“Good morning. I’m Mrs. Zanger and I’m new to this school. Is anyone else new?”
Brenda Zanger asked the question as she stood in front of her third-grade class Monday on the first day of the new year at Calaveras School. Two students raised their hands, a relatively small number compared with the turnover among Calaveras teachers.
Zanger was one of 22 new teachers who started work at Calaveras School following the district’s decision last year to post the jobs of 20 teachers at the site. It was the first step in the superintendent’s efforts to reorganize the district’s historically poor academic performer.
Spurring the decision to overhaul the staff was Calaveras going seven consecutive years in “program improvement” – a designation for schools continually failing to make adequate yearly progress in math and reading.
The roughly 570-student K-8 school is 95 percent low income and 65 percent English language learners, said Lonna Martinez, the district director of education services. Last year, the district designated Calaveras as a “priority school,” and gave the campus additional funding and resources in an attempt to pull the site up to achieving levels.
“We have one of the biggest needs here,” said Principal Christine White, as she sat at a table with Martinez the morning of the first school day.
“We want this to become a model school,” added Martinez, mentioning that she hoped future success at this campus would later be replicated at other sites, such as R.O. Hardin School.
A quick walk by the classrooms Monday morning revealed teachers talking about “Thinking Maps” – a teaching tool that helps students organize their thoughts in outlines – as they explained classroom rules to pupils in the first hour of the new school year.
It’s the third year of a five-year plan to get all teachers in the district using “Thinking Maps,” according to Martinez.
“In this day and age when we can Google something,” said White as she picked up a smartphone, “we need to teach students to think.”
While the initiative to get teachers using “Thinking Maps” is districtwide, Calaveras was singled out for special attention and was the only site in the district to get an entire day of training on the teaching tool.
“It’s a way to either organize your thoughts to either have a conversation or write something,” White said. “It’s a way to organize your thinking.”
But changing the way students record their brainstormed ideas is not the only variation in place at the Calaveras this school year.
An increase in site funding – a trickle-down effect from the statewide increase in funding for public education – means four new staff positions have been added at Calaveras. Two of these positions are assistant support teachers, a new position in the district that brings in a certified teacher to work with small groups of students that need remedial help. The support teacher can also take control of teachers’ classrooms, allowing instructors time during the school day to observe other teachers, collaborate with peers, or work with the site coach on implementing Thinking Maps into lesson plans.
The school is also one of five elementary sites in the district that added a physical education teacher to the staff this year. Adding P.E. teachers to elementary schools provides an additional opportunity for small groups of students needing extra academic help to work with teachers while their peers practice sports outside.
The school’s migrant parent liaison position also has been changed from part time to full time in an effort to engage the community in the school’s work.
The staff members aren’t the only ones adjusting to the school year. For the students, the first day of school is one with new desks, faces and rules. In just a few hours, the pupils learned the basics of their new classrooms, including where to find the bathroom passes and where they will sit among the rows of tidy desks.
“I’m just nervous and trying not to mess up,” said David Mendez as he smiled shyly and prepared to enter his new fifth-grade classroom at the site’s Accelerated Achievement Academy.
“He’s anxious,” said the boy’s grandfather, Mario Infante, as he walked with the help of a cane alongside the younger generation. “He’s been waiting for this.”
