CBHS School Success Plan 2023-24

Long-Term School Target:  We will co-create a more just, equitable, kind community which maximizes learning and growth for all and which catalyzes excellent work that betters our community and world. 

Long Term Faculty Target: We will comprehensively narrow the opportunity gap for CBHS students, especially for our students of color and economically disadvantaged students. Neither race nor economic class nor gender nor any identifier will be a predictor of academic outcomes.

 

First, we need to remain committed to preserving our great strengths:  Creating and implementing great, substantive learning expeditions that engage our students in curriculum embedded in the most important issues of the day as well as who they are and want to be. Cultivating faculty wellness, collegiality, and joy Supporting each student to have a deep sense of belonging and homeplace at school, starting with Crew.  Narrowing the gap between our daily practice and our vision for an equitable, anti-racist school.

 

Data and reflection in 2022-2023 yielded the following areas in need of improvement for 2023-2024

1. Student Culture: There was an increase in more acute behavior that undermined community and safety and which disrupted  learning, in particular, fighting, hate speech, skipping class and absenteeism. 

2. Student Achievement and Learning: As students and staff continue to rebound from the pandemic and pandemic learning, faculty assert that many students continue to struggle to sustain engagement and persistence with challenging, vital academic tasks. 

3. School Identity and Vision: Faculty conveyed a belief that we have drifted somewhat from a unified sense of who we are and what we are about as we emerge from the survival mode of pandemic and post-pandemic schooling. 

 

23-24 Priorities for Improvement 

1) PPS Goal: Cultivate Safe and Equitable Schools (Whole Child/Equity)  CBHS Priority: Teach, coach and support students to be accountable for their own learning and behavior and to build community with one another.

Theory of Action: If we teach, coach and support students to be accountable and build community, then more students will summon their best selves more frequently, fewer students will engage in behavior that disrupts the community and learning and therefore student learning will increase as well as faculty joy and self-efficacy,

Key Moves

• Clarify the purpose and importance of crew and the crew advisor with all stakeholders.

• Establish and teach - in both crew and academic classes - cross-team Habits of Work and Character targets. What does it take to be a successful CBHS student in 9th grade? 10th grade? 11th grade? 12th grade?

• Utilize the new Assistant Principal and Dean of Students positions to work with staff to more consistently hold students accountable and monitor behavioral plans and progress. 

• Revisit and revise as needed high leverage policies that can promote students to be accountable (eg: personal technology, crew attendance, X Block attendance, course attendance).

• Deepen use of existing structures and student leaders  (e.g.: buddy crews, community council, Quests)  to help expand students’ empathy and connections to those outside their friend group. 

• Build on the new Summer Bridge program to help orient incoming 9th graders to each other and CBHS values and expectations more quickly and deeply.

• Integrate the Breathe Support program and staff into our school culture so some of our highest needs students can be successful both academically and behaviorally. 

• Continue to develop interventions for our highest need students in emotional self-regulation and conflict resolution (eg: Breathe support and an in-house targeted coaching)

 

2) PPS Goal: Strengthen Core Instruction (Achievement/Equity) CBHS Priority: Continue to work on the teacher strategies and structures that will improve students’ academic fitness in persisting with hard, important work and giving quality effort the first time.

Theory of Action: If teachers find ways to help students persist with hard, important work, students’ deep learning, achievement and self-efficacy will increase - as will faculty joy and self-efficacy. 

Key Moves

• Focus teachers’ learning - including teacher coaching cycles - on daily classroom practices that help our full range of students to sustain hard, important work and more independently. 

• Integrate more examination of student work into our grade level team meetings.

• Support students to improve both their daily attendance and time in class on task (eg: using attendance goals and Orange Pass). 

• Communicate to all students, and especially 9th graders, what it means to be on track for 4 year graduation and on track for career and college success. 

• Establish and teach - in both crew and academic classes - cross-team HOWL and Character targets. What does it take to be a successful CBHS student in 9th grade? 10th grade? Etc (also a key move for goal 1).

• Provide more opportunities for students to read grade level texts across disciplines as well as read for pleasure.

• Explicitly teach crucial academic vocabulary.

3) District Goal:  Build and Sustain a Strong Professional Learning Culture (People/Equity)  CBHS Priority: Re-connect with who we are as an EL Education school and get clear with where we go next.

Theory of Action: If faculty and students develop a clearer, more unified sense of who we are and where we are going, both faculty and students will be more invested in learning and building community as well as more joyful.

Key Moves 

• Use the Summer Institute, Wednesday professional development time to re-connect with core CBHS and EL Education  philosophies and daily classroom practices. 

• Develop and actualize the CBHS Instructional Compass. Communicate the Compass to students, parents and the broader community.

• Send more faculty to the EL National Conference.

• Ensure new faculty experience a deep orientation to CBHS and EL Education core principles and practices. 

• Re-institute visits and exchanges with another ELEducation  high school (eg:  MELS in NYC).

• Re-institute the Future Task Force and clarify long-term aims. 

• Convene a student-staff schedule task force to look at our daily schedule and the best use of instructional time. 

• Clarify the purpose and importance of crew and the crew advisor with all stakeholders (also a key move for goal 2).

 

Casco Bay Student Credo for 23-24 

Be Present

Work Towards Your Awesome

Build Community