By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Principals from three Tucker County Schools addressed the Tucker County School Board at their regular meeting. Kelly Thompson from TVEMS presented the board with an end of rear report of student progress.
Thompson gave a favorable report on the progress of her students at Tucker Valley Elementary Middle School. She gave the credit to both her staff and students’ hard work. “I think the teachers and the kids worked really hard,” Thompson said. “Even Middle School, usually they are the one that it’s hard to motivate, they had a big jump, too. I was really happy about, some of them went to the two and three grade levels above. So, that’s pretty good for Middle School kids, any kid, but Middle School kids.”
Board Member Cathy Hebb questioned Thompson on the issue of testing preparation time. “This year, weren’t there more times to be on the computer and do testing?” Hebb said. “To familiarize themselves with the process?”
Thompson said that the county had set a goal for the children to meet in regards to the computer testing system. “Alicia (Lambert) wanted us to set like how many lessons completed,” Thompson said, “which was a really big feat for some of them, but with certain circumstances she let us play with those a little bit because with some kids, you know, they will spend forever on one lesson just to get it finished. So, there were certain things we threw in there. Some did complete the lessons, but some didn’t get it. Some were close, but we had to set some kind of rule just to motivate them to just try and reach as close as we could. I think the program is a good program. I think it is the more consistent we use it; I think it is geared more towards the GSA demands.”
Lambert commented on the growth shown by those students that met their goal, versus those who did not. “You can definitely see in the students that did meet their goals; their percentage of growth far exceeded the typical student. So, there is proof in the data that it works, but getting them onboard to try to want to do that.”
Student participation has been a struggle according to Lambert. “The first year we assigned a time frame. You had to spend 45 minutes on each, one reading, one math,” Lambert said. “What we found were students were spending the time, but they weren’t completing any lessons. We had maybe one student complete the lessons for the year and he had huge growth. He came up two grade levels and scored mastery level GSAs that year. So there’s proof that it works.”
Lambert also said that the county had addressed this year differently in response to last year’s problems. “So, this year we approached it differently and said 25 lessons per nine weeks for a total of 100 for the school year,” Lambert said. “We didn’t have a lot of students that met that goal. We had several very close, but we didn’t have a lot that met the goal of a hundred. So, I’ve been sending out emails all this week trying to recognize the students that did meet that goal, to the teachers, so that they know that we are looking at that data. But those who did it really did have substantial growth. They all met their stretch growth target or exceeded it.”
Lambert said student participation and engagement is key to the program’s success. “Getting the buy in, I think is really important,” Lambert said.
Thompson said her teachers had more time to study the data and target the skills the students were needing most. “The teachers, they kind of had a little more time to look at the data and the interventionists are involved in that, too,” Thompson said. “Then they can pick apart skills that they are weak in and work on those skills. So, I think that was really helpful this year, too.”
Lambert also informed the board that some teachers have felt more comfortable with their own instruction. “And we have said, in fairness as well, that if teachers are doing their own interventions and not using the program, but are going teacher led interventions, we are in full support of that because I think a teacher taught lesson takes the place of any computer program ever, but we didn’t want to give them one more thing to prep for. So, here’s the program that will do it for you, but if you choose to say, ‘No, my kids really struggle with comprehensions so I need to do a very rigorous activity on comprehension and intervention.’ I am completely fine with that. I just told them to make sure to let their administrators know what they are doing. Now, that’s not a free pass to go outside and play during intervention time, but if you want to teach lessons versus this, then we are in full support of this as well because we did have some teacher who felt more confident in giving the direct instructions themselves. Which I appreciated. It’s just one more thing for them to prep for.”
Thompson also informed the board of the accomplishments of her students over the year. The students had participated and won in a variety of academic fairs, events, and competitions over the year. “That was exciting,” Thompson said. “Because the school, I don’t really think they made it mandatory to do these fairs and I think that with Covid and everything, we got out of it. I think the kids really took pride in their projects. So it was nice to see as much interest as was there.”
Thompson also said the students did projects for nursing home residents and planted seeds with the county extension office staff among other projects such as Cooking Around the World, Random Acts of Kindness Week, tree planting and an end of the year celebration with a mechanical bull, inflatables, dunk tank and snow cones, among other treats. “We went out with a bang,” Thompson said.
Thompson also updated the board on training the staff has undergone in preparation for the next school year and the steps her staff is taking towards next year’s academic season.
Hebb thanked Thompson on behalf of the board for the hard work that Thompson and her staff have put into this year. “You and your staff have done a wonderful job this year,” Hebb said. “A lot of work. A lot of positive things. Congratulations to you all.”
The next regular meeting of the Tucker County School Board will be Monday, June 19 at 4:30 p.m. at the Tucker County Board of Education Office, 100 Education Lane, Parsons.