We kept it pretty similar to what Shai explained.
One thing that we did decide to do was have teachers put initials, because we wanted to
know, have this as a place to look back.
If we wanted to know about a student, we could go, 'oh, who, who has that relationship with that student,'
so that we could maybe talk to that teacher.
Originally, we were going to put checkboxes, but I like this idea that we did initials
because it has been useful to us.
Shai talked a lot about having a common understanding.
And that was one of the things I was thinking a lot about when we deployed this to staff.
I made a Screencastify video, it's just a tool, which you can record yourself and screen share.
So I basically walked my staff through it.
And I answered that question of 'how do you define what a trusted adult is?'
I'm not going to tell you with 100% certainty, we all have a common understanding of that.
But I would say for the first time around,
we did an okay job of really identifying those people, for those kids.
And basically how I said 'it was if that student were in trouble, or needed help, would they go to you?'
Who are the people that they would define as those people when they need help?
Who would they go to you for seeking that help and support.
And I gave this to teachers, Paras, everybody in our school filled this out.
I made it as an assignment, we have a staff Google Classroom.
I said, 'Please have this done by this day.'
And I give them a short window of time, because that's tends to work better with staff:
not giving them too long to do it.
You can go the next slide, please.
So what did we do with the data?
We are using what's called the Atlas protocol, you might use it in your own school.
We do a lot of protocols with our staff.
The Atlas, one is one that I like, it's pretty simple and straightforward.
You can find it anywhere on the web, but I'm pretty sure Ellie's going to share it out
with you later, via email.
But essentially, it's a step by step process to really look at data and engage staff in
analyzing it, describing it, talking about actions.
And that's the big piece of this is we don't want to do anything with staff where they're
going to collect data and not do anything with it.
We've all been in that place as teachers I have where we just collect a lot of data,
but you're not sure where it goes or what you do with it-- that's frustrating.
So it was really important to me that when we did this, that we showed staff that
this is really important in our work.
So the protocol is described there.
It's pretty easily laid out for you.
What I do like about this is I think it opens up a dialogue.
It's not to make judgments.
It's not to say, as Shai said, 'this teacher has more relationships than that teacher.'
It really opens up a conversation.
We can get very easily sucked into looking at data and making judgments and assumptions
about what we see.
I even did it when I first looked at the data.
And I had to check myself because I looked at a grade level and went 'Hmm, I knew I'd
see that group of teachers struggle sometimes to build relationships with kids.'
And in talking with those teachers, there was a much deeper explanation for that,
for the reasons we saw what we did.
And what I appreciated about that conversation was I was able to hear from them where they
were struggling to build those relationships and why: and they were all legitimate.
And then we talked about some actions.
So it's really, using this protocol, or any kind of protocol with your staff is really helpful
in the fact that you engage with your staff.
You don't take the data and say, 'I saw this, this is what needs to happen.'
So it's really collaborative in nature.
And you and you ask people to think broadly, when they look at the data.
You actually ask them in the interpret part, to think outside their own perspective.
Why do you think you see what you see?
What would someone else say if they saw this data?
And then we talk action steps.
And before I get into what we did as actions and what we're thinking about,
I'll talk about the tiered analysis.
I have two Dean's one in each school.
We basically took the data and we meet every morning and one of our days is the day-to-day,
and we looked at this data and went through the protocols with each other-- the three of us.
We then have a leadership team, which is a grade level rep from every team, and my Deans,
and a couple other people in the school.
We went through it together and put our analysis and actions side by side so they can see what
the three of us came up with compared with what the leadership team did.
And then we got to practice the Atlas protocol a couple of times.
We then gave this as an assignment to our leadership team and said, 'please go to your
PLCs (we have PLC time every day) and walk through this protocol with your team
and share with us your notes.'
And so kind of had this layered effect where we were all looking at this data together,
but in different ways.
So I'm looking at a district level perspective, but my grade level teams are looking strictly
at their grade and really having conversations about what that means for their work.
We then, because we're in remote, had these things called personalized learning plans.
And what these did, if you're wondering, they did inform those learning plans.
So this was a way to graphically show us 'who are those kids that we're really concerned about?'
More times than not they were the kids that we were also concerned because
they weren't engaging in remote learning.
And we designed these personalized learning plans for kids, we made sure that we included
those people who have strong relationships, and made sure that we built relationships into their plan.
So it was really important.
What we're thinking about next is, and this was actually an action step
from one of the Atlas protocols, was okay, 'we did this in the Fall, it would be really interesting to
do it again in the Winter and in the Spring, and have it be part of our, in our benchmarking
that we do three times a year.'
So I'm excited about that.
I'm also excited about when we are back in person continuing to use this tool,
because I don't think it's something that we would strictly use only in remote learning.
I think it's something that we're going to continually apply in our work and talk about.
It's like I said, we you know, we say all the time 'relationships first,
everything else comes second.'
So I like the way that this shows it, puts it in front of people.
You can't argue with it.
And but you can talk about it and do something with it.