Chapter+3+Summary

Qualities of Equitable and Excellent Classrooms

Tice Elementary School has some characteristics that helped them achieve high levels of success with their students:

Every teacher was teaching every student most of the class time

No Student was out of the zone



No Student was left on his or her own to learn.



//EVERY STUDENT// HAD A CARING TEACHER WHO INSISTED AND ENSURED THAT THE STUDENT //LEARN AT HIGH LEVELS// Tice Elementary used frequent school wide benchmark tests to measure student progress toward curriculum mastery and used these test results to target which students needed help with which skills. What have you done at your school that is similar to the assessments they used at Tice? Take a look at the DCPS Assessment Calendar. How can those assessments we are required to give help us target and move individual students on specific benchmarks and skills? Through the efforts of everyone working together, the teachers and administrators at Tice were able to close the achievement gap. The classroom teachers could focus on the curriculum for just their grade levels instead of trying to teach a large percentage of students who were one or more grade levels behind. This eliminated the need to differentiate at extreme levels. The teacher still differentiated instruction, but now they could differentiate to take students further, not differentiate to make up for gaps.

Remember, teaching those students we find easy to teach is not hard. Teaching students who we find difficult to teach, for an array of reasons, if tough. It can be done. It requires that we transform our classrooms into equitable communities. Classroom Equity Audits The teachers at Tice Elementary are not necessarily working harder; rather, they have learned what to pay attention to and where to put their efforts. The Principal explained to the staff that he wanted teachers working hard for the time they were at school, but then he wanted them to go home and take care of their personal lives so that they could give their full attention and efforts to their students when they were at school. He understood that to be productive, people need to be able to focus on their work. He also understood that people need time to be away from work, mentally and physically, so they can recharge.

Take Time To Take Care of Yourself