D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update
Weekly Happenings
We're back into full weeks! Great to see our students settling in and also enjoying their time in many of their extra curricular events throughout the week. We have talented students and phenomenal coaches and advisers who help students reach their potential! Our students and our community owe a huge debt of gratitude to anyone who puts in even more time outside of the normal school hours to provide opportunities for our students to shine. A few photos below.
Interesting Information
Maskot / Alam
Here’s a feedback scenario that plays out far too frequently: Students glance at their assignments, see the grade, and discard the work in the recycling bin, completely disregarding all the feedback I have dutifully written. Or they check the online grade portal without even looking at the feedback I annotated on their digital submissions.
James Nottingham, an education leader based in the United Kingdom, says there are seven steps to effective feedback. I’ve adapted his seven steps and added an eighth step that will lead to deeper learning while making teaching simpler and more rewarding. I’ve also created a brief video summary.
AN 8-STEP PROCESS FOR GIVING EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK
1. Know the target: Particularly for major assignments, teachers and students must be clear about the goals. Students need to know what success will look like through examples and well-defined parameters, and one of the best ways to do this is to generate shared goals. For middle and high school students, this might be a cocreated rubric or a cogenerated range of optional assignments that meet clear criteria for success.
2. Develop the first final draft: This is not a rough draft. It’s the best version that students can put together on their first attempt. Teachers or peers can’t give meaningful feedback if students don’t provide the best version of what they can do on their own. Garbage effort = garbage feedback. I remind students that they’re wasting each other’s time if they’re sharing poor quality work when asking for peer feedback in Step 3.
3. Check the target: Using clear parameters, the student or the student and peers should review the first final draft. This is the step where many things can go wrong. Students need to focus on shared goals and good examples. If we don’t provide clear parameters, peer feedback becomes pooled ignorance. For example, when giving feedback on others’ writing, students need to look for no more than one to two points with each reading. They can check for vivid language, student voice, certain grammar rules, or particular content elements—but not all of these at the same time, particularly if they lack expertise.
One simple and slightly cheesy way I addressed peer ability was to develop peer editors among my fifth graders who had demonstrated competence in writing through a series of writing and grammar exercises. When they achieved a certain level of proficiency, they received “golden dictionaries” (cheap pocket dictionaries that were spray-painted gold) that they put on their desks during the revision step to let other students know they were available for peer review.
4. Improve: This step allows students to use feedback to make meaningful progress. They’re no longer ignoring assessments and just looking for a grade—they’re improving their work. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 as many times as necessary to improve the work.
5. Teacher checks the target: This is when I give feedback, and it’s my favorite part of the process. By this time, the work is so much better than it would have been earlier. My life is already so much easier, and more important, students’ work is so much better, because learning has improved, based on feedback.
When I started teaching, I worked myself into the ground trying to give feedback on initial drafts. Eventually, I saw the benefit of giving that work to my students. At this step, it’s still critical to focus feedback on the rubric or criteria for success. I’m not trying to fix everything. I’m giving students feedback so they’ll improve. This should be in the form of genuine feedback, not advice. Grant Wiggins makes the claim that much of what teachers give as feedback is advice that’s unclear and not actionable. Instead of advice, ask questions like “Why did you choose to do this?” “What more can you tell me about this?” or “How does this idea fit with your earlier ideas?” The student is responsible for making the improvement, not mindlessly accepting our revisions.
6. Improve again: Students use my feedback to take their work to a higher level. For those of us who’ve seen our feedback in the recycling bin, this is a rewarding step.
7. Grade: This isn’t about grade inflation. The purpose is to evaluate what students have accomplished after getting meaningful feedback. Students should meet our shared targets, and if not, there’s plenty of evidence of the meaningful support they’ve received along the way.
8. Reflect: Teachers and students should return to the assignment target through the rubric or other criteria for success to celebrate the growth they’ve seen and make a plan for where they’re going next. For example, at the end of a project, we might ask our students, “How are you thinking differently than you were at the beginning of this project?” “Given what you now know, if you were king/queen of the classroom, what would we do next?”
The more we make learning the reward for learning, the more likely we are to create conditions where intrinsic motivation flourishes. This type of work with feedback will result in deeper learning, less shallow coverage of content, and more meaningful growth for teachers and students.
Announcements/Week Ahead
Advisory Wednesday - Please look for a video from Rose Matthiae to be played for your Advisory students this week.
Advisory Schedule on Friday, 9/24 - We will run an Advisory Day Schedule to accommodate for the virtual kickoff homecoming assembly on Friday. Please reiterate this with your students throughout the week so that everyone is aware.
Visitors to the building - We will not be allowing visitors to the building for the time being. This is a fluid situation - if that guidance changes we will let you know. See Mike Raether if you have any questions.
Faculty Meeting this week - We will be meeting in the Auditorium on Wednesday at 2:50 for our faculty meeting. If you cannot make it - we will have a makeup faculty meeting on Thursday morning at 6:50. Please plan to attend one of the meetings. We will be focusing our time on training related to Advisory as well as accessing and utilizing Grade Guardian within your classrooms.
Important Dates
September:
21 Juniors and Seniors vote for Homecoming top 5
22 Faculty Meeting at 2:50 p.m. in Auditorium
23 Make up Faculty Meeting at 6:50 a.m. in the IMC (Teachers must attend one)
23-24 Fust Farm Food for America
24 ADVISORY SCHEDULE, Virtual Homecoming Kickoff Assembly
26-2 Homecoming Activities and Dress Up Days
October:
1 Altered Schedule for Homecoming Assembly, will be emailed soon
1 Homecoming parade at 5 p.m. and football game at 7 p.m.
4 Academic Letter Awards Banquet, SH Auditorium, 7 p.m.
5 Senior Class Picture during ELT - Do not request Seniors for ELT
5 Flu Shot Clinic at Greenheck, 2:30-6 p.m.
5 Benefits Meeting, Auditorium, 2:50 p.m.
13 BLT Meeting, Conf Rm 369, 2:50 p.m.
13 Community Open House, 5:30-7:30 p.m. (not required for staff - but welcome)
20 Faculty meeting, IMC, 2:50 p.m.
27 BLT Meeting, Conf Rm 369, 2:50 p.m.
28 No School, Teacher PD/Work Day
29 No School
November:
1 Vertical Teaming Night 3:15-6 pm
5 Quarter 1 Ends
8 No School, PD for Grading
9 Quarter 2 Begins
10 BLT Meeting, Conf Rm 369, 2:50 p.m.
11 Parent Teacher Conferences 3-6 pm
15 Parent Teacher Conferences 3-6 pm
17 Faculty Meeting @ 2:50
17 Faculty Meeting @ 2:50
February
17 Parent Teacher Conferences 3-6:30 pm
17 Week of the 17th - 3 parent contact hours
May
25 Graduation 6-9 pm
Upcoming Field Trips
Field Trips - Field trips are still permitted at this point. Please consider academic and curricular importance when scheduling. If the guidance changes we will let you know. See Mike Raether if you have any questions.
*NO additional field trips on -
- 3rd Friday Count (9/17/21)
- 2nd Friday Count (1/14/22)
- JH Adventure Day??
Field Trip Form from District (click on '2340(A): Field Trip Request' then '2340 (A) Field Trip Request Fillable 5-289-19.pdf.
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