RICAS Rockstars: Coventry's Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School is Keeping the Momentum

[Music] it's definitely the long game right this is not a one-year flash in the pan we don't want an EKG type success model where we're up one year down another we want to have long sustained [Music] growth it's called about 1% rule the 1% rule was something that a while back was done where England's bicycle team wasn't doing really well and they had a new person come in take over and he said that if he can increase 1% in all the areas that that would be a way to get the team to start winning well he did this and lo and behold he started winning the Olympics Tor of France and it did really push that and I really think that's what we really did here at asfms it was many many years ago we were looking at curriculum and we're looking at where we wanted to start implementing high quality curriculum especially in ela and math and we started in the middle school because we had been tracking that data for a lot of years we really thought about what our priorities would be and we're really beginning to see it take hold uh practices have been put in place and we're seeing the results I believe in our test scores and the type of work students are able to produce State Testing has been um you know challenging since the covid years and I took on the State Testing coordinator during that time um so it's been quite the transition and when we came back to school we knew we were going to have to do more um to elevate our students last year we had sixth graders come in who were on fire to learn they were committed they were strong um it was across the board that they just truly seemed like they came in ready to go and it was a wonderful year I took advantage of that and really was able to to Foster that and teach with Fidelity which I always do anyway I follow the curriculum and I teach what I'm supposed to teach um I do it with a little flare sometimes maybe with a little accent cuz I'm also a theater person you know throwing a little English accent here and there make things fun um but yeah they it was a a really good year and I felt like maybe after the covid situation and whatnot these kids were just like coming in like yeah let's do this changing up the schedule specialed programs we constantly Chang them to our student need we increased our reading Specialists we had our math interventionist increased class time incentives we initiated a practice test high quality PD talking about data constantly for those key you can look at data in so many different ways right so so we when we look at data we're looking at it by cohort we're watching one group of kid kids over or students over a course of many many years are they improving are they not improving is there a place where they start leveling off we really started pushing PD for foring relationships of kids um that is really important because that's a motivator for kids to come in and really try their best if I were going to give a message to parents on how they can foster a love of learning in English language arts it has to be in Reading they can certainly play games playing games is really effective I do that for rcast I have quizlets that I have so they understand terminology I have um different things that we do that are fun and reading should be fun we all did this together so it was really an effort a schoolwide effort we have an incredible group of leaders up at central office we're really fortunate um I feel like we're on a great journey um with these leaders and I feel like centry is really um on the upswing when it comes to uh being leaders throughout the state the positivity of this year the enthusiasm that we just have in our buildings is very similar to what we were feeling pre- pandemic before we slid into you know those dark times and and so I'm just really excited that students are feeling good about school that they're coming here we're working on attendance we're getting kids to feel successful again particip extracurriculars find their place find their people build their pride U all things that we think make us a well-rounded district and hopefully a place where people you know want to come they want to raise their family grow their family and hopefully graduate from C high school and go live a really successful [Music] life