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Welcome to Creating an Actionable Plan

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Jones: My name is Eric Jones and I am the
principal at the Jackson Central-Merry Academy

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of Medical Technology in Jackson, Tennessee,
and I have been principal here for four years.

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McDaniel: I am Dr. Teresa McDaniel. I am assistant
principal at Jackson Central-Merry Academy

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of Medical Technology in Jackson, Tennessee.

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Jones: In 2009, I started as principal at
Jackson Central-Merry Academy of Medical Technology

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[JCM], and we were a turnaround school and
[had a] lot of instability.

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So we started a partnership with Dr. Mel Riddile,
and our first order of business was to stabilize

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the building.

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And from that point, we were starting to stabilize
the building and we were able to do more of

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a focus instructionally.

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And starting in 2011 we really started to
identify some areas of deficiency in the area

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of literacy.

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Dr. Mel Riddile introduced us to Doing What
Works, and as a result of that, we were able

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to really start to hone in on some of the
issues that had allowed JCM to stay behind.

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With the help of Dr. Mel Riddile and the Doing
What Works template for addressing adolescent

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literacy, we were able to really create a
comprehensive plan to address literacy throughout

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the school building.

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McDaniel: Where do you start? What do you
do?

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Okay, we know we have a problem; now what?

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And that’s where Doing What Works came in
for us.

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The Doing What Works template identified specific
behaviors and actions that leadership should

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take, that teachers should take, certain things
that should happen within the school as you

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start to focus on improving literacy.

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Jones: We sat down and we created a literacy
council, and that literacy council consists

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of one person from each core content area,
the principal, our assistant principals, our

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instructional coach, and our media specialist.

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And one of our first orders of business was
to address the Adolescent Literacy School

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Planning Template.

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And as a result of that, we were able to really
identify areas where we may have been doing

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well and areas where we needed to improve
or areas where we needed to even start implementing.

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And that literacy council really started to
meet on a regular basis and plan out how we

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wanted instruction to look.

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McDaniel: The Doing What Works template initially
helped us to know what questions we needed

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to ask.

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When it says consistently in all content areas:
Where were we with that?

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And I think early on, we might have thought
we were further along there than we actually

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were. When we started actually going in classrooms,
looking for literacy strategies, what we were

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missing is engagement with literacy, with
text.

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And so, as we were able to understand what
that really looked like in a classroom, then

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our professional development actually moved
to offering articles and asking our teachers

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to closely read the articles and actually
demonstrating the type of questions we wanted

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them to ask their students by asking them
those same questions in professional development.

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Jones: The Adolescent Literacy template also
points out under the heading D3: Supporting

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Instruction in the Classroom that the principal
needs to schedule weekly planning time for

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literacy specialists to work with content
area teachers.

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That was not something we were addressing
before we saw this in the template.

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So what we were able to do was schedule time
during the school day that our core content

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area teachers were able to meet in a professional
learning community and discuss specific strategies

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around how to best address student challenges,
especially in the area of literacy.

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McDaniel: One component of the Doing What
Works template, the C: Providing Research

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Base and Effective Instruction, #3 suggests
that you should screen students for their

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reading levels.

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And when we read that, we realized that we
were not screening our students for reading

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levels.

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So we implemented a reading—the Gates MacGinitie
Reading Comprehension Test and it yielded

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some interesting results.

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The first year that we tested our students,
we found that our students were reading on

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an average Lexile of 600 to 650, which we
equated to be 70% reading at a fifth-grade

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level or below.

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We tested those students again the following
year and our students gained 130 Lexiles.

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That’s the equivalent of almost two grade
levels in one year.

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Jones: I think it all starts with having a
clear direction.

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The Doing What Works template, the Adolescent
Literacy Template, allowed us to have a clear

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direction.

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And with the implementation, the consistency
that it provided, we have been able to see

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immediate results with our students.

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To learn more about Creating an Actionable
Plan, please explore the additional materials

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on the Doing What Works website.