Located in the second poorest district in Indiana, Heritage Hills Junior/Senior High School has little money to fund school improvement efforts. According to the principal, Al Logsdon, the state provides no money for professional development.
Aware of the barriers their students face living in an isolated, rural area, neither Logsdon or his staff were willing to accept this limitation. Nine years ago they took their first steps toward improvement by sending 15 teachers to a state leadership academy over the summer with funding from the state. This turned out to be the beginning of a long journey toward improvement that has steadily produced results, not just in test scores, but in raising the academic expectations of teachers, students, and parents.
The focus of that first summer leadership academy was collaboration and team building, and the teachers who were able to attend returned to the district eager to share what they had learned. Unfortunately, the next summer there was no funding to send anyone else. Not willing to give up the opportunity, these same teachers approached the principal wondering if they could plan their own summer institute modeled on the leadership academy. He agreed, so they applied for and received a grant from the leadership academy for $1,000. Because this barely covered the cost of facilities and refreshments, Logsdon funded the institute by tapping into the soft drink fund and by charging teachers $25 to attend. Despite the fact that the meeting took place during the summer, and that teachers had to pay for their own professional development, the response was positive. About 70 of the 124 professional staff in the district attended the three-day academy, which they called Journey into Excellence.
Since that first summer, the focus of the work has changed, but the spirit of collaboration and improvement has remained. About six years ago the district recognized from their test scores and from teacher observations that they needed to focus on literacy. Logsdon notes that the data they collected at that time revealed profound deficits in literacy exposure. "A poll we took of parents showed that 85 percent of our students had never been to a bookstore," he explains. "Most had not even taken a book out of the public library which is located in an isolated part of the district. This is a poor community. Most parents never attended college, and children just don't have a lot of exposure to books."
Having selected literacy as their primary focus, the principal and faculty decided to introduce several new measures to improve students' ability and interest in reading and writing. Logsdon attended conferences across the country on literacy and asked well-known speakers if they would be willing to reduce their fees and come to his rural district to lead workshops during the summer academy. Over the past few years, several have done so. Nancy Livingston came to talk about reading comprehension strategies; others have given talks on building vocabulary, using picture books as a source for writing prompts, and writing rubrics for student assessment. In every case, strategies introduced in summer workshops have acted as a springboard for teachers who then spend time during the rest of the summer integrating the new strategies into their curriculum. Even though not all teachers have been able to attend, ideas from the workshops have filtered into most classrooms. Logsdon has observed, during his weekly visits to every classroom, that 80 percent or more of the teachers are regularly using some methods from the summer workshops.
The literacy strategies introduced in the summer are only one aspect of Heritage Hill's literacy initiative. The faculty has scheduled a 20-minute reading time every day, when everyone in the school takes time to read for pleasure, and they have used a Goals 2000 grant to hire a literacy consultant from Indiana University who visits the school at least six times a year. She works with teams of six to eight teachers in two-hour blocks to follow-up on the summer work. She has helped teachers improve their ability to develop writing prompts, to introduce writing in all disciplines, and to assess student work. Logsdon believes that these small groups act as unofficial study groups: "Teachers get to know and trust each other in this small setting and are more willing to try new strategies."
Recognizing the importance of developing good literacy habits at home, the school has also worked hard to involve parents in their efforts. Five years ago they asked Dr. Kent Mann to speak at a summer workshop, and they have implemented many of his ideas about how to encourage parent involvement and ownership in the school's improvement efforts. The school has included parents in planning committees, has asked for parent feedback on all major changes, and has worked to make the school an inviting place for parents. Two of their more popular initiatives with parents have been to give every teacher $250 annually to buy books for a classroom library and to give all seventh grade students seven dollars to spend on a field trip to the nearest bookstore. "Now when I go clothes shopping," one mother remarked, "my daughter wants to go to the bookstore as well."
Teachers' efforts have had an impact on student achievement at Heritage Hills. Student performance on the state reading tests that are required for graduation have steadily increased. Between eighth and tenth grade, there has been an increase in the number of students who scored in the top quartile in reading comprehension, from 42 to 55, and a dramatic decrease in the number of students who scored in the lowest quartile, from 37 to 12. In addition, scores on the State Essential Skills Test have steadily increased, from 53 percent who met the standard in 1992, to 70 percent in 1999-2000. As a measure of student's expectations for themselves, a higher percentage of students take the SAT than four years ago -- 68 percent of the senior class in 1998-1999, as compared with 51 percent in 1994-1995. According to Vicki Winkler, a Media Center Specialist and the Chairperson of the School Improvement Committee, none of these changes would have happened if teachers had not attended the summer workshops. "In the informal atmosphere of the academy," she explains, "away from the school building, we became friends in a way we never could have during the school year. We have a good time there, and this increases our sense of commitment as professionals."
