WEBVTT

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My name is Owen Young, principal of Middleton
High School located in Tampa, Florida.

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When I arrived at Middleton High School, it
was clear that the avenue for creating a culture,

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or the avenue of a culture that promoted student
academic achievement, was absent. We did not

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look at attendance in isolation. We looked
at the attendance issue more from a strategic

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standpoint, trying to identify what could
we do to make school more meaningful. Due

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to the level of students needing remedial
services on a yearly basis—we receive kids

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maybe 60% to 70% in our freshman class who
require some level of remediation—that's

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stripping away the opportunity to participate
in an elective or something that they like.

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So we've decided to look at several electives.
One was construction; one was barbering to

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give, especially our young men, an opportunity
to engage in an elective that we thought they

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would like. We did a survey, we captured their
information, and then we went to work, working

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with the superintendent and the district staff
to put in place an elective, the barbering

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class, that allowed students who wanted to
develop the barbering skill set to really

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participate in this career pathway for themselves.
We strategically put the barbering class at

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the first-period block because we knew that
if they were coming to school and if they

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were coming to school for something they like,
we could then sustain them throughout the

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school day.

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In addition to that, we're looking for the
teacher to identify differentiated instructional

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strategies that, again, all level learners,
despite where they are in a classroom, have

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the opportunity to engage in some level of
rigorous activity that's going to really

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stretch them and get out of them. We support
these things through our lesson study, where

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our teachers have the opportunity to go in
with us and look at a lesson. We're really

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looking at the student engagement aspect of
it. And we're then able to come back, have

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discussions with each other to see where we
could improve and how we could critique and

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fine-tune an instructional lesson that is
always going to reflect a level of student

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engagement, the rigor and the relevance, and
ending that lesson with a scaffolding and

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a conclusion of students being able to demonstrate
that they have mastered the content during

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that instructional period.

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During student engagement and during observations
of student performance and participation in

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class, the major strategy that we use is to
actually talk with students. During our observations,

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we are more focused on what the student is
doing during the instructional lesson. So

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we take a very direct approach to the student
to really get the depth of what they are doing

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and to ask the question, "What are you doing
and why are you doing it?" So we're always

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probing the student to be able to share with
us what's happening in the classroom.

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There are several remarkable outcomes that
I can share as a result of the student engagement

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in the classroom. Overnight, we saw students
who once were uninterested in school now coming

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to school. The benchmark for me is that students
were now buying into the idea of school being

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a place where teaching and learning was the
focus and not behavioral issues. So when you

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look at those two, as behavior decreased,
usually the measurement is that instruction

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and student academic increased, and that is
exactly what we saw as our students committed

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to the process here at Middleton High School.