Yocum and Yocum Primary leaders have seen positive developments at both schools this year, the El Dorado School Board learned on Monday.
Yocum Primary Principal Kristen Thomas and Yocum Elementary Principal Jessica Moore gave a joint presentation on their schools. Students that complete first-grade at Yocum Primary move on to finish elementary school at Yocum Elementary, so the schools are closely linked.
The pair first highlighted the teachers, faculty and staff who make the mission of the two schools – educating local children – possible.
"We don't make the magic happen within our school, it's our people who make it. Those are the real rock stars that we like to celebrate," Moore said.
Moore also highlighted new partnerships the schools have created with "community partners," which range from artists-in-education to local businesses and industry.
"One thing we've been very intentional about this year is our community partners, and what that does for our students – so, allowing for extensions, allowing our kids to see what goes on in our community and what other occupations there are besides teachers, doctors, lawyers, that kind of thing," she said.
The School Board saw a video produced by the school showing clips and photos from some of the community partnerships, like students working on art projects with AIE Mike Means, taking a field trip to the South Arkansas Regional Airport and more.
"I think it introduces them to different walks of life. It shows them all the different possibilities they have for their future, which hopefully reinforces the importance of education and doing well in school," Yocum teacher Brooke Burger said in the video.
Thomas also noted the schools' new behavior matrix, or standards, which was developed through the district's professional learning communities (PLC) development.
"We've kind of always known, I guess, that as a classroom teacher, your classroom management plays a huge part in student success, so it's taken us a little bit of time to understand that when you explicitly teach what you expect in the restroom, in the hallway and everybody is using that same language, it really helps kids understand," she said.
As a result of adopting the BEARS Way – the name for the behavior matrix, which is an acronym denoting the standards of Being responsible; Empathy; Achievement; Respectfulness; and Showing Citizenship --, behavior referrals are down 17%, Thomas said.
"Something I was really proud of, right after we did this, there was a football game, and a couple of our students were getting ready to leave, and they saw the people cleaning up, so they stopped, helped clean up," Thomas said. "So not only are they doing it at school, but it's carrying over into our community."
April reports
In April, Washington Middle School Principal Bethanie Hale and Northwest Elementary Principal Michael Odom gave School Board members an update on their respective schools as well.
Hale highlighted some of WMS students' achievements over the past year, including the school's archery team's recent second-place finish at the National Archery in Schools Program National Tournament; Washington's first-ever House elections, where student representatives were chosen by their peers to lead their classmates as they earn points; the Diva Knight Step Team's first-place finish in the Self Culture Club category at the city's Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade; student Alex Flowers winning the Union County Spelling Bee.
New to the school this year is the "cowbell standard," which Hale explained involves teachers and administrators celebrating with students when everyone in a class reaches an essential learning target.
"When 100% of that class masters a target, we go in, play music, ring cowbells and kind of act like fools. The kids, most of them love it; some of them may be laughing at us, I'm not sure," she said. "We hand out these little cowbell stickers, and we kind of took that from Ohio State – you know, the players get stickers on their helmets. So the kids are collecting their cowbell stickers on their Chromebooks to see who masters the most standards."
Washington students also got to go on what was likely, for many of them, their first college tour, visiting the South Arkansas College East campus. Sixth-graders later also got the chance to visit Southern Arkansas University, Hale said.
"It was pretty incredible, and now we're hoping to make this a yearly tradition, so once you come to Washington, you will at least get to tour two colleges before you move on to Barton," she said.
Odom said Northwest follows three guidelines their staff and faculty have learned through PLC training: keeping a focus on learning, establishing a culture of collaboration and focusing on results.
"That guides our whole educational programming at Northwest," he said. "
Additionally, Northwest has adopted five school improvement principles: don't blame kids, learning is required, not optional; hope is not a strategy; surround yourself with the best; and have fun.
"A huge part of what we do as adults at Northwest is learn. We learn how to do our jobs better so we can be better for the kids," he said.
Regular, collaborative PLC meetings, workshops with content experts in literacy and math and self-reflection among staff and faculty all are part of keeping Northwest teachers at the cutting edge of education practices, Odom said.
And the work has paid off. According to the Arkansas Dept. of Education, 2022 test scores show that most third- and fourth-graders at Northwest are ready or exceeding grade-level requirements in English. Fourth-graders are also mostly exceeding expectations in science, while most third-graders performed at or above their grade-level in math.
"The trend is extremely positive, and we have set a goal to be a B (letter grade from the state) school, recognized as a B-letter grade, next school year," he said.
Northwest, like the other schools in the ESD, uses a three-tier system of academic and behavioral intervention, where Tier 1 is comprised of students who do not require intervention, Tier 2, students who require light intervention and Tier 3, students who require specific, individualized intervention, Odom explained.
"Generally, you expect 80% of your students to get everything the first time, academically, in a perfect world, right. And then 15% receive targeted intervention and about 5% need that intensive remediation, and basically, that shows you that the vast majority of students do the right thing and learn every day, and then you provide the supports for the students who need it," he said.
School Board member Wayne Gibson asked whether the school could improve the traffic on College Avenue during pick-up time, and Odom said he has a few ideas he will present over the summer.
School Board members said they were impressed to hear about the successes at all four schools.