WEBVTT

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Hi, my name is Monica Martinez, and I'm the Vice-President for Education Strategy

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for the KnowledgeWorks Foundation.

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There should be a common core curriculum for all students,

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and assuring that will help with equity,

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and there are many different ways you can start doing that.

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So, one thing you can do is you can look at your course scheduling,

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and you can really look to determine what are your core courses and what are the courses

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that you might need to eliminate from that curriculum.

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Because often we find that students are not enrolled in the appropriate courses

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that prepare them to go to college.

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In fact, most recent statistic was 25 percent of all students are actually enrolled in a curriculum

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to prepare them to go to college.

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The other thing we can do is really work on pedagogy.

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Because we have students who are at risk, who may be first generation students,

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students who have not become accustomed to or are behind in grade level,

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we need to provide a very different kind of pedagogy for students.

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And this kind of pedagogy is one that is very student-centric,

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one that focuses on the individual needs of students,

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and one where a teacher can personalize instruction for that student.

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And the other kind of instruction we need that is consistent

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with being a student-centered curriculum

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and instructional way is to think about applied learning.

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So, when we think about rigor, we often think about content.

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But we don't think about rigor as a way to apply how kids learn content,

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and that's also where we're able to get relevance.

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So, we can provide a rigorous and a relevant curriculum by not only providing a core curriculum,

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but by coupling that with pedagogy that is applied learning

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and by expanding students' content areas into application.

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And therefore, people are applying the learning that they have,

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and this will make them prepared for work, and this will prepare them for college as well.

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A great example of applied learning is one of my favorite places to visit,

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and it's a small autonomous school located on Jefferson High School campus in South Central LA.

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It's called the Student Empowerment Academy.

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And students are from the area.

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They're all first generation students.

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Most of them are English language learners;

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most of them have siblings who have never gone to college.

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Their parents may be not even completed high school,

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and they are learning in an environment that is all project-based learning 24x7,

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where they're always applying content, and they are also using technology to do this.

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And with this kind of applied learning-and the teachers have to spend time

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to align all their projects to the California Exit Exams-the students participate

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in project-based learning, and they have outscored their counterparts with the same students

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on the same campus in SLCs (Small Learning Communities) that are co-located on the campus.

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And essentially, 65 percent of sophomores passed the California Exit Exam the very first time they took

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it, compared to 34 percent of the sophomores who passed the California Exit Exam who were co-located

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on the same campus but were not doing 24x7 project-based learning

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where the teachers were aligning the projects to standards

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and then facilitating groups of students doing this.

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Now, at the same time that the students are engaged in project-based learning

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in a very rigorous core curriculum,

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they are also taking college courses at the local community college,

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which is another way to provide academic rigor.

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And at the same time they're doing that, if they are challenged in some of their courses,

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then the teachers will do learning labs with the students after class,

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use Title I funding-so it's after school-to do a form of remediation.

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But when they do the remediation, it's still in a project-based format,

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and it's also in a very cultural relevant way.

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Schools need to ensure there is a community of practice for all teachers who are in that school.

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And that means that teachers have to have planning time.

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This is a very difficult thing to do in your school.

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This requires professional development to be embedded

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and integrated in the daily lives of teachers.

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This means, therefore, the schedule has to change so that teachers have time

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to plan their work together as a unit, whether it's by discipline,

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whether it's by course offerings, whether it's by grade.

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But time has to be built in the schedules for teachers to work together.

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And with this, you have to do a lot of facilitation at the beginning to ensure

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that teachers are using this time to provide critical feedback

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to each others' instructional practices in terms of their grading,

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any kind of interaction they have with the student.

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For all students, especially those students who are at-risk,

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they must be able to see a pathway to their learning experience.

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They must see a beginning and to an end, and they must understand the relevance

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of what they are learning to be able to apply that to their future life-whether that's work,

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whether that's a career or whether that's college.

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So, many of the schools are actually doing this by providing theme-based instruction

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or curriculum or philosophy to the schools that are created, and a theme might be curricular,

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it might be a career, it might be pedagogical.

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Many of the theme schools are career-focused.

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Very popular right now are STEM schools: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

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This is not only a need that we have in United States for more students to have these type

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of degrees in order for us to be more competitive,

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but is also an area where we need more students who have been traditionally-people of color

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or first generation-to be able to excel in these areas.

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How can schools help students prepare academically and non-academically for college?

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Schools can do this by using outside organizations.

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There's groups who will come into your school once a week to help students prepare for college.

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It will help students to fill out financial aid forms, college applications,

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understand the course requirements, understand the financial aid forms,

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or schools can actually do this through very formal programs such as student advisories.

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Student advisories are very predominant in schools as a way to personalize learning experiences.

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A lot of schools have started to use advisories to help students prepare for college,

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so they start thinking about this when they enter as freshman,

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and they create a student growth plan or individualized learning plan

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that helps them design their learning experience to prepare them

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for work and to prepare them for college.

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So, advisories are really good structure to help students plan for college,

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again academically and non-academically.

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If schools do not have the luxury of putting an advisory into the structure of their classes,

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they might be able to provide a junior or senior seminar where the bulk

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of that time is committed to helping students prepare for college.

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Providing Rigorous and Relevant Instruction to All Students-Monica R. Martinez, Ph.D.