Generate an improved response to the following prompt from the perspective of a high school math teacher. 

response: My district does not have a SLO ( student learning objective) process. There is  School Improvement Plan (SIP) however that team did not have any teachers on the team. The school’s goal is to have 95% of 9th graders on track for graduation and for school wide attendance to be over 85%. Math curriculum teams of a few teachers meet over the summer to create unit plans for the upcoming school year however the units are rarely looked at during the school year. I would improve our SLO process by making one. Have teachers and administrators come together to make goals for each grade level in english and in math. I would also have quarterly progress monitoring checkins with data analysis for progress towards the goal. 

End response with apa 7 works cited with link to video

Prompt:
Watch the Student Learning Objectives video and reflect on your school’s SLO process.  Is your school using the SLO process in a way that benefits teachers and students?  What in the video spoke to you?  If you were in charge of revising the SLO process at your school, what would you change?  Why? 

Video url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-9_J1eJO8E&ab_channel=MCPSTV
SLO Video transcript:

Loretta Woods: An SLO is a formal way to capture what skillful teachers and leaders already do. It allows
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them to look the gaps that students have and work collaboratively to try to close that
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gap. So this is a tool for equity because you don't look at a group of students and
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assume. You use data to support it, and then you set measurable targets. You help kids
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make implementable growth based on what the data says. Gary Bartee: It personalizes the gaps that we
0:35
have in our schools, those kids that aren't making progress, and it takes the data from
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numbers form to real life face. Dorthea Fuller: It did help us look at students a little differently and
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look at what we were doing differently. Teachers have to see that this purposeful; it is not just
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another thing to do, it connects with the work the are already doing. So we took and provided
1:00
time for teachers to come together to collaborate, to decide as a team what would be an important
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student learning objective. And then to decide individually what the needs were in their classroom.
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Loretta Woods: If a teacher is having a hard time with their SLOs , they turn to their team
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at their schools to help support them.
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Jennifer Webster: As a principal, I think it important that I have structures in place to provide teacher that support, to collaborate, to make meaning of
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what research says about good teaching, how to reach kids who aren't achieving, and that
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we make the SLO an evolving, living document. I see the SLO as really, very closely aligned
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with our school improvement work; not something extra to be done. So for us , SLOs are a
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topic of every other rolling meeting we have. It is very embedded into the work we're doing,
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so that no one out there on their own trying to figure it out.
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David Culpepper: Once a week we meet to discuss the process of SLO's, how were progressing, any problems we are running into or questions
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we may have. For teachers, the SLO fosters risk-taking to get you a little bit out of your comfort zone and try
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to take a lesson that you've done over and over again to see if you can do it totally differently
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and get better results. There is a similar component to National Board Certification where you have
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students that you track, you track their progress and you try to make sure that you are focusing on what
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works for them.
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Jennifer Webster: The SLO does help teachers to chunk and break down their planning to think about what are the most important things that I need to students to know and be able to do in my course.
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Loretta Woods: Teachers and leaders are growing and learning and perfecting their craft.
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Traci Townsend: So we always have a conversation with teachers so that we can talk about their decision making and
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the groups they decided to focus on. So it is definitely a collaborative effort.
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Dana Sturdivant: The SLO in my self contained math class is looking at our school focus which is writing.
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Specifically, I'm looking for students to be able to make a mathematically viable claim in their writing.
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I think because of the SlO's teachers are more aware of students strengths and weaknesses
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and specific strategies they can use to target certain groups of student.
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Robert Randolph: One of my SLOs is for my children to essentially compose a paragraph in which they have a topic sentence,
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two to three detail sentences and one closing summary statement. I chose that particular
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goal because I recognize severe writing deficits in my students, particularly four of my young
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men who have a tendency to compose run on sentences. Some of the strategies I'm utilizing
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with my identified students would be, for example, using a graphic organizer, which allows
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them to break down this paragraph into components.
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Angela Sebring: I think it kind of critical when you go to write an SLO and how you carry out an SLO is that you're working with other people in the building
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and your talking to other people in the building. It helps me to give focus for the year. So
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what am I gonna do this year, how am I gonna get these students to understand this concept.
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I'm coming up with these different strategies that will really help them understand what
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does clockwise mean, where does it come from. And when your focused on something, it really
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helps you to get better strategies out of it.
4:24
Denise Rodriquez: As an ESOL teacher, I chose a small group of 1st graders, and I had two SLOs - the first one was related to analyzing the vocabulary
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words in the question that directly relates to our SIP. And its our whole instructional focus.
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So wasn't something more than we do here, it is what we do here.
4:51
Audrey Lubitz: I work with a group of four other algebra teachers, we got a professional development day to sit down as a group, think about our
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students. We use data from a pre -assessment that we created. So the goal was to have students
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graph and interpret the graph of the linear function. Once we landed on our SLO goal, we
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looked up different online resources that we can use to support our students and support
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us in teaching the students. Doing the SLO has made me a better teacher now because I
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really forced to think about my teaching and think about how am I helping the students;
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what am I actually doing to make them improve.
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Ashley tauber: Every Friday we listen to a different type of music and they've been writing feedback about what they hear and they're not
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really using music specific vocabulary that they know, but they're not applying it when
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they're writing in their listening log. So I've been working with our staff development
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teacher to build some vocabulary lessons to work on, some worksheets for the students.
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It definitely made me a better teacher to work on an SLO because I'm trying to find
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different ways to access my students.
6:03
Amail Panakure: When you go through this entire process and you have some students, some of your targeted students reach their goal
6:06
and some fall a little shortof doing so, it makes you really reflective and focused. As a teacher our goal is for
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all of our students to be successful, and the SLO is merely a tool to help them get there.
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Kristina Hawkes: Here at Longview, we have students who have severe profound and multiple disabilities.
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I wrote my SLO for this year with my teammates Selena and also Lisa .
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My SLO goal this year is for students to increase their functional receptive vocabulary by 1 or more words.
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None of our students have speech or sign. So we use assistive technology. We use objects as much as
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we can. Having this SLO has help me become a more careful planner. Its helping me focus
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on making sure that I am purposely and carefully planning in opportunities to teach the vocabulary.
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Norman Coleman: As a principal, when it comes to SLOs, we have to do the same thing that teachers do.
6:54
We really have to have a focus group of individuals students that we're looking at.
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This year I'm focusing on 1st grade students, African American males and Hispanic males and their
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achievement areas of reading and mathematics.
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Maria Boichin: The SLO is a process, and it starts with determiningfinding your group of students which need you most. The idea is that what is good for that
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group of students will be ultimately good for everybody else. The main focus of the
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SLO is the reflection. We are wanting to reflect on our practices, what worked, what needs
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improving, how am I going to do it differently next time.
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David Culpepper: My reflections on my teaching tend to be more general. It is working for the class and the whole 90% of the students are getting
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it, you know that seems like a good job, but if 90% of the students are getting it that
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means that there 2 or 3 that aren't. And so the SLO really makes you stop and think about
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those 2 or 3 people who aren't getting it and think about what might you try differently.
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Jennifer Webser: It about reflecting on your practice and trying something that is new to you. If your SLO reflects
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what you've done to tweak and reflect and the growth you've had, then you've written a wonderful
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SLO. It is not always about the results. It is about the process, and the results merely inform
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our next steps.
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Amali Panakure: We shared ideas with each other. We reflected. It really was a great opportunity for us to build our school community also.
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Denise Rodriguez: The SLO process has made it easier for us to be able to say I tried this and it didn't work - because if something doesn't
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work then I feel like somebody else has another strategy that I can use.
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Gary Bartee: We move form an isolated format of close your door and work in this environment to really having conversations
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about what is our collective responsibility. It not just about my class and my kids, but
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it about all of our children and how do we support each other in terms of achieving that.
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Loretta Woods: The SLO is a learning opportunity for teachers and what it does for students is
8:57
that it helps them reach their full potential.
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Amali Panakure: When you're actually meeting the needs of your students and they're becoming more proficient, it really builds their confidence and I think
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it puts students a lot more at ease. So I have definitely have seen a change, a more positive
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attitude in a lot of our students.
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Dorthea Fuller: Anytime we focus in on students' needs, and we are very targeted and specific, we close the achievement gap.
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Gary Bartee: SLOs help you focus on the work that we're called to do.


