Whitehall Elementary Principal Check-in: 4/28/2021

Greetings, Trojan Community! Do I dare say that after the recent rains we are now finally done with winter and snow? I know 215 elementary students who are almost unanimously ready for the sun to start shining on a regular basis. Though we all know the weather can sometimes put us into a lethargic mood, I think it is very important to put into perspective where we have been in the past year and, perhaps more importantly, where we are planning to go in the next.

A year ago this weekend, I was editing a video of the elementary team dancing to "I'm Happy" which was posted on Facebook. The purpose was to bring some joy into the hearts of our students who had been quarantined at home for a month. This week our students are taking national exams, playing on the playground, laughing with their peers, and learning from their teachers. Suddenly a bit of rain doesn't sound quite as bad.

The past year has had its bits of silver lining. The educational team at Whitehall Elementary has undergone a whole year of digital professional development. Each teacher in our school is proficient with Google Classroom, the online components of our instructional materials, and a variety of communication vehicles such as Classtag, Seesaw, and Remind. When we selected a new Language Arts program this spring, we made sure that the program contained a strong digital component and a highly effective school-to-home connection concept.

Basically, we had the chance to select a new instructional program that would incorporate all the important lessons we learned during Covid-19.

We have selected "Wonders," a product designed by McGraw-Hill. This program is very robust, and I am very excited to see it deployed next fall. The process of selecting it started many months ago.

The first step was to really drill down into our student achievement data. This revealed strengths and deficiencies. We spoke with experts in the field, other schools, and the Office of Public Instruction to generate our first list of potential products. Each of these products was vetted very carefully to ensure that they were scientifically researched, and that the studies conducted about their effectiveness was documented, supported, and scientifically sourced. Only the best of the best was even considered by our teachers.

When we narrowed our potential packages down to two, we dug in even further. We wanted to make sure that the program we chose would work in practice as well as it looked on paper. To help with this decision, we conducted seminars with the companies to take a deep dive into what the program looks like when it is in front of the teachers and students.

In the end, "Wonders" was the clear winner because of the intervention and differentiation possibilities that it provides. Our teachers will have the tools to meet each student where they are academically, the means to capture mountains of data about student progress, and the supplemental materials to provide enrichment and/or intervention to the students who need it. What is more, the program also contains solid school-home communication tools so you will always know what your student is doing for Language Arts.

Though the steps we followed to select "Wonders" are the same steps we would use anyway, a year in a COVID environment really helped us to focus on what our students need most when times get difficult. Throughout 2020, all of us had a chance to really find out what we are made of, what we want to make better, and the best steps to make the changes necessary. Your Whitehall Elementary education team is so blessed to work with your 215 students, and we will continue to calculate, disaggregate, innovate and disseminate our very best instructional practices to each one of them.