Solution Seeking Through Systems: One District’s Innovative Journey

Many systems in education were broken prior to the pandemic. Fast forward to the additional obstacles piled on top of schools in today’s educational climate and the urgency for change is critical. School districts across the country have been seeking innovative approaches to improve teaching and learning amid overworked teachers. In May of 2021, the Chillicothe School District embarked on an atypical approach to curriculum and assessment development in order to expedite the traditional process of providing teachers with a clear and focused roadmap to attack content standards. Their approach not only fast tracked quality curriculum and assessment documents but has leveraged a positive framework for teachers to engage in meaningful and relevant conversations about student learning. Below are 5 simple steps this small Missouri district took in order to make big shifts.

1. Reimagined Curriculum Systems and Approaches

Chillicothe has always provided curriculum documents and instructional resources to their teachers. However, many teachers have confused  purchased instructional resources as their primary curriculum. This common curriculum confusion among teachers caused an immediate teaching and assessment alignment gap to the Missouri Learning Standards (MLS) and newly adopted priority standards. The district knew they had to improve clarity of what a Missouri guaranteed and viable curriculum was to teachers while also expediting the curriculum development process. To accomplish this, the district chose to use a simplified curriculum template in Google Sheets that showed the pacing of priority and supporting standards over the course of the year K-8 in all core subjects. To simplify the traditional curriculum process, teachers paced their MLS priority and supporting standard to their instructional resources. This approach created a clear connection between standards and a resource, while also helping teachers to reflect on the best lessons to use within their resource. The heavy lifting of creating the template was accelerated by utilizing a premade digital document containing all of the priority and supporting standards information that needed to be included on each template. This allowed teachers the ability to quickly copy and paste their standards into the template following the pacing of their instructional resources. K-5 teachers needed about a ½ day to full day for this process, while K-5 math and all 6-8 core teachers created a template for each course in a 2-4 hour time frame.

2. Backward Designing with Clarity

Once teachers developed the above scope and sequences/pacing guides, they had a clear roadmap of how to ensure they intentionally taught all priority standards in core subjects throughout the year. Their next step was to ensure they had summative assessments in place for each unit that mirrored what students would see on state assessments. Their goal in creating these assessments was to ensure standard and content alignment.  With a focus on state items as calibration, teachers quickly found they had unintentionally been assessing students at a lower rigor and that they had different understandings of some of the state standards. A new approach to assessment building brought clarity to end of the year learning targets/standards for teachers. Confidence and morale was boosted during assessment development as teachers realized their misunderstanding of standards was most likely the cause of prior low achievement in students. These revised summative assessments provided a clear understanding of what students should be able to do in order to demonstrate proficiency. 

3. Building Systems That Support Sustained Instructional Focus

Chillicothe shifted their focus from having curriculum documents, resources and assessments, to teacher understanding and collective ownership of the documents. In this shift, they deviated from select teachers being chosen to work on curriculum and encouraged all staff voice and ownership in development and process. Beyond summer training dates and use of built in professional development days throughout the year to do the work, buildings also utilized weekly grade level Professional Learning Communities (PCLs) to review assessments made by team  members and discussed them as a  whole group, revising them if needed. Collaboration and group feedback around summative assessments and curriculum pacing, allowed all stakeholders voice in the process and engaged teams  in deep instructional conversations around their standards.

4. Empowering Leadership Through Collaboration 

Building principal leadership and support was integral in moving the district past the traditional curriculum process. They met monthly as a collaborative team to discuss the district goals and curriculum transition. These frequent meetings helped the district keep an accurate pulse on how their training and approaches were impacting teachers.  They also equipped leaders with the ability to collaborate and learn from each other to support their staff as best as possible. District and building leadership collaboration has been critical to their success and will continue to be needed for sustainability of the process.

5. Leveraging ESSER Funds and Learning

Leveraging ESSER funds allowed the district to purchase a simplified curriculum templates and Missouri specific products to easily create their MAP mirrored assessments. In addition, they hired an outside consultant to guide them in facilitating the work and use of the product.The willingness and vulnerability of leaders to learn and try a unique approach ultimately helped this district to accelerate their journey while maintaining positive staff morale. 

While world events and culture have drastically changed the educational landscape and added additional barriers, the educational systems and approaches have stayed the same. “We have moved more in the past nine months working with our consultant and her new approaches than we did in the past three years”, stated Jennie Boone, principal of Field Elementary.  “I get the power of this work and how it immediately impacts my teaching, I never realized my confusion of the standards before this work,” explained a second grade Chillicothe teacher. In times that seem impossible, we must think back to the pillars in education we know to be true and foundational, but reimagine how to do them. This small town district did just that and is hopeful that their story can help other Missouri schools do the same. 

Shauna Stephanchick
STEP Up Consultant
Educational Consultant
@stepupeducator 
Shaunastephanchick@gmail.com
https://kc-educator-network.mn.co