Principal's Conference April 1, 2025 by

Structure

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Teachers analyzed and used data in teacher teams.

Small school issues

2025-04-01 15:07:03 UTC

Many schools have only one Algebra teacher. Presents opportunities and challenges.

Coupling Skills Classes w/ IM Classes

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I liked the tracking chart used for SWDs. I will see how I can utilize this to tie in IEP goals to the learning objectives of the class and students.

Structures

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Book club

PDSA

January Regents

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Structures and Systems Alg

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Dedicated time for teacher teams

January ISA and IA data analysis

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Looking at ways to support teachers when they are the only Algebra 1 teacher in the building

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Use of assessment data to inform instruction and testing in January.

ISA

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Unpacking ISA’s from exams

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Wanting to increase student agency in the classroom is similar to mine.

Inter-school visitation

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I want to send my teachers to see what other schools are doing.

Misalignment between IM and Regents

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Same lessons being learned regardless of groups

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Looking at building student agency and engagement through routines to ultimately build student thinking

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Schools used lead teachers, influencers, teacher teams and PD structures to drive the work.

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I love the ideas of focusing on thinking and want to hit up Danielle re mastery grading…. (Trying to get into third column but stuck!)

Own L4I

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Building Thinking Classrooms/Vertical Boards

Intervisitations cross content

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A team that respects each other and is willing to be open for ideas to move their school

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Coherence of instructional routines across content areas to support student learning.

Implementation of instructional routines throughout all content areas

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Ensuring that students have agency in their learning. This will yield outcomes that extend beyond the classroom .

Inquiry Cycles

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Worked on developing a focus of quick assessments, data analysis and intervention planning. This work is done in 2 week department team cycles.

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Making time for teachers to plan together, visit each other, and for the routines to take hold were critical.

Data

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The use of data to drive instruction.

Takeaways

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Finding connections between staff and student voice - setting targets for themselves public in the community

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Leveraging Literacy Rountines to impact and improve effectiveness in Math and other content classrooms.

2025-04-01 15:08:44 UTC

Excited to build on the work that was started this school year and implement the feedback from my colleagues. We are excited to scale up and spread the work of the ELA department.

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Using a checklist

L4Improvement- Team Phoenix

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Principal focus groups are a TRUE win
Literacy routines embedded and mid point tickets
Teacher matching + teacher PD time

Concern over regents results and willingness to try new ideas that you never have been

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The intervisits themselves were a valuable system for engaging around real problems of practice and generating perspectives necessary for improvement.

IM Algebra

2025-04-01 15:08:53 UTC

Providing students several opportunities to "pass" the Algebra Regents by the end of the first year.

2025-04-01 15:08:54 UTC

I really liked the collaborative process, but would like to work on something similar as this would be more beneficial when working on change ideas.

Peer Led PDs and dedicated Common planning time

2025-04-01 15:09:00 UTC

Showcasing what works, with student work. Having time for teachers to work with each other.

Principals led teachers through cycles of protocol-based student inquiry.

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Mid Point Ticket

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Spoke about midpoint checkins. Similar to our shift.

Building thinking classrooms!

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Learning about Mastery grading and shared literacy routines.

Learning from Colleagues…

2025-04-01 15:09:16 UTC

…are the most valuable professional development opportunities for me.

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I appreciated the literacy skill success monitoring for students with learning differences and thought it would be a very clear and data-based way to determine/support IEP Progress Monitoring.

Where are the kids in this process? How often were kids asked about their experiences in IM classes? We continue to undervalue them as a data source in the process.

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Taking teacher perspective into account but also raising the bar through routines and assessment

Looking at smaller cycles to build in more time to adjust and change as you see goals being attained

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Go unafraid to modify and adjust IM lessons to support your students and teachers by adding a mid lesson assessment.

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Having students think about their thought processes

Many principals had similar journeys. Also the concept of less is more seems to be a common theme.

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Systems of Note

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PD time facilitated by colleagues, a tracking system, instructional leadership team.

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Using January Regents administrations as an early assessment tool to drive intervention.

The value of principal groups as the best PD!

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Thinking of scheduling more time for teacher planning, possible more class time, and sitting students in January with targeted prep.

IM Algebra

2025-04-01 15:09:42 UTC

Struggle with lesson time or completion of lesson by IM teacher.

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Balancing between specific practices/protocols and the “big idea”

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Finding more ways to integrate meaningful feedback that is specific to student learning and teacher progress.

School-wide Literacy Routines

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Grade specific literacy routines that students must master across all content areas.

Unit planning day

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I’m thinking about adding a unit planning day into our process

Open to Change

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All teams were open to the change process. Additionally, the teams supported each other throught this proces.

Consider when in the class and year to have which assessments. Consider which routines to use

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Systems to Guide the Work

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Book Study using Design Thinking for Every classroom and The Thinking Classroom to frame the work behind the Change Ideas.

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Structuring PD more thoughtfully

Always thinking about next steps

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All of the presenters were continuously monitoring their progress and thinking about what next steps to take to refine their plan.

Building on the work of CPET was helpful for our L4I work.

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Identifying and promoting school wide routines

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Collaboration is key

IM Algebra

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Incorporating ELA and Math routines into other content areas.

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Leveraging Assistant Principals, inter-visitations, scaling literacy routines implementation, etc:

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delineating the cycles of improvement, so we can fit in at least two cycles.

Connection to my own work

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Reflection during inquiry cycles is always needed, less is more, and always use data! Capture notes from teams and teachers in a central space.

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Taking the risk and allowing room to learn while understanding the process.

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School-wide classwork classwork rubric built with stakeholder input.

Creating system for 9th grade January regents by including parents and addressing IEP and ELL concerns

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Consistency, honest feedback, pick a strategy and stick with it

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Change ideas that are normed across classrooms and monitored through classroom walkthroughs, observations and looking at student work. Specific focus on closing the gap of our MLL and SPed students.

Anchor Texts

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Many principals grounded their instructional focus and professional learning through a text. This guided the work of inquiry, documents, structures, and collaboration.

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PROSE PD Day focusing on department and co-teaching planning for differentiation and tracker updating and monitoring.

Focus Progression

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It is important to ackowledge that less is more. I want to spend time thinking about the tiered development for this work next year.

The concept of using a cycle to improve on and monitor progress. Generating ideas as solutions can be somewhat easy compared to implementing across the school with the fidelity and sophistication needed for those ideas to work

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There was a clear intention to differentiate between sustain and spread. There was value in identifying current strengths and how they would use them to elevate ACTIVE student thinking.

Monitoring

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How will you monitor the change idea to ensure what is happening matches what you expect to see?

Takeaways

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Use of literacy routines across classrooms

Book study

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Many of the presenters highlighted the importance of including teacher voice throughout their cycles in order to increase buy in and ownership among teachers.

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Planning Calendar, Dept PD , assessments, success criteria, benchmarks, and student feedback

January testing, communicating January testing to families, and creating time for teacher collaboration and learning.

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Learning from my colleagues has been extremely fruitful and hope to continue this practice for the future.

2025-04-01 15:11:59 UTC

A system, structure that was utilized to strengthen the action plan for supporting the change idea process was: willingness to take risks, being vulnerable and connecting with someone in the L4I that has either trying the same thing or something similar

Takeaway & Next Year

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Discuss our inquiry work for next year during ILT meetings THIS year. Get leaders to contribute NOW. Create an inquiry check-list to use next year to set norms school-wide!

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How can I leverage my Aha moments from the presentations and my groups to push forward and refine my change idea?

Math

2025-04-01 15:12:08 UTC

Administering the Algebra 1 Regents to all 9th graders in January is a strategic move to help students practice taking the test and to alert teachers where their students are on curriculum already learned. I believe the strength of how they do on curriculum not covered can also inform how to approach those upcoming topics.

2025-04-01 15:12:24 UTC

I think it is important for us to reflect on how we monitor success and next steps as micro-communities so that we can better invest in teachers.

Scaling the implementation of literacy routines and strengthening supervision.

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Narrowing focus, productive struggle, abd student self-reflection on learning (metacognition)

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Cycle of Inquiry

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Intervisitations

School-Wide Routines

Horizontal Alignment

Using Multiple Sources of Data (MAP, Regents, Formative Assessments, etc.)

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INSI was a huge help! The meetings structures and agenda helped keep everyone focused.

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Collective Efficacy

Leaning into Cycles

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Groups leaned into iterating based on implementation, reflection, and adaptation. I saw that on the large scale and also in micro (thinking of Denese speaking to how annotation routines change over the course of a year to promote independence).

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Supporting colleagues!!!!

Pivot / Reflection and Reseponse

2025-04-01 15:14:11 UTC

Groups identified that there were things that came up that shifted the moves they made as focus remained same

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interested to learn more about the building Math routines.

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Teacher voice, consistency & continuity. Sticking to it...

Language acquisition

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The importance of always thinking about how bilingual people process content in an academic setting

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For SY 25-26 how can we further enhance student achievement through the scaling of interdisciplinary, intervistations with focused 3-5 instructional routines per grade level, each routine having a specific assessment purpose, pick 3-5 and stick with it for the year.......

2025-04-01 15:15:58 UTC

Starting small. Inviting teachers and APs to possibly be a part of the process (join visits if possible).

Collaborative Process

2025-04-01 15:16:37 UTC

The presentation groups emphasized collaborative conversations of practice between principals that could directly inform school-specific practice. As those principal-to-principal exchanges were shaped primarily by observation, they were free of the politics and pre-existing perceptions that impact discussions among school-based staff.

Connect the dots

2025-04-01 15:17:01 UTC

Facilitate connections between systems so teachers are pulling bodies of work together (e.g. IEP progress monitoring and literacy routines).

2025-04-01 15:17:49 UTC

One key takeaway for next year is the 3 I's. Interdisciplinary, Intervistations with high impact, high performance grade level Instructional routines.

Lisa

2025-04-01 15:25:48 UTC

There were clear structures for communicating vision in large schools from AP, to teacher leader, to teacher team with sticky messages that leveraged vision AND structures. We also heard about the use ways to communicate with families about the change idea and the use of the January Regents to create urgency and help students and teachers plan strategically for college ready scores in June.

2025-04-01 15:28:31 UTC

At a couple of points in the presentations I felt like "oh that's us". When the idea of the historic impact of students being 'counted out of Math' and how to use film and school wide pre-existing structures to level the IM work were all aligned to the work at our school. I stole a lot of ideas. Thank you.

2025-04-01 15:33:42 UTC

I plan to steal the following:

continuing to do inter-visitations across schools. ( did one with with Xhenetes school so dope)

consider goal setting student and family after the Spring Mock
develop structures to support teachers develop student expertise in using the IM routines to support student advocacy