Family and Community Engagement & RtI Symposium
This event will feature a keynote address by Dr. Steven Constantino, a nationally-renowned family and community engagement expert.
Following the keynote address, there will be concurrent breakout sessions. Come to learn more about the Response to Intervention (RtI) Framework, for Family Math Workshops, Family Literacy Workshops, family and community engagement strategies, Performance Management, services and projects being offered by the
Family Support and Community Partnerships Program, The Source, Higher Education access, Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD), and more!
A light breakfast and lunch (from Maya's Mexican Restaurant) will be served. Interpreters will be provided.
Comments
Following a recent survey of parents and staff, the District and the Shoreline Education Association have agreed to move spring break to a later date in 2010. With the change in state assessment testing dates, it was no longer necessary to schedule spring break so early in the spring. Now it will be scheduled halfway between mid-winter break and the end of the school year. Nearly 90 percent of District families and staff surveyed supported this change.
You can learn a lot about The SOURCE, why to use it, how to use it, and how teachers can use it.
You can learn about the Performance Management System. What is at stake here? Could schools really earn the autonomy to choose their own curriculum as promised? What would they have to do?
You can learn about the Response to Intervention effort. It has both an academic and a behavioral side. This could be truly marvelous. Every student in the District will be taking these MAP tests to measure their progress, but that's just the start. The important bit is what comes after that. Students who are shown to be falling behind should then get interventions to bring them up to the Standards. That's the Response and the Intervention. But that's not all. Students that are shown to be advanced should then get additional challenge as well. The District is committing to an intervention on that side as well.
The behavior/discipline response to intervention promises a more consistent and systematic response across the district.
All this and math and literacy and more.
After the keynote address, you can choose which breakout session is of interest to you. There will be several to choose from in each time period.
I'll telling you all, this could be very very cool and useful.
Many school districts throughout the country voluntarily started using these techniques in 2004 (some as early as 2001) with the ushering in of new regulations for special education... Washington State and Seattle Public Schools are more than 5 years behind... and over-representation of students of color in special ed. continues.
RTI, response to interventions, will take 3-5 years to approach full implementation and will only be successful when accompanied with "real and authentic" cultural competency training. In other words, you can say that your district "does" RTI's, but doing it "correctly and successfully" will require additional training and of course, supportive funding. (This is WHY other districts and states started RTI's a long time ago... because it takes time to build to capacity)
Seattle Public Schools just loves, loves, loves to hop on the initiatives band wagon, but historically, does not make the appropriate commitments (training, policies, resources...) to reap the benefits and success!
Saying you are doing it, doesn't mean it is being done.
Community Engagement Definition