Teacher Evaluation of the Program
School: Balboa High School
Teacher: Melinda Martinez
School Year: 2001–2002
Overview
In all my professional development I have never been given such a sheer number of useful tools and strategies than from the Saturday Workshops. It would be great to compile a book of all this to give to each teacher at Balboa so we all have the same tools to build a better, more coherent, cross-curricular school-wide system of literacy—linked to other SF public high schools and the CSU system.
Do you think your students have benefited from your collaborations in the CAPI project?
Yes, my students have benefited from the CAPI project in several ways, specifically:
- Students benefited by having a beyond professionally trained teacher/SFSU professor, the fabulous Kevin Conway, in my classroom, working with students one-on-one, focusing on their literacy, assisting in developing strengths and identifying weaknesses in reading and writing, and following up with lessons to target those skills necessary to be successful in college as well as high school. His lessons were thoughtful and gave the students the tools they needed, like TEA, inference, metacognitive strategies, autobiographical writing styles, perspective in literary theme, etc. The lessons were fueled and conceptualized by our Saturday Workshops.
- Our partnership in the class was always helping us to refocus lessons, reflect on what was working or not, and plan ways to increase the skill level of the students—a reflection made daily and at the Saturday collaboration with other SF schools/teachers.
- On the pre-IWA and post-IWA (9th grade reading assessment), all but two of the 40 students went down in scores (due to truancy, I believe), a few stayed the same, but an overwhelming majority of the students raised their writing by one to two grade levels! Yes!
- On the SRI (Reading Assessment), students gained approximately 100 points each since the beginning of school, when I averaged all scores of all the students (equivalent or no grade level), for sure even more, next time.
- Students were able to identify and reflect on the metacognitive skills in reading they gained as well as basic writing formulas!
- The students felt confident during the STAR exam, yet I don’t know our results and have nothing to compare them to.
- I teach 50 freshmen at Balboa High School in the Excelsior, one of the three “Bermuda Triangle” schools that produce low performing (on standard tests) students that typically need remediation in college. But the school is undergoing a slow and steady turn around that has left our entire staff hopeful and, as always, ready to give 100% to our incredibly bright and diverse student body. The CAPI program has added to that hope, making it a reality both last year and this year in several classrooms across curriculum and grade levels.
Which, if any, of your teaching practices have changed or been influenced by working with your SFSU collaborator? What was the most useful/valuable practice you implemented in your classroom?
Working with the SFSU collaborator was definitely the most rewarding part of the project. It helped me to look more critically at my lessons, focus them, and target the skills my students need to succeed, a powerful experience. Prior to the CAPI experience, my teaching was the study of pieces of literature, but now it is about the basic tools necessary to becoming a critical thinker and reader.
The most useful/valuable practice I implemented was TEA—Topic sentence, Example, Analysis—because it forced students to analyze and gave them a very structured, but simple, analytical format.
What can you suggest as further methods of improving student proficiency for entering the CSU campuses?
I think students entering the CSU campus will be more writing proficient once the high school teachers and college teachers speak the same language and know the skill sets. I see a need to do the following:
- Recognize the successes and efforts of CAPI school-wide by both administrators and staff
- Bring the tools we’ve used forward in school-wide professional development
- Continue collaboration with other high schools
- Be given the support of our district, as well as recognition, in developing written materials, aligning the official curriculum, etc.
Did the Diagnostic Writing Service (DWS) help you or your students? Why or why not?
We used the IWA as a benchmark for student writing, rather than the DWS, because 9th graders are being BOMBARDED by standardized test taking. I appreciate 100% that we were able to substitute the IWA, and above and beyond that, the program has, in the past, been limited to working with the 11th and 12th grades. But this year it was extended to the 9th grade where, I think starting earlier, everyone will see a huge investment in the future that will pay off not just in college, but in the 10th, 11th and 12th grades as well!
Other than the writing test, we were given the methods and language of the CSU written evaluations by teachers looking at student work. This was extremely useful in guiding my own responses to student work.
What other assistance or involvement would you like to have from San Francisco State University?
Aside from a printed compilation of the Saturday Workshops, more time to present the material, answer questions on it, etc., for facilitation with the school district to gain more momentum and support not only with other public high schools, but middle and elementary schools as well, so these tools are introduced to students as early, systematically, and coherently as possible. That’s what I’d like to see.
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