For the fourth time in nine years, Saskatoon Public Schools has won the Premier’s Board of Education Award for Innovation and Excellence in Education! Ray Morrison, chair of the Saskatoon Board of Education accepted the award at the recent Saskatchewan School Boards Association’s annual general meeting in Saskatoon.

 (Read the nomination report: 2011 Premier’s Board of Education Award for Innovation and Excellence in Education)

Collegiate Renewal, with its four dimensions of belonging, potency, relevancy and competency, is the innovation that won the award. The goal of collegiate renewal is that all collegiate students will be engaged in their learning so they will graduate as active participants in lifelong learning and as responsible and caring citizens in the community, nation, and world. “We want our students to want to come to school, to want to stay in school, to graduate from school and to contribute to society,” said Board Chair Morrison.

“We truly believe collegiate renewal is transforming what is happening in our high schools. In this our fifth year of this strategic learning priority, we have witnessed students – especially those who have historically struggled and disengaged from learning – become authentically engaged in their learning.” Saskatoon Public Schools is very humbled to be the school division that has received this award four times in the award’s thirteen year history. Previous winners were our Royal West Campus in 2003, Literary for Life in 2006 and our Okiciyapi Educational Partnership in 2007.

The Premier’s Innovation and Excellence Award recognizes educational innovations and improvements focused on student achievement which have been advanced or directed by boards of education. The winning Board receives a $3,000 prize from sponsor Xerox. The prize is used to support or extend the innovation or project.

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According to Dr. Doug Willms (2002), “sense of belonging at school  pertains to students’ ‘attachment to school’, which has to do with feelings of being accepted and valued by their peers, and by others at their school.” Sharing his research findings from Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, he reminds us that students with a poor sense of belonging at school are less likely to value schooling outcomes, and in the longer term, are less likely to undertake further education.  Belonging is built on strong relationships (Dr. Martin Brokenleg, 2000). 

For Saskatoon Public Schools belonging means to feel valued, affirmed and significant—comfortable and welcome within a group; to believe in the importance of a shared purpose—to identify with the goals; to have philosophical congruence.  Belonging can mean more than connectedness through culture or religion. For example, it also means community through diversity and difference.   It is the interplay of independence and interdependence.  Belonging is not just about relationships among people but also to things, ideas and actions. 

Potency
Potency means “to feel able”.  Such a feeling comes in having influence over one’s learning, in having a strong sense of self-efficacy or belief in one’s own abilities, and in believing what has or is being learned is worthwhile or significant.  As argued in How the Brain Works (1999), “Learners of all ages are more motivated when they can see the usefulness of what they are learning and when they can use that information to (have) an impact on others—especially their local community.” 

In Saskatoon Public Schools, our students must have a sense that if they act, and act strategically, they can accomplish goals.  We call this potency and we do not trivialize its importance.  Research tells us that “Children who doubt their competence set low goals and choose easy tasks, and they plan poorly.  When they face difficulties, they become confused, lose concentrations, and start telling themselves stories about their own incompetence.  In the long run they disengage, decrease effort, generate fewer ideas, and become passive and discouraged” (Johnston, 2004).   “Yes, I think or feel I can do this” is an important student expression.  

Relevance
Motivation is the reason for being engaged and relevance helps to provide that compelling reason.  Learning is often engaging to the extent that students deem the learning as meaningful and interesting to self and world.   “Contextualized learning involves being able to see the value and relevance of the skills [and  understandings] being learned as opposed to learning that is abstract and divorced from real life (Feuerstein, 1980, Haywood, 1993).  Learning is best placed in meaningful contexts that show its inherent utility and capitalizes on students’ interest” (McLean, 2003). 

When will I ever use this in the “real world”?  This is a perennial student question and thoughtful teachers consider relevance when viewing curriculum and considering instruction.  The sentiment is reflected in our instructional planning question:  “Why would students give their hearts and heads to this work?”   For we know, learning is ultimately the choice of the learner.  Still, we also understand that students must take responsibility “for generating interest, if they find the work boring, by finding ways to make it more challenging and worthwhile for themselves” (McLean, 2003).

Competence
Competence is central to learner engagement.  The development of key competencies is both an end in itself (the goal) and the means by which other ends (or goals) are realized.   These are the “big ideas” of school learning and come in the form of essential understandings, skills, and dispositions.  In the 21st century, “It is not enough for our schools to produce people who are knowledgeable; we need to develop adaptable, technologically and socially adept people who can use and create knowledge” (Gilbert, 2008).  These competencies allow us to live, learn, work, and contribute as active members of our communities. 

Challenge within competencies is also a powerful motivator.  Engaging work is learning that is just outside the zone or reach of students.  It is the space between what students can do independently and what they can do with teacher help (Vygotsky, 1978).  Robust learning goals and sufficient complexity foster learner stamina and curiosity. These two outgrowths are necessary elements or tendencies for lifelong learning and learners.

While “engagement” has become a popular word in education, it is a word often used with little precision.   As engagement is the central concept in the Board’s outcome for Collegiate Renewal, we have studied this concept in order to achieve a clear, common understanding of our challenge.  What do we know about engagement from our study of educational research?

• Motivation is the precursor to engagement (Dewey, 1913: Kohn, 1999; NRCIM, 2004). Motivation is the reason for being engaged.  While extrinsic motivators such as grades, awards, praise and punishments, will sometimes engage, intrinsic motivators will lead to deeper, lasting learner engagement.
• Instructional practices strongly influence learner engagement (NRCIM, 2004).  When instruction draws on students’ prior knowledge, interest, culture and world experiences, the curricular goals become more meaningful.
• Engagement is connected to complexity and challenge. The deepest learning and understanding occurs when learning is “hard fun” (Bransford, 2007).  
• Engagement precedes learning  (Vail, 2001; Schlechty, 2002; Gordon, 2006).  Authentic engagement is the necessary state to ensure deeper understandings and greater retention of key learnings.
• Engagement is a worthwhile end in itself (Willms, 2002). Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes this end as “flow”.  Flow is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”  Such “flow”, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is the “optimal experience” that leads to happiness and creativity.
• Engagement is a more reliable, long-term indicator of future economic success and health and well-being than achievement (Willms, 2002).  Teachers, parents, and administrators are better informed by behaviours that signal authentic engagement.
• Engagement is significantly influenced by the quality of relationships.  This includes relationships to people (e.g. teacher-student, student-student, teacher-parent, school-community); relationships to structures (e.g. rules/policies, schedules, and facilities); and relationships to curricular goals and extracurricular opportunities and instructional practices (e.g. subjects, ideas, activities, learning styles) (Van Manen, 1986; Schlechty, 2002; Willms, 2002; Kanter, 2004;Young, 2005; Kohn, 2006; Gordon, 2006).
• “Engaging teacher” is different from “engaged student”.  “Schools cannot be made great by great teacher performances.  They will only be made great by great student performance” (Schlechty, 2002). 
• Student engagement is less likely if teachers and parents are not engaged.  Student learners need to see adult learners model the behaviours of engaged learners (Schlechty, 2002). 

Renewal, in a rapidly changing world, means our secondary schools are responsive to the needs of and hopes for all public school students.The Division has begun to achieve this goal through a strategic, sustained focus and by providing the necessary resources so that educators may consciously, consistently, and deliberately support all students in becoming engaged learners. For students, it means authentic involvement, deep learning, generosity, and ownership.

Collegiate Renewal: Engaging Learners Through Choice and Relevance from Collegiate Renewal on Vimeo.

Many people have described their mathematical education as painful and frustrating.  For most, it is not because of the exhilarating pursuit of problems that Paul Lockhart described in his book.  For most, school mathematics was painful and frustrating because they struggled with the development of basic skills disconnected from the problems and the ideas that make the skills meaningful and compelling.  Because competence in mathematics requires skills, understandings and dispositions that are specific to each student, Collegiate Renewal has continued to support teachers in creating the conditions for each student to actively engage in developing mathematical competence. There have been two critical steps: helping teachers understand how to engage their specific students and supporting collegiate Mathematics departments in pursuing their own inquiry.

Our teachers worked to meet the needs of their specific students in school-based inquiries.
Each collegiate Mathematics Department initiated an inquiry that targeted the specific conceptual and engagement needs of their students. The inquiry process was designed to respect and honour the teacher learning that needs to occur in our classrooms and in our collegiates for mathematics instruction to be proactive and engaging.

The topics were shaped by a vision of an engaging mathematics classroom developed in a workshop facilitated by Karen Hume in September, and informed by the knowledge of the unique needs of the students in their school.   Division wide professional learning sessions were kept to a minimum in order to give teachers the time and space to meet on their own and to put into action plans designed to have significant impact on the growth of their students’ mathematical competence. Teachers reported the value of the time to focus on the needs of their specific students.

In May 2011, all grade 9 students completed a common assessment consisting of an outcomes based multiple-choice exam and a student questionnaire intended to capture students’ perceptions of their opportunities to learn.  The results from the assessment completed this May (2011) were compared to the Grade 9 assessment completed in May 2010.

Students exhibited growing Mathematical competence in Statistics and Probability
On the curricular portion of the assessment, the greatest increase was associated with the Statistics and Probability strand of the curriculum, with a 12% relative increase in correct responses. Many other students’ scores remained relatively stable.  The most significant decrease occurred in the Shape and Space strand, but many teachers had not planned to teach this strand until after the assessment. 

Student sense of belonging increased.
The student questionnaire suggests that student engagement has remained relatively stable, but the dimension of belonging, often the precursor to engagement, saw a 7% year-to-year increase across the Division.

A specific, dedicated inquiry increased the likelihood of positive results for students in both the curricular portion of the assessment and the student questionnaire. 

There are two school stories, Bedford Road and Evan Hardy, that illustrate the power of this approach.

 Bedford Road Collegiate’s Mathematics Department inquiry into student persistence in learning had a positive impact on student engagement.  Teachers paid careful attention to specific students in their classes to see if daily practice in problem solving helped these students persist in their learning, even when the learning was difficult for the students. 

Other indicators of persistence at Bedford Road include:

• specific resistant students are now fully engaged in Mathematics class and help their classmates
• more students contributing to class discussions
• decreasing number of test questions left blank
• increased attempts on common assessment items that represent concepts not yet learned in grade 9
• increase of 3% on the curricular portion of the common assessment
• percent change of +13% in student engagement in Mathematics as indicated in the student questionnaire

 At Evan Hardy Collegiate, the Mathematics Department members used common assessments to target instruction and see if they could improve competence in Mathematics 9.  By identifying the specific reasons that students were having difficulty with the concept of equations using teacher created common assessments, teachers were able to tailor their instruction to meet the learning needs of students. 

The indicators of increased competence at Evan Hardy:

• increased performance on unit exams.
• student reports of increased confidence.
• increase of 8% on items from the curricular portion of the common assessment related to solving equations.
• percent change of +3% in student engagement in mathematics as indicated in the student questionnaire.

Based on their success, the mathematics teachers at Evan Hardy Collegiate have plans to extend their work to other concepts that some students find difficult including fractions. The teacher inquiries taught us that an evidence-informed focus on the learning and engagement of specific students can make an important difference in Mathematics. Expect us to deepen and extend the collegiate-based inquiry process to encourage further experimentation and increased collaboration between teachers to more effectively support students in growing their competence in Mathematics.

What progress have we made?

Our students are improving as writers.
Common writing assessments conducted with Grade 9’s in October helped teachers determine where their students were as writers. A number of interviews were also conducted with Grade 9 students to learn about the role writing plays in the lives of these students. School-based teams of teachers were able to use data from the writing assessment, the interviews, and their own classroom observations to determine students’ writer needs. They then collaboratively determine the best way to support them. Teachers said this process is an important reason for student improvement.

The results from this year’s common writing assessments suggest the work of these school-based teams made a difference.  From September 2010 to May 2011 we saw gains in all four areas measured (mechanics, organization, style, and content) with the most significant gains in style and content.  

From the 2009/10 assessment to the 2010/11 assessment we are also seeing improvement.  While we want all students to at least meet the standard by the end of the school year, we also what to help students exceed the standard. In last year’s assessment, we saw students show gains, but one area we did not see gains was in students exceeding the standard. (Click here to see common writing rubric.) This year, in specific areas of content and style, we did see growth in students who are exceeding the standard.

While these improvements are encouraging and suggest teachers are more targeted in their teaching, more time will be needed to determine if these improvements represent a trend.

Expect us to continue to get better at using assessment data to learn the literacy needs of our students and respond appropriately.

Our READ teachers are building professional communities and using data to shape the learning opportunities for our most vulnerable learners.

Last year we promised we would widen the circle of teachers leading this shared work.  Secondary Read teachers are building communities of teachers who are becoming more aware of the needs of our struggling readers.  Through the use of data and collaboration, our teachers are designing learning opportunities that respond to student need. Assessments such as the Grey Silent Reading Test and the Reader-Thinking Interview helped READ teachers (view video) identify those students in greatest reading need and support them, often through co-teaching.  Expect us to continue to widen the circle of teachers who work collaboratively to support the reading needs of our struggling readers.

Student Voice was an integral part of professional learning.
Last year we said we would continue to work on collaborative writing opportunities for our students because collaboration is significant in building writer competence. This year, our Division Opportunities to Learn data from the provincial Assessment for Learning protocol indicated that our students still generally write in isolation and we responded by creating communities of writers. Sessions like, Growing Writers to Develop Readers and Growing as Writers, helped our teachers and students understand the importance of writing communities. In these sessions, teachers came with one or two of their students and together they experienced the day as co-learners and co-writers. In this way a community of writers was created. Feedback from both teachers and students established that both see the value and importance of writing as a part of a community. 

Expect us to continue to create professional learning opportunities where teachers and students can come together as co-learners and co-writers.

Connecting reading and writing with 21^st Century methods of expressing our understanding is a critical piece of our work with the renewed Grade 10 curricula. Next year as this curricula is taught in our schools expect us to establish clear benchmarks in the area of representing and to help our teachers become more proficient in the transformational use of technology.

We are growing instructional leaders to support student learning.
Last year we promised to provide a foundation for Secondary Teacher Librarians (TLs) and Secondary Instructional Technology Leaders (SITLs) as they engaged in the critical work of planning and instructional support for teachers using technology.  We deepened that work and collaborated with an external consultant, Bernajean Porter, to help bring clarity to the concept of transformative uses of technology.  Our teachers looked at the curricular outcomes and considered the ways technology could reach those goals. As a result, we have seen an increase in the amount of opportunity for students to utilize the power of connection that technology offers .  As the graph indicates, 8% more of our students have increasingly more transformational opportunities to communicate and collaborate online which offers the potiential of an authentic audience and increased feedback for the student.    

Our students are representing their learning in ways that are more transformational.
Students are expanding their ways of representing their learning to demonstrate their understanding of concepts with the support of technology.  Compared to the beginning of this year, 4% more students are being provided with the opportunity to create digital products to this end. 

Teacher librarians and English Language Arts teachers focused on book trailers which were developed by students. The trailers were more transformational because students used them to persuade their peers to read books they were recommending.  These booktrailers were displayed on monitors within our collegiates and presented at our annual Literacy Conference. 

Because of work like this, we have seen a 7% increase in students developing digital products to convince or persuade the teacher and a dramatic 15% increase where it is a for real-world audience outside the students’ classroom .  In addition to the emphasis on writing, these multimedia representations allow us to attend to a variety of learning styles and preferences.  To this end, we have seen an increase of 9% of students designing these type of supports for their written work.  Next year, expect us to have targeted efforts with SITLs, TLs and those teaching ELA 10 as we implement renewed curricula in this area.Research tells us that authentic audience and authentic tasks make the work more relevant to the students, deepening their commitment and, in turn, their learning.  We have seen a dramatic increase of 17% in this area.  Next year, expect us to grow opportunities for students to publish information online to inform and to educate others. 

We have increased the focus on technologies that support student-driven inquiry.
We know that inquiry is one way to develop conditions for authentic learner engagement and a  major component of all the renewed curricula.  This problem-based approach to examining topics develops students’ independence in making choices and assists in shaping their own learning.  Technology continues to support inquiry, as 8% more students are using these resources to capitalize on student curiosity and 6% more of our students are using technology to showcase or conduct inquiry.  Next year, expect us to provide opportunity to consider the power of technology within inquiry in our Mathematics classrooms, as we continue to implement renewed curriculum in these courses.

Our students have a much greater opportunity for authentic tasks.
Research tells us that authentic audience and authentic tasks make the work more relevant to the student, deepening their commitment and, in turn, their learning.  We have seen a dramatic increase of 17% in this area.  Next year, expect us to grow opportunities for students to publish information online to inform and to educate others.

Student voice to shape our practice.
Last year we committed to using student voice to shape our practice. This year, Saskatoon Public’s students decided which eBooks the division would purchase in our first foray into digital titles. Genuine student leadership through technology created relevant title selection and gave students the power to shape their schools’ libraries. In addition, our students increased their use of technology to collaborate with their peers while answering questions in ways not possible prior to using the technology available to them.

 More of our teachers are seeing the value of technology to support learning.
Last year we committed to extending professional learning opportunities. In our Teachnology conference, our teachers lead sessions on the value of technology. In addition, more Saskatoon Public teachers chose to attend the provincial IT Summit this year than ever before, and we presented more of the sessions than ever, indicating a growing interest in and commitment to teaching with technology. Teachers also used technology in more transformational ways throughout the year. Next year, expect us us to grow the opportunitites for our teachers to learn about the transformational use of technology.