission Statement: It is the mission of the Hamilton School District, A child-centered, progressive, pro-active organization, To ensure maximum achievement For each student Through a respectful and active learning environment; A rigorous, relevant curriculum; And a highly qualified, caring staff In concert with our diverse community. ||
 * Slinger is a small-town school. The population is under 5,000 people. Slinger is a primarily white community. By looking at the demographics of the entire school district, you can see that the district is primarily white. By looking at the chart below, you can see that Asian, Black, American-Indian, Pacific Isle, and Hispanic make up less than 5% of the district population. || The Hamilton School District seems to be slightly larger than the Slinger School District, but like Slinger, this district seems to be primarily white. Between 1995-2011, 86.5%-95.5% of the students enrolled have been white. The small remaining percentage of students have been a mixture of Pacific Isle, Hispanic, Black, Asian, and American-Indian. ||
 * The demographics of the Slinger Middle School, are similar to the demographics of the entire district. The middle school is made up of primarily white students, and less than 5% of the population at the Slinger Middle School are Asian, Black, American-Indian, Pacific Isle, and Hispanic. || The Hamilton Middle School is a primarily white district. From the years 1995-2011, 86.5%-94.7% of the students have been white. The remaining percents have been a mixture of Pacific Isle, Hispanic, Black, Asian, and American-Indian students. ||
 * *Looking at the 7th grade WKCE testing results, you will see that there are only two testing group results: White Not Hispanic and Combined Groups (Small Number). For the white group, 71.3% of the students were advance, 25.5% were proficient, and roughly 3% of the students scored between basic and minimum performance. For the combined group, 63.6% of the students placed in the advanced performance, 18.2% placed in proficient, and 18.2% placed in the basic performance, but there were no students who placed in the minimum performance. || Looking at the 7th grade WKCE testing results, you will see that 33.5% of American Indians students placed at the advanced level and 48.2% placed at the proficient level. 39.8% of the Asian students placed in the advanced level and 43% placed at the proficient level. 19.9% of the Black students placed in the advanced level and 46.9% placed at the proficient level. 27.3% of the Hispanic students placed at the advanced level and 49% placed in the proficient level. 54.9% of the White students placed in the advanced level and 36% of them placed in the proficient level. ||
 * By looking at the 7th grade WKCE results, you will see that 22.2% of the students were advanced, 33.3% were proficient, and 44.4% were minimum performance. The students without disabilities had 73% of students in advanced, 24.7% were proficient, and roughly 2% were basic and minimum performance. || <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">By looking at the 7th grade WKCE results by disability, you will see that 15.4% of students with disabilities were advanced, 36.2% were proficient, 26.9% were basic, and 20.3% were minimum performance. 53.1% of students without disabilities placed in the advanced level, 39.2% placed at the proficient level, and the remainder placed at the basic or minimum performance level. ||
 * *By looking at the 8th grade WKCE results for Language Arts, I was surprised with what I saw. Students did not score as I had expected them to. 33.2% of students were advanced, 37.7% were proficient, 18.2% were basic, and 10.9% were minimum performance. || <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Overall, it looks like the Templeton 8th grade students did better than the Slinger students on the Language Arts portion of the WKCE. 40.7% of the students were advance, 36.7% were proficient, 18.2% were basic, and 4.4% were minimum performance. ||

Phase 2: Interview
 * 1) Based on the demographic statistics of your school and classroom (discuss), what are the differences that exist between you, your students, and their families? What implications does this have on student learning in the classroom?

Roughly 5-7% of the school falls into the minority and poverty level category. My co-op can partially relate to this because there was a period recently where her husband was without a job for a year and a half. It was rough to provide for a family of 5 on only one salary. They really had to cut back and make adjustments in their lifestyle. And their children became very stressed out because they feared they would lose their house. It made her more aware of the difficulties some of her students are faced with. In times like these, my co-op tries to be more flexible and understanding towards those particular students. Sometimes parents try to keep quiet about the big stresses going on in life, but students are smart and can figure out what is really going on in the family, which creates extra stress and their schoolwork begins to suffer.


 * 1) **What “funds of knowledge” have you gained from your students’ families?**

The families at the Templeton Middle School aren’t overly involved. This year, the families may have been less involved than normal because the school chose to do invite-only conferences. This means that parents were only pushed to attend the conference if their student was struggling and there were some underlying issues. During these conferences, my co-op found more out about particular students. For example, she learned one student, who seemed dazed and often did not do well on her homework was coping with the fact that her older brother attempted to commit suicide and the event left his 18-year-old self with the capabilities of a 10-year-old. Basically, it’s taught her that when students seem distracted and are doing poorly in school, she needs to contact the parents to find out if there are any issues going on outside of school.


 * 1) Have you noticed any patterns of achievement within your students by group membership (gender, ethnicity, etc…)? If a particular group is always lower in achievement than another, what adjustments have been made in your practices?

Recently, my co-op was in charge of rating and scoring the 6th grade written test papers. During this, she found that girls seem to be stronger writers and readers than boys. She also says that Hispanics and African-Americans seem to have a lower achievement than other students within the school. In times like these, she tries to be more flexible, but she also tries to offer more help to those particular students. I also learned about study halls at Templeton. Unlike Slinger, not every student has a study hall. Only the students who need study hall, have one. Typically the students who have study halls are the lower achievement students who need a little extra focus and help on doing their schoolwork.


 * 1) How do you promote cultural awareness within the class and/or school environment?

The school has special observance days and activities. Recently, the school had an observance day for Martin Luther King Jr. On that particular day, classes were shortened and there was an all-school assembly held that provided students with more info about MLK Jr. and there were some fun activities to participate in.


 * 1) How do you integrate knowledge about diverse cultures in the community or into your teaching/work practices?

Again, my co-op provides her class with more information, especially when the whole school is participating in an observance day, otherwise she leaves most of that up to the history teachers. Most of the students within the school come from the same culture and they do not always seem interested in exploring other cultures.


 * 1) **How do you integrate the 21st century skills into the curriculum and instruction?**

Each quarter, teachers are required to have their students participate in 2-3 different types of activities. These activities and projects are usually technologically based. In the past, students have been required to create a wiki page, make a Moodle page, or give a presentation via Prezi.


 * 1) Do you know of any out reach services this school provides to meet the needs of families?

There is one particular example that comes to my co-op’s mind. There is a student in the middle school who has stomach migraines. Because of this, it is hard for him to focus in school. Instead, he takes some classes in the regular classroom, but he takes an online Comm. Arts and Social Studies class. He takes these online classes while at school, but he goes to the computer lab and is supervised.


 * 1) What evidence do you have that proves students at your school are culturally competent?

Making the students culturally competent has been an ongoing process since the students have been in K5. It’s a school wide process and reinforced into each student when there is something like an all-school assembly for a special observance day.


 * 1) **How do you support __all__ students in the school into an understanding of cultural competency? (This would include students with special needs.)**

Again, this relates back to the special observance days. Everyone is urged and invited to attend the special observance days.


 * 1) What impact has the increase in students learning ESL made to classroom practices?

Very recently, the Templeton School District has acquired a new ESL teacher. She spends half her time at the middle school and half her time at the high school. Throughout the entire district, there are roughly 29 different languages spoken. The ESL teacher works with the children who need the help and she rates their progress on a scale of 1-5: 5 means the student is proficient and no longer needs the assistance of the ESL teacher. Last year, in my co-op’s classroom, she had so many ESL students, that she had the ESL teacher as support in her classroom for part of the day.


 * 1) How much of what is going on in the state, the country, and the world is included in the curriculum of the school?

My co-op avoids politics at all costs. Teachers and staff at Templeton are also advised to keep their political views private from the students. In Social Studies class, the teacher is allowed to teach politics, government, and wars, but teachers must be careful to avoid giving their own opinions.


 * 1) How do you mentor teachers towards an understanding and respect for cultures to which they may have not been previously exposed?

My co-op chooses not to call a lot of attention to it. Sometimes when too much attention is called to one particular culture, students of that culture feel uncomfortable and the majority students wonder why there is no special observance day for their culture. Instead, if the problems or issues continue to grow, my co-op chooses to have a small one-on-one conversation about it.

Overall, Templeton Middle School seems much different than the Slinger Middle School. Slinger has some diversity, but not nearly as much as Templeton. Because of this, I’m not sure how much Slinger incorporates diversity and race into the regular school schedule. In history classes, students are taught about specific racial movement and there is some focus in English, but these issues could probably be brought up more. It’s also important to note that in relation to social status, teachers and student families typically are from the same social status. Slinger does not have a lot of poverty.

Phase 3: Reflection Julia Claire Duquaine Phase III School Profile Reflection After comparing Slinger Middle School and Templeton Middle School, I can see a correlation between cultural proficiency, the achievement gap, and parent communication and involvement. Both schools have many similarities and differences, but in both schools, it is apparent that the missions of the schools are to provide a well-established education for all students to enter into the school. Both middle schools are predominately white. Templeton is slightly more diverse than Slinger, but with each passing year, Slinger is becoming more and more diverse. By doing fieldwork within each middle school, I have seen how teachers try to incorporate culture into each classroom. Doing so helps to create a much more diverse and close-knit community within the classroom. At Templeton Middle School, the school celebrates certain public figures of a minority race (like Martin Luther King Jr), and they create activities that involve all students within the school. Although both schools are working hard to make their schools more diverse, there is still the existing achievement gap. In interviews I have conducted within both schools, I have learned it’s usually the minority students who struggle. What I have also found out is that the parents of the students who struggle usually do not involve themselves within their students’ schooling, which is very sad. Sometimes students do better when there is some form of parent involvement. It’s great to see the cultural diversity amongst schools today, but it is also disappointing to see that the achievement gap still exists, especially amongst the minorities. Hopefully someday, the achievement gap will vanish.