Bonaire Elementary School (2022)

School Information

School District: Houston County School District
School Address: 101 Elm St , Bonaire, GA 31005-3433, US
School Phone: 478-929-7826
Principal: Catherine Gardner
Contact E-Mail: catherine.gardner@hcbe.net
Web Address: https://bes.hcbe.net/

Demographics

Number of Students: 578
Percent Eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch: 28.03%
Percent of Limited English Proficient: 1.38%
Percent of Special Education: 14.36%

Racial/Ethnic Percentages:

White: 64.36%
Black: 15.74%
Hispanic: 9%
Asian: 1.21%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: 0.17%
American Indian or Alaska Native: 0%
Multiracial: 9.52%
Other: 0%

Bonaire Elementary School began its journey to build a shared understanding and commitment to the PLC framework in 2016. The administrative team worked closely together to build a Guiding Coalition and develop a plan for learning, embracing and growing in this important work. The Guiding Coalition held a retreat at the school where the team completed a book study utilizing Starting a Movement by Kenneth C. Williams and Tom Hierck. This book helped create a joint understanding of the foundations surrounding our school as a professional learning community and understanding the beginning steps for this process.

This team of teachers and staff attended our county’s leadership summit where Anthony Muhammad was the guest speaker on Transforming School Culture. This was followed by the team attending the PLC at Work conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Hearing these speakers truly had an impact on our team and helped us shift our mindset away from working independently to working collaboratively. We embraced the mantra “All Means All” as a school and worked diligently to begin our journey to address student needs.

During the 2017-2018 school year, we began the process of forming a shared mission and vision, creating collective commitments, developing norms and protocols for collaboration, identifying essential standards, analyzing student data and becoming transparent with our data to create a ‘current reality’ for our teachers and staff. Our mission is to Build an Education for All Students and our vision is to Be a Learning Community dedicated to the belief that all children are capable of learning. We utilized the article “One Step at a Time” by Parry Graham and Bill Ferriter to build our understanding of the seven stages of collaboration. This article along with our collective commitments, norms and essential standards are reviewed each year to refocus our direction and create goals for each collaborative team. Common collaboration time was previously built into the master schedule, but this article along with our professional learning helped our teams have a stronger understanding of how to best utilize that time collaboratively. A sample master schedule overview, our collective commitments and norms has been shared in resources.

During the fall of 2017, we were able to send teacher representatives to learn about Common Formative Assessments (CFAs) from Tim Brown. This was followed by sending a team to the RTI at Work Conference in Tampa, Florida. Each team returned and redelivered information from their sessions and assisted in creating an academic Response to Intervention (RTI) plan for our school. We began our process of creating CFAs focusing on the four questions for collaboration. It was also in this school year that we included an academic opportunity time called “Wildcat Workout” into our master schedule to ensure that there is a portion of each day outside of content area instruction, to provide students with remediation and enrichment opportunities. During Wildcat Workout, all teachers, no matter their content area or level, support our students based on the needs identified. For example, Wildcat Workout for our current year identified students according to reading level. Students reading below grade level were identified and placed in reading intervention groups. Students reading at or above grade level were placed in enrichment groups.

In the spring of 2018, our Guiding Coalition attended a session with Mike Mattos titled Connecting the Dots. This was followed by the Houston County Leadership Summit where Anthony Muhammad held a second session for Transforming School Culture. Additionally, a second team of teachers and our assistant principal for instruction attended the RTI at Work conference in Macon, Ga. We concluded our year with the administrative team attending a training with Jasmine Kullar on helping develop teacher leaders in our building. Each of these speakers helped us analyze our practices in our building and make adjustments that impact student learning and our overall culture for supporting the PLC framework.

During the 2018-2019 school year, we deepened our journey into creating stronger assessments by taking a team of teachers to an Assessment Institute in Macon, Georgia. Our initiative this year was to strengthen our unit planning by looking at standards, summative assessments, formative assessments, and unit pacing. We focused on assessment protocols to ensure that our assessments matched the standards and depth of knowledge level required. The school year ended with the Guiding Coalition attending professional learning with Nicole Vagle surrounding assessments and responding to the data. A sample CFA and Summative Assessment have been shared in resources.

Throughout 2020/2021, we were faced with challenges presented by COVID. However, immediate action was taken to provide students with devices, internet access, learning packets as needed, training for teachers on utilizing resources for video conferencing and Google Classroom as well as best practices for managing collaboration through those platforms. These challenges were met with resilience from all stakeholders. We ensured that our collaboration remained a priority and focused on our students’ engagement with the school throughout the spring semester to avoid creating learning loss while away from face-to-face instruction.

Returning to the building in the fall of the 2020-2021 school year and moving forward, our school found ways to maintain COVID protocols while still encouraging parent and community involvement. We began the process of creating a RTI plan for behavior that helps support the emotional wellbeing of a child as well. We identified specific school wide behaviors that we explicitly taught our students for the various areas of the building such as cafeteria, hallway, and classroom behavior. We understand the importance of educating the whole child especially during a global pandemic. A picture of our behavior matrix has been shared in resources. An overall matrix is displayed in our building as well as individual posters of expectations for the designated areas. At Bonaire Elementary School, we strive to live the PAWS Life. PAWS standards for P: Positive Attitude, A: Always Respectful; W: Works Diligently, S: Safety First.

Additionally, we have found ways to connect with our community such as through virtual math nights prior to starting a unit in math. Prior to each unit, teachers would zoom with parents and students providing an overview for the upcoming math unit as well as demonstrations of strategies and skills taught throughout the unit. Each session is recorded and shared with families to review as needed. In the Summer of 2022, the Georgia Association of Elementary School Principals announced that our school will receive the Georgia School Bell Award for the Bonaire Elementary Math Virtual Nights. This award is given in recognition to no more than 10 schools with an outstanding program in curriculum and organizational leadership.

Finally, our teachers have started goal setting with students and using data notebooks to help track their progress. Students track their reading levels and make goals specific to increase their current reading level as well as track their progress with their common math assessments.

Future Implementation

Moving into the 2022-2023 school year, we are utilizing practices shared from Taking Action by Austin Buffum, Mike Mattos, and Janet Malone and Behavior Solutions by John Hannigan, Jessica Djabrayan Hannigan, Mike Mattos and Austin Buffum. We are working to create an intervention team to support both academic and behavioral needs of our students. This team is defining schoolwide team responsibilities and teacher team responsibilities. A universal screener will be provided for academics and behavior to determine students who need additional support. This includes subpopulations of students who demonstrate additional needs.

Bonaire Elementary School truly believes that the work we do as a professional learning community is a journey, not a destination. With each day we strengthen our belief that ‘All means All’ and are committed to working diligently to continue our professional growth as a Professional Learning Community to ensure greater gains for all our students.

1. Monitoring student learning on a timely basis.

At the beginning of each year, our school shares a data picture of our current reality. Teachers are able to view data from the prior year’s Georgia Milestone Assessment and NWEA MAP universal screener to determine areas of strength and areas of opportunity. We spend time identifying and adjusting our school’s essential standards for each content area based on this data, creating our guaranteed and viable curriculum for our students. These essential standards are decided by teachers based on the needs of our students and are taught by all teachers in that content area for that grade.

During Grade Level Collaborative Planning, our teacher teams focus on the four guiding questions for their work to include:

What do we expect students to learn?
How will we know when they’ve learned it?
What do we do when the students have met their learning target?
What do we do if they do not meet their learning target?

Teachers utilize their collaborative time to develop strong common assessments, both formative and summative, prior to teaching to address the essential standards. By utilizing backwards design, the teachers are able to know exactly what they expect their students to learn and how they will assess that learning accordingly. After students have participated in engaging instruction and assessment, the teachers analyze each assessment by student by standard to have a stronger understanding of the targeted needs of their students. It is at this time that teachers will provide small group instruction based on those needs for enrichment or remediation. The administrative team visits collaborative team time to provide support to teacher teams as needed through the recursive teaching and learning cycle. A sample of a 4^th grade spreadsheet using for tracking their students by essential standards for math to determine remediation or enrichment needs has been shared in resources. This excel spreadsheet is organized by essential standards assessed on common formative assessments and is a driving force for determining instructional practices needed while meeting in collaborative teams. This sample is current for FY 23 and additional CFA data will be added with each new CFA.

In addition to common assessments, our students complete a universal screener assessment three times per year. Students and teachers conference together regarding this data along with their common assessments to create goals. That information is tracked in their student data notebooks to track proficiency and growth over time.

Teachers also meet collaboratively with the administrative team and counselor monthly to review summative assessment data and review progress monitoring to include academics, behavior, and attendance. The team works together to problem solve through discussing prior, current, and possible interventions that can be utilized to support those students, specifically Tier 3 who are below grade level. A sample of how administration and teachers review summative assessments and reassessments for math has been shared in resources as well. This sample is current for FY 23 and additional CFA data will be added with each new CFA.

During the FY 23 school year, our teachers are focusing on English Language Arts/Reading to include these assessment practices. It’s important to note that remediation and enrichment opportunities are provided between the initial summative assessment and the reassessment based on targets identified. To view how a collaborative team identifies essential standards and priority standards that a student struggles with or mastered, please see the common formative assessment and summative shared in resources.

The preponderance of evidence reviewed throughout the year including team assessments with the data rubric disaggregated by item and standards, the team CFA excel spreadsheet by student and essential standard, the summative data spreadsheet that supports reassessment or extension summative opportunities, our universal screener data and the state Georgia Milestone data demonstrates our gains over time, especially in the area of math which has been a strong focus for our school. We are currently adding ELA as a stronger focus this year to see greater gains in our data regarding that content area.

2. Creating systems of intervention to provide students with additional time and support for learning.

Bonaire Elementary has devoted a 30 minute daily academic opportunity time into the master schedule to provide students with additional support for essential learning standards. Utilizing grade level and content area subject Common Formative Assessments (CFAs) and our universal screeners, teachers determine areas of need for students, which students need support and which students need enrichment. During our school’s academic opportunity time called Wildcat Workout, our teachers provide interventions based on these needs and track student proficiency. For example, Wildcat Workout for our current year identified students according to reading level. Students reading below grade level were identified and placed in reading intervention groups. Students reading at or above grade level were placed in enrichment groups. A sample master schedule overview has been shared in resources.

During our grade level/administrative data check-ins, our teams analyze various data types such as CFAs, summative assessments, county benchmark reading data and universal screeners to determine Tier 2 and Tier 3 support. Students who are identified as needing these supports follow our specific RTI plans for those content areas. Teachers perform quick, formative checks throughout their remediation time to ensure proficiency and effectiveness of the intervention being provided. With an “All means All” mentality we are able to provide services for our students through a collective commitment and collaborative process that includes not only the grade level teachers but also early intervention teachers for reading and math, counselor support, speech support and other student services supports as determined through specific need.

As previously mentioned, at Bonaire Elementary School, our teachers have embraced the mantra “All means All.” Prior to the pandemic, our grade level collaborative teams would work together to analyze the data and create groupings of students with a similar targeted need for Tier 2 and Tier 3 remediation. This collective responsibility that teachers share allowed the teachers the ability to have a targeted focus to support all of our students. The process followed during this time followed the teaching and assessment cycle needed to ensure that students are being provided exactly what they need academically and behaviorally. When returning to face-to-face instruction after having been out spring of 2020, we focused on targeted instruction for remediation during our academic opportunity time called Wildcat Workout within each individual classroom. However, during the 2022-2023 school year we have resumed grouping and sharing students as previously completed for this time.

3. Building teacher capacity to work as members of high performing collaborative teams that focus efforts on improved learning for all students.

Bonaire Elementary School works in collaborative teams that focus on the recursive teaching and learning cycle to support their students with differentiated needs. Teachers share a common vision of having students grow academically through a collaborative culture resulting in a clear focus on learning.

In the spring of 2018, the administrative team had the opportunity to attend a workshop with Dr. Jasmine Kullar where she accentuated the importance of developing teacher leaders to help guide their collaborative teams in this work. Our Guiding Coalition members were trained on leadership skills and have completed several books studies to include Learning By Doing by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, Thomas W. Many and Mike Mattos and Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson. The skills learned from these books directly impacted the interactions and accountability measures for each collaborative team. Our Guiding Coalition meets monthly to review pertinent academic and behavioral data, review needs from our collaborative teams, and make collective decisions on our next steps.

Our Guiding Coalition members also provide support to their teacher teams regarding data analysis and response. Teachers will analyze CFAs to determine needs for small groups for remediation and enrichment as well as the best way to utilize our academic opportunity time. Our academic opportunity time called Wildcat Workout is outside of our content area time. Additionally, universal screener data is utilized to determine which students are predicted to fall within a particular range on our state Georgia Milestone Assessment. Teachers collaborate to determine support for moving students up bands of proficiency for this assessment. The data is analyzed according to specific standards and students are grouped according to need.

During the 2021-2022 school year, our school developed a math task force which analyzes summative assessments and CFAs prior to a unit starting to ensure vertical alignment. This task force has rich conversation around vertical needs and helps ensure that assessments created by our collaborative teams are being assessed at the appropriate level of rigor. In the Summer of 2022, the Georgia Associated of Elementary School Principals announced that our school will receive the Georgia School Bell Award for the Bonaire Elementary Math Virtual Nights. This award is given in recognition to not more than 10 schools with an outstanding program in curriculum and organizational leadership.