UD merges professional development centers to offer systemic teacher and leader support to Delaware schools

Assistant principals and principals in kindergarten through 12th grade schools routinely support teachers by observing their classroom teaching and offering feedback on their instruction. But, what happens when a school leader is unfamiliar with the current best practices in math or literacy? How can he or she offer meaningful feedback on the teacher’s instruction?

The University of Delaware will support teachers and school leaders in growing together through its new School Success Center (SSC), housed in the College of Education and Human Development (CEHD). The SSC will bring together UD’s Professional Development Center for Educators (PDCE), known for its excellence in instructional support, and the Delaware Academy for School Leadership (DASL), known for its excellence in leadership preparation.

Through a new systemic approach, the SSC will offer comprehensive and coordinated support to Delaware’s schools and districts to help improve student and school outcomes.

“One important key to any school improvement effort is ensuring that both teachers and school leaders are growing together in terms of their understanding of the curriculum and their ability to deliver that curriculum,” said Gary T. Henry, dean of the CEHD. “Rather than pursuing a partnership with a single UD team to address literacy instruction, for example, the SSC will allow schools and districts to pursue a systemic approach to school improvement so that professional development in content, instruction and instructional leadership all drive toward the same goals.”

UD will officially launch the SSC on Friday, Oct. 21 in an on-campus event that will also showcase CEHD’s teacher and leader preparation initiatives, support services for education students and faculty research addressing critical needs in schools.

A systemic approach

For nearly two decades, PDCE has supported teachers and administrators across the nation in their instructional practices. Through partnerships with schools and districts, PDCE’s coaches in literacy and math instruction facilitate professional development for educators that maximize student learning opportunities through the use of evidence-based curricula and teaching practices.

Similarly, DASL has supported assistant principals, principals, superintendents and other educational leaders in meeting the complex challenges of leading a school or district. DASL coaches in educational leadership assist school and district leaders throughout their careers by providing powerful research-based professional development and differentiated coaching services based on their school or district’s individual needs.

In joining the teams from these two centers, the SSC will partner with both teachers and administrators so that teachers, schools and districts can coordinate and integrate their improvement efforts.

“In a large school, we often partner with an assistant principal who is in charge of math instruction, for example,” said Faith Muirhead, senior associate director of mathematics in PDCE. “We spend time with the assistant principal so that when they observe teachers and give feedback, they can align their feedback with what the teachers are learning about the curriculum. But we’re not always able to do that with the principal. Bringing together the expertise in literacy, mathematics and leadership is really exciting because school culture and instructional leadership cross over all three of those areas. If all of our teams are working simultaneously in a school, that would be incredibly powerful.”

The SSC will bring to fruition a model of support partially implemented by UD with Laurel School District, where members of PDCE and DASL worked to close substantial gaps in student performance.

Before UD’s partnership, there was a 20% gap in math proficiency between Laurel’s third to eighth-grade students and the state average. While there were many factors that affected student achievement during this time, UD’s partnership helped reduce the difference to less than 2%. In reading, seventh graders now exceed the statewide average in proficiency.

Last year, in the Seaford School District, Jaime True Daley, senior associate director of literacy in PDCE, observed similar results in student achievement.

“After a cohort of principals studied and aligned K-8 high-quality instructional materials in literacy across five schools, student achievement accelerated,” Daley said. “The principals’ knowledge and understanding of the curriculum helped contribute to the gains in Seaford, where multilingual learners demonstrated impressive growth.”

David Santore is a senior associate director in DASL.

“We often see a disconnect where one part of the instructional system is not working in concert with the other,” Santore said. “Teachers and leaders can grow individually and therefore affect the system, but if that growth is well coordinated, then it accelerates everybody’s growth. We can do a lot with making sure that everyone is moving forward together to optimize the school improvement process.”

Teacher and administrator shortage

Through its systemic model of support and partnership, the SSC will also work to address the teacher and administrator shortages in Delaware and across the nation. For many schools and districts, the COVID-19 pandemic worsened an existing teacher and administrator shortage as teachers and leaders struggled with school closures, virtual learning, mental and physical health concerns and a shortage of substitute teachers once they returned to in-person learning.

In Delaware, this shortage is further complicated because about 41% of assistant principals and principals are eligible for retirement in the next five years.

“The teacher and administrator shortage in Delaware and across the nation is both multifaceted and complex,” Henry said. “The shortage is both related to a lack of available teachers and an alarming number of educators leaving the field due to a lack of instructional, leadership and, increasingly, public support. Through collaborative partnership, our SSC will provide the support that educators urgently need in their schools, but also facilitate connections to our teacher preparation initiatives in CEHD, including our high school pipeline programs, diversity scholarships, associates and bachelor’s degree programs and innovations in our teacher preparation programs, such as teacher residencies.”

Launching the School Success Center

With school leaders, human resources professionals and government representatives in attendance, UD will officially launch the SSC on Friday, Oct. 21 at the John M. Clayton Hall Conference Center from 10 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.

Through three engaging conversations with faculty members, the event will also highlight research and partnership work that directly impacts the critical issues facing Delaware schools.

• Roderick L. Carey, assistant professor in CEHD’s Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, will share insights and research findings from his Black Boy Mattering project, a unique school-based research partnership that acts like a think-tank for high school Black boys. This project helps school community members foster positive relationships with Black students who feel marginalized so that these individuals know their worth, importance and significance.
• Erica Litke, associate professor in CEHD’s School of Education (SOE), will share an alternate way to think about improving algebra instruction — one that is content-focused, employs more equitable teaching practices and aligns with instructional practices already in place in Delaware schools.
• Joshua Wilson, associate professor in CEHD’s SOE, will share findings from his research in Delaware schools on how a relatively new technology — automated writing evaluation software — helps students develop writing proficiency and highlight his long-standing partnerships with Red Clay Consolidated School District and Colonial School District.

Attendees will also learn about CEHD’s full portfolio of teacher and leader preparation initiatives from the faculty and staff members leading these efforts:

• Delaware Teaching Fellows program, which provides full four-year scholarships to highly qualified Delaware high school seniors admitted to a UD teacher education program in exchange for teaching in Delaware schools for at least four years

• CEHD Dean’s Diversity in Education Scholarship, which alleviates the financial barrier to a UD degree in early childhood education or elementary teacher education for students from underrepresented backgrounds
• Teachers of Tomorrow pipeline program, which introduces Delaware high school juniors and seniors from underrepresented backgrounds to the teaching field and campus life through a two-week summer institute at UD
• Associates in Arts programs in early childhood education and elementary teacher education, which allow students to complete the first two years of an education degree at UD’s Georgetown and Wilmington campuses
• Bachelor’s programs in early childhood education and elementary teacher education — which offers concentrations in elementary education, middle school English, math, science and social studies, teaching English as a second language and special education
• 4+1 programs that allow UD education students to receive a master’s degree with only one additional year of coursework
• University of Delaware Center for Excellence and Equity in Teacher Preparation (formerly the Delaware Center for Teacher Education), which supports all UD education students in their field experiences and certification processes
• Principal Preparation Program, which provides the professional development required for assistant principal and principal certification in Delaware
• Governor’s Institute for School Leadership, which provides professional development and mentoring for assistant principal, principal supervisors and superintendents through a partnership between CEHD, the Delaware Governor’s Office, the Delaware Department of Education and Delaware school districts

Article by Jessica Henderson Photo by Evan Krape

Jake Rutz, Delaware Live

March 14, 2022

Caesar Rodney, Brandywine, and Appoquinimink school districts will welcome a national tour this month that celebrates the high level of mathematics learning in Delaware.

The Knowledge Matters Campaign chose Delaware as the first stop, and it’s the first time the First State has been the subject of a math-focused tour. It previously has been included in English language arts and literacy.

The tour will highlight shifts in classrooms that include new materials and allow more student-led classes, presentations and discussions.

Barbara Davidson, the executive director for the Knowledge Matters Campaign, said Delaware has implemented high-quality improvements to their curricula and instruction in an effort to restore wonder and excitement in the classroom.

The campaign’s mantra is “find the good and praise it.” 

Michelle Hawley, supervisor of mathematics at Brandywine School District, said that the most prominent improvement to Delaware math has come at the middle school level, where they have been teaching “Kendall Hunt’s Illustrative Mathematics 6-8 Math,” published in 2019.

The math book received a perfect score on EdReports, an organization that grades materials that schools use in their curriculum. 

In addition, Hawley said the unique quality of Delaware’s mathematics education comes from enlightening and elevating students in the classroom.

“The curriculum requires students to be an active participant in their learning,” Hawley said. “Students have really taken ownership of the classroom, and teachers have become facilitators that connect the dots.”

This curriculum was provided by Illustrative Mathematics. 

This Delaware ownership comes in the form of students making connections to each other, connections between different mathematical areas, and being more outspoken in the classroom.

“Students are realizing that math makes sense,” said Hawley. “They are seeing how fractions and ratios function similarly, for example, and their ability to be at the forefront of a lesson’s discussion allows them to foster these math connections much quicker.” 

Hawley said that Delaware is unique in that it does not just provide new materials, but it also assists heavily in making sure the instructors know how to effectively work with such materials. 

Mathematics teachers are required to go through hundreds of hours of training to understand the curriculum, review instructional strategies, and figure out how students will comprehend their lessons. 

Part of this professional development requires teachers to present their curriculum in a way that is culturally responsive and inclusive to special needs students and students who speak languages other than English.  

Hawley said that the state’s math curricula “helps the students gain efficacy.” 

By Tamara Grimes Stewart

July 21, 2021
The views expressed here are those of the author.

This is the final of three pieces from a Knowledge Matters tour of school districts in Delaware, in recognition of the state’s new initiative – called DE Delivers – to encourage adoption of high quality instructional materials in its 19 districts. In this piece, Claymont Elementary School Principal Tamara Grimes Stewart describes the Wilmington school’s journey since its 2017 rollout of the Bookworms Reading & Writing curriculum. Part of the Brandywine School District, Claymont saw English Language Arts proficiency scores rise 21 percent in just three years after the new curriculum was implemented. Follow the rest of our series and previous curriculum case studies here.

Claymont Elementary School was constructed in 1969 as a high school. It played a pivotal role in our nation’s fight to create fair and equitable schools for all students, being one of two northern Delaware schools named in the landmark Brown v. The Board of Education court order that declared school segregation unconstitutional.

Today, Claymont is a diverse, 800-student K-5 school serving a predominately low-income population. We house Spanish Immersion, the Brandywine Specialized Autism Program, and a gifted and talented program for grades four through eight, in addition to serving a large multilingual learner population.

Claymont’s journey of transformation through the implementation of high-quality instructional materials occurred just as we were being identified by the Delaware Department of Education as an underperforming school. In 2015, just 41 percent of our students were proficient in English Language Arts and only 39 percent were proficient in math. Based on these scores, we became a state “Focus School,” which required developing a plan together with the state for academic improvement.

Claymont was fortunate that, as this was going on in the background, our district office introduced Bookworms as our response to intervention curriculum for reading. Using Bookworms, we were able to see our students who receive small-group and intensive interventions make progress much more quickly than they had in the past. We attribute this to the systematic focus on foundational skills contained in the program.

“By targeting decoding skills, we can get to fluency much faster,” says Kristen Cook, Brandywine School District’s reading specialist.

We had heard about Seaford’s success using Bookworms with all students in the class. We visited several other districts and asked our teachers to pilot the materials for one week — and everyone became excited to move forward with the curriculum. Rather than implementing at certain grade levels with certain teachers, we chose to dive all-in and bring the curriculum on across the board. We knew there would be growing pains, and we wanted to go through those together as a team. Everyone knew a change was needed — and everyone wanted to be part of the solution.

Our first priority was to map out our professional development plan, and it was extensive. We received support from our district office and coaches at the University of Delaware. We targeted professional development for specific grade levels and specific content. We differentiated our faculty meetings to address areas of concern revealed by the data, which was gathered both from walkthroughs and benchmark assessments. Coaches supported individual teacher needs. And for educators to share resources and strategies that were working, we devoted staff meeting time and made it the crux of our professional learning communities, in which our teachers regularly gather in small groups to collaborate and learn from each other.

What we’ve learned is that despite Bookworms being a relatively structured (some even say “scripted”) curriculum, it actually provides a framework that enables teachers to deliver powerful, student-centered instruction in their classrooms. One structure, for example, is a focus on a high volume of reading for all students. This is supported by a curated library of 275 whole-length, content-rich texts that students read and study across their K-5 experience. What is not to like about scripting that looks like that? What I find interesting is that our teachers don’t “feel the script.” Instead, they talk about how kids love the books.

“One of the parts that I love is hearing kids walking around talking about books,” fifth-grade teacher Brian Horne told us. “I have been teaching for over 20 years and I never remember [that].”

And it’s not just the students. Kindergarten teacher Meredith Allen said that she, herself, gets excited by every book she reads with her students. It might sound to some ears like an oxymoron: that a very structured curriculum is actually driving a much greater love of reading. But that’s our truth.

Just one year later, during the 2018 and 2019 school year, based on the Department of Education criteria, Claymont Elementary was identified as an “Exceptional School.” English Language Arts proficiency scores after implementing Bookworms increased over three years to 62 percent from 41 percent. Proficiency scores in math (we adopted Eureka Math around the same time) rose to 60 percent from 39 percent over the same period.

“It’s been an amazing transformation,” fourth-grade teacher Jodi Engleman told our school tour visitors.

Whether with Bookworms or Eureka Math, we attribute our success to the following:

• Implementing the curriculum with full fidelity, monitored via walkthroughs and observations
• Buy-in by staff and teacher commitment to implementing the curriculum, all of which came as a result of staff seeing positive changes early on
• Staff professional development focused on areas of need that are data-driven and teacher-directed
• Coaches and district office staff providing professional development and individual support to staff as needed
• Professional learning community meetings focused on the curriculum including instruction, data, and strengths/weaknesses
• Ensuring we stayed student-focused. From our data to student’s reactions to the curriculum, we wanted to ensure our students were engaged

Change does not happen overnight. The work we do as educators is not easy, but it is necessary. In each student there is greatness, and it is the job of the educator to find it. As we continue this journey, we are excited about the future for our students — and we remain committed to the process of change so that we can help students achieve their greatness.

“If you, as a district leader, are looking at the data and it’s not producing results, change it,” says Lavina Jones-Davis, Brandywine School District’s director of elementary education.

We invite our fellow educators to embrace the change that high-quality curriculum and curriculum-based professional learning can produce. You’ll be glad you did.

Tamara Grimes Stewart is the principal of Claymont Elementary School in Wilmington, Delaware.