{"id":15309,"date":"2022-06-02T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-02T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/?post_type=cw_post&p=15309"},"modified":"2022-06-02T02:47:59","modified_gmt":"2022-06-02T06:47:59","slug":"strategies-for-responsive-pacing-at-the-success-center","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/strategies-for-responsive-pacing-at-the-success-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategies for Responsive Pacing at the Success Center"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the second post in a series<\/a> about Opportunity Academy in Holyoke, Massachusetts.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Teacher<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0Holyoke Public Schools<\/a><\/p>\n

The Success Center at Opportunity Academy has many practices that support responsive pacing, a key element of competency-based education (CBE). Students in competency-based schools advance when they demonstrate mastery, not based on seat time, so pacing varies from student to student. Different CBE schools support responsive (or \u201cvaried\u201d or \u201cflexible\u201d) pacing in different ways, and the Success Center provides a model that relies on student agency, innovative course structures and scheduling, and a variety of student supports.<\/p>\n

Course Structures and Scheduling that Support Responsive Pacing<\/strong><\/p>\n

As explained in the previous blog post<\/a>, much of the learning at the Success Center happens through project-based \u201ctransformative learning experiences\u201d (TLEs). Each teacher also offers what they call \u201cskills-based courses\u201d that are not project-based, last roughly two weeks, and focus on a small number of \u201cattainments\u201d and \u201cmicro-attainments\u201d\u2014the subcompetencies and smaller learning targets within the Success Center\u2019s set of broader competencies. These courses focus on academic content, skills, and habits of success.<\/p>\n

The Success Center also has a learning lab where students can receive tutoring and support on any subject, and all students have learning lab time in their weekly schedule. Students can take online courses at the learning lab, although Schmidt said that the Success Center is using this option much less than in the past and that teachers provide ample supports for online courses.<\/p>\n

Innovative scheduling supports these different learning structures. Every day but Wednesday has four 75-minute blocks beginning at 9:00 a.m., 10:15 a.m., 11:30 a.m., and 12:45 p.m., followed by a 60-minute block that begins at 2:00 p.m. Students can select any one of these blocks as a \u201clunch\u201d block or schedule a class during every block if they\u2019re trying to accelerate. Many students who drop a sibling off at school miss the first block of the day, and some students who have jobs miss the final block. Students often use the shorter 2:00 p.m. block to go to the learning lab or \u201cdrop in\u201d on teachers for extra support.<\/p>\n

Wednesdays are flexible \u201cworkshop time,\u201d with no scheduled course meetings. In the morning, students meet with their advisor to make a plan for the day. They have to check in with every teacher at some point during the day, but they decide how to spend the day to maximize their progress. They can make up missed work, go deeper in an area of strong interest, have one-to-one meetings with teachers, complete assessments, or spend time in the learning lab. The day ends early, at 12:45 p.m., when students leave and staff begin an afternoon of planning and professional learning.<\/p>\n

Attendance is a serious challenge at the Success Center. \u201cThat\u2019s why many of the kids are here,\u201d one teacher said. While the school has a variety of strategies to encourage attendance, including a team of engagement specialists, the scheduling and learning structures are also designed to enable students with low or intermittent attendance to make gradual progress rather than dropping out.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of our students who make the most progress academically are not the ones who are present 100% of the time,\u201d principal Geoffrey Schmidt said. \u201cUsing our competency-based model rather than seat time is necessary<\/em> for many of our students. Many of them come here because they can\u2019t or won\u2019t or don\u2019t know how to play the game of school. So our adaptable schedule is essential, and so is the fact that students earn micro-attainments each day and don’t lose them if they happen to miss a week down the road. You don’t get credit at the end of the cycle based on the whole scope of what you’ve done, which could sink you based on attendance alone. You get it for the work you do when you\u2019re here, or even, for many of them, when they\u2019re not here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students with lower attendance\u2014missing many days or even leaving for weeks or months\u2014may return to school in the middle of an eight-week TLE and not really be able to make substantial progress on project-based work until the next TLE session starts. However, it will be two weeks at most before the next skills-based courses start, and in the meantime they can be in the learning lab working on attainments they had partly completed previously or new ones. Sometimes, with additional support from the learning lab, students are able to join a TLE or skills-based course in mid-session.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all teach a class that\u2019s theoretically \u2018attendance-proof,\u2019\u201d one teacher said. \u201cYou can work on it when you\u2019re here, and absences don\u2019t compound in the same say. And we\u2019re on a two-month cycle, so if you miss something you can pick it up again. There are opportunities to plug back in.\u201d He contrasted this to a traditional model where students may have to wait until the next year or redo an entire course if they miss certain learning opportunities or assessments.<\/p>\n

Principal Schmidt added, \u201cIt\u2019s about building a schedule that can support students with low attendance while also making sure that our most engaged and regularly attending students are also adequately challenged, regardless of skill level, and that all students get the core knowledge they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Teacher<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0Holyoke Public Schools<\/a><\/p>\n

Agency and Student Supports<\/strong><\/p>\n

Clearly this model places considerable responsibility on students, which is consistent with CBE\u2019s emphasis on student agency and developing habits of success such as collaboration, communication, and self-direction. But the model also provides supports to help students build these habits over time.<\/p>\n

Case conferences with advisors are one essential type of support. Describing a case conference on a Wednesday workshop day, one teacher said, \u201cI\u2019d meet with one of my students in the morning. I\u2019d say, \u2018OK, let\u2019s dive into what your next steps are on Integrated Lit. We set goals around that, and we\u2019ll do that for each of his classes. Then it\u2019s his responsibility. He\u2019s got the sheet that says who he needs to check in with. He brings it to the teacher. The teacher says, \u2018Here\u2019s what we\u2019re doing today. To make progress you have to look at the feedback I gave you on this assignment, which is tied to a particular competency.\u2019 The student will work on that, then the teacher will check him out, and he\u2019ll move on to the next class, doing all of this at his own pace. For students who don\u2019t use a Wednesday well, we\u2019ll have a case conference with them on Thursday and talk about what they left on the table yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Effective case conferencing also requires transparent systems for tracking students\u2019 academic progress and engagement. The Success Center uses a FileMaker database with a variety of dashboards (see image below) that a local software developer has built for them over time. They want a system that helps students set goals and track their own progress with strong visual cues. As with many CBE schools, the Success Center has found that no commercially available learning management system has all the features they want. At the same time, they see the limitations of their homegrown system and are trying to decide whether to shift to a commercial product.<\/p>\n

\"Dashboard<\/p>\n

Finally, the Success Center provides strong socioemotional supports. Part of this comes from the advisor and engagement specialists, who help students navigate both academic and non-academic challenges. The Success Center has also partnered with Alianza, a local group of clinicians that created a practice to serve students at the Success Center and opened an office in the same building.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to individual and group therapy, Alianza uses a \u201cfrom pain to power\u201d model through which, Schmidt explained, students help to \u201ccarry the trauma-informed, socioemotional learning, and restorative justice culture for our school, and are the ones who educate us and help us develop the system.\u201d The seed funding for this work came from the Barr Foundation\u2019s Engage New England grant described in the previous blog post. Now most of the funding comes through MassHealth, the Medicaid and Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program in Massachusetts, which covers most Success Center students.<\/p>\n

In traditional K-12 schools, time is the constant and learning is often variable. Competency-based schools strive for rigorous learning to be the constant, which requires time to be variable. The Success Center at Opportunity Academy provides an outstanding example of the intertwined elements of structure, culture, and pedagogy that make responsive pacing possible and powerful.<\/p>\n

Learn More<\/strong><\/p>\n