FOCUS: EDUCATION
New technology and retrained teachers greet students as schools open
Educators tackled quiet but important work during summer break
At Cheektowaga Middle School, sixth-grade teacher Melissa Gladwell discovered this summer that many of her incoming students missed one particular question on last year’s state English assessment exam.
“The all picked C, and the right answer is D,” she said. “I’m just trying to figure out what they’re thinking.”
While some school personnel took advantage of summer to install new technology in the classroom or renovate classrooms, Gladwell spent part of the summer poring over data so she knows what concepts to stress starting on Day One.
Most children in the area will start school Wednesday, although some pupils have already returned to classrooms and some have until Friday to begin another year.
In preparation for the opening of school, East Aurora offered summer workshops for teachers and spelled out writing standards for elementary school pupils.
In the Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda district, consultants from the University of Maryland were brought in to train teaching coaches.
And in Buffalo, traditional chalkboards are becoming obsolete, as the opening of school ushers in a major technological advance.
Students at 16 city schools will return to classrooms that are equipped with “smart boards,” teaching tools designed to make learning more immediate, interesting and versatile.
“The students are more focused with smart boards, they’re more engaged and they’re motivated to learn,” said Siu Connor, technical integration specialist at Buffalo’s North Park Academy School 66.
In a process comparable to television game shows, the boards allow students — through the use of clickers — to record their answers electronically and for teachers to receive and record instant feedback on their progress.
The boards also provide Internet access on huge screens, play instructional videos, can be written on by hand and provide data on student performance that can be stored on classroom computers.
While smart boards — also called interactive white boards — are in the works or already being used in many local suburban school districts, Buffalo’s plans are the most extensive.
Through the use of $12 million from the district’s $1 billion school reconstruction project, the city plans to have the cutting-edge equipment in 2,200 classrooms in about 60 city schools within three years, said Superintendent James A. Williams.
As Buffalo officials were busy unveiling their new smart boards, local suburban school officials used the summer break to refine teaching methods and approaches, and to adjust curriculum to meet state requirements.
An increased reliance on data — from both state and local assessment tests — allows teachers to more clearly identify the strengths and weaknesses of both individual students and entire classes, and to tailor instruction accordingly.
Summer is the best time to tackle those technical but crucial details, said R. Brad Gibson, assistant superintendent for curriculum in East Aurora.
“It gives us an opportunity to work with the teachers to upgrade their skill sets without interrupting their instructional time,” he said.
At Ken-Ton, some teachers learned how to be coaches, helping children to be self-directed readers by selecting appropriate reading material, said Barbara Battaglia, director of assessments, research and data for the district.
Other teachers created formative assessments and curriculum maps so they can track student progress.
Cheektowaga Central took advantage of the data warehouse at Erie 1 Board of Cooperative Educational Services in redesigning its academic intervention program for the Middle School.
Kristen Marchiole, curriculum coordinator Erie 1, said examining state tests to see if students improve from year to year gives teachers an indication of whether their teaching methods are working. A child’s score may have moved from a low Level 2 to a high Level 2.
“That’s proving not only that your curriculum is working, but your student is making great strides,” Marchiole said.
“I like the idea [that] we are creating the program. This is so specific to a kid’s needs — it doesn’t come from a textbook from Nebraska,” said eighth-grade English teacher Jill Nogaro.
Marchiole said looking at the data allows teachers to change their methods if children aren’t getting a certain concept.
“If you take a test for diabetes and it comes back positive and you don’t change your lifestyle, you won’t change the next test result,” she said.
bobrien@buffnews.com and psimon@buffnews.com
