Description of School

Sprayberry High School is a large high school (2,079 students) located in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. The school opened in 1952 to serve a principally rural community; however, the school population is now drawn from more suburban neighborhoods. The past six years have seen a sizeable influx of ethnically diverse families, many of whom speak English as a second language.

Student Demographics

Background and Goals

Over the past seven years, Sprayberry High School has been transformed from an average school to a school of excellence. The basic vehicle for change at Sprayberry has been the adoption of site-based management that made teachers and the administration equal partners in school improvement.

Sprayberry High School?s teachers are now empowered to assume leadership roles in designing their own professional development. Sprayberry set goals and created a staff plan articulating the four elements of the School Improvement Action Plan (SIAP):

1. disaggregation of data to identify areas of need;
2. investigation of current educational studies to select research-based strategies for improving instruction;
3. designing staff development programs to train teachers in best practices for improving student performance; and,
4. on-going review of progress.

Professional Development Design and Implementation

Learning for All: By attending numerous seminars with Dr. Larry Lazotte and participating in study groups related to Lazotte?s book, Learning for All, Sprayberry?s administrators and a core of teachers became immersed in Lazotte?s mission statement: Learning for all, whatever it takes. When Sprayberry was selected to participate in their county?s "Learning for All" program, their entire faculty bought in to the Lazotte philosophy. Dr. Lazotte himself became a mentor for Sprayberry and conferenced regularly with the principal and other faculty members. Much of the staff development focus has resulted from Sprayberry?s belief that every student has the potential to learn, provided his teachers are sufficiently equipped with the right strategies.

Critical Thinking Skills: Sprayberry?s model for critical thinking skills came from Hanson, Silver, and Strong and Associates, Inc., a consortium of educators who have developed over 500 strategies conveying information, inspiring creativity, and infusing lessons with activities which demand critical thinking. The Georgia Department of Education later adopted this model as the standard for teaching critical thinking thus validating the choice. Richard Strong and Harvey Silver trained the Assistant Principal for Curriculum and the principal. The Learner Support Strategist conducted inservices and courses for the faculty based on the critical thinking strategies developed by the consortium.

Brain-Based Learning: Realizing that the emerging field of brain research and the cognitive sciences was a vital source for developing teaching strategies, 100% of the Sprayberry faculty read Brain-Based Learning by Eric Jensen and met in study groups by subject area to dissect the information and select those components which would most impact their particular disciplines. Again, collegial study, assimilation and application of the material proved to be the best model for teachers taking ownership of the information and applying it to the development of critical thinking in their classrooms.

Multiple Intelligences: Sprayberry combined the work of Howard Gardner and David Lazear to develop their own approach to identifying intelligences and adjusting instruction to the different intelligences possessed by their students. Creating assignments that focus on a variety of intelligences provided every student an opportunity to work on his own area of strength while being exposed to other intelligences that they needed to strengthen. The Learner Support Strategist as well as a number of related inservices taught a 30-hour staff development course. Teachers incorporated multiple intelligences into their unit lesson planning and shared plans with other members of their respective departments.

Cooperative Learning: Recognizing a need for an instructional approach which would enable lower-level students to work with and learn from more advanced students, they selected the cooperative learning model of Robert E. Slavin. Two 30-hour staff development courses were presented in cooperative learning, as well as a one-day seminar for the math department that narrowed the focus of cooperative learning to its application in applied math courses.

Technology: Dovetailing the critical thinking skills emphasis, Sprayberry saw a need to present technology training as part of their staff development program since the Internet offers a richer information base for student assignments.

Objective Evidence of Success

Consistent improvement in the SAT and Georgia High School Exit Exam scores reflect the success of Sprayberry?s staff development program. In seven years, the SAT composite score has grown from 1004 to 1025, well above the national average. The Exit Exam has seen consistent gains in four out of five areas, during a time of changing demographics. The combination of a focus on teaching to improve critical thinking skills and the infusion of technology into both instruction and student-centered activities has led to across-the-board gains for all achievement levels and ethnic groups.

Contact Information

Athena Vachtsevanos, Principal
Sprayberry High School
2525 Sandy Plains Road
Marietta, Georgia 30062
(770) 509-6111
(770) 509-6114 (fax)
vat10765@cobbk12.org

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