A community pep rally for Jefferson City Public Schools at Fleming Fieldhouse had lots of energetic celebration Monday morning, as well as insight from a veteran retired principal into how to advance student performance in areas like literacy.
The pep rally was the third annual such occassion for JCPS and featured performances from Jefferson City High School's Step Team and the Jay Band Drum Line. Jasper the Jaybird was also around for photos.
"Our overall goal this morning was to inspire 1,474 staff members," Superintendent Larry Linthacum said of energizing the district's full- and part-time staff for the new school year set to start on Thursday.
Immediately after the rally, everyone in attendance heard from keynote speaker Sue Szachowicz, a retired high school principal from Massachusetts who is now a senior fellow and consultant with the International Center for Leadership in Education.
The district partnered with ICLE in 2015 to rework its curriculum in English and math.
"We are committed 100 percent. Our time and our energy is in getting you the curriculum that you need, a good curriculum, with the resources you need to get it done," the district's chief of learning Brian Shindorf said in his introduction to Szachowicz, and his statement received widespread applause.
Szachowicz retired as principal of Brockton High School in Brockton, Massachusetts. She said she recognized the great work she observed in JCPS, "but then I want to push you a little bit, and give you some ideas of things to try."
JCPS' new long-term strategic goal is to get every one of its students reading at or above their grade level or otherwise meeting their educational goals if on specialized plans.
Szachowicz had some experience to relate on that, as Brockton High launched a school-wide literacy initiative under her tenure there.
Previously, Brockton was by all accounts a failed school; three-quarters of its students didn't pass mandatory state examinations, which meant only 25 percent of its students graduated. In 1998, only 22 percent of its more than 4,000 students were advanced or proficient on Massachusetts' standardized state test, and only 7 percent met those marks in math.
However, by 2010, Brockton had been transformed and was outperforming 90 percent of Massachusetts high schools, according to the New York Times.
Szachowicz said the keys to Brockton's success were answering some basic questions about what skills students needed to be successful, on state assessments, in their classes and beyond high school.
One of the obvious answers was literacy, and she said staff had to think outside of big conceptual terms to what solutions meant on a classroom level. What ultimately happened was that a new model had to be created to ensure consistency between classrooms and to make sure teachers knew what they needed to be teaching their students, and how.
All teachers had to incorporate reading, writing, speaking and reasoning skills into their work, even if they were science, math or history teachers.
"Part of our literacy workshops (for teachers) were more than just literacy. They were around. 'How do you engage kids?'" she told JCPS' Board of Education at a work session later on Monday.
She said better engagement with learning for students led to some improvements in their overall behavior in school, a lesson Linthacum believes is relevant to JCPS, too.
ICLE's core tenets are rigor, relevance and relationships. "I think you guys have done great work with the relationship piece. You can feel it. But it's not enough. You put that together with rigor and push, and move it," Szachowicz said, comparing "relationships" with one of the district's priorities of improving its workplace culture and climate.
Board President Steve Bruce said after the work session that his biggest takeaways from her were consistency and the importance of supporting and standing behind staff.
"The key is not to mimic what happened at Brockton High," Shindorf said after Szachowicz's keynote speech in the morning. "Instead, take lessons learned and apply concepts, and I believe we're ready to do that," he said.