Tag: School Calendar

Progress on “Progress Reports”

With it being all things relocation and renovation during these last weeks before Passover Break, let’s take this opportunity to offer a brief update on something scheduled to go home next week that you may not have been expecting…

…Progress Reports.

Almost a year ago, we shared with parents our scheduled change from being a school based on trimesters to a school based on semesters.  As part of that change, we committed to the following set of parent engagement opportunities:

  • PTA Back to School BBQ
  • Back to School Night (September)
  • Goal-Setting Meeting (October-November)
  • First Semester Report Cards & Parent-Teacher Conferences (January-February)
  • Second Semester Report Cards (June)

And that is the calendar we have followed thus far.

We heard lots of feedback from families about what went well, and where there was room to grow, by introducing a “Goal-Setting Evening” and we are (already) looking forward to what that evening will look like next year.

In that same post, we said:

We may need to build in an engagement point between late January-early February and June.  Whether that comes in the form of (true) “progress reports” or updates from “goal-setting” or something entirely new, it may be true that we cannot reasonably go that long without formal parent engagement.

Well, what we had anticipated as a may need has turned into a need.  Part of the feedback we received from parents regarding “Goal-Setting” is that the gap from October to February is too long for parents to go without receiving feedback on academic progress.  (Even though, yes, it is reasonable to assume that significant issues don’t wait for official engagement events to be communicated.)  This we had somewhat anticipated.  The additional catalyst we received this year was the need for graduating students applying to specialized high school programs requiring academic reports before we were scheduled to issue first semester report cards.  That invited us to create simple progress reports, which were well-received by both teachers and families.

And so…

…recognizing that parents would like to receive a progress report at the midpoint of a semester, and…

…knowing that we had already prototyped a progress report template…

OJCS Parents can look forward to receiving “Third Quarter Progress Reports” on Monday!

🙂

Now please bear in mind that these are Progress Reports and not Report Cards.  There is less information, it is presented more simply and there will be far fewer comments.  We are aiming for “short & sweet”.  But it is designed to help you understand your child(ren)’s progress at this approximately midpoint to the Spring Semester and it may invite follow up questions or conversations.  It is also one of our famous “prototypes” which means that we will solicit feedback from you (and from teachers) knowing we will look to improve upon it in the future.

We hope parents appreciate these snapshots and, if so, we will look to add both Fall & Spring Progress Reports as appropriate mid-semester checkpoints to round out our year of parent engagement opportunities.

Remember – JK-3 Parents: Virtual Town Hall on the Relocation is Monday, April 15th at 6:30 PM.  If you are having trouble getting the link, just let us know!

2>3: Moving from Trimester to Semester (and Why It Matters)

Why is the OJCS calendar organized into trimesters?  What difference does it make?

The answer to the first question is simple.  The answer to the second question is meaningful.

Why trimesters?

Well, when I arrived at OJCS, we were technically operating on a semester model, but when one looked at how and when teachers were reporting on academic progress to parents, it kinda looked like trimesters with the distinction failing to find meaning.  Technically, parents received a “progress report” about a third of the way into the school year and then had two report cards and two rounds of parent-teacher conferences.  The “progress report” and the “report cards” were not entirely the same, but they were not different enough to warrant the difference.  So…if we were offering feedback three times a year anyway…why not simply divide the year into thirds and keep it simple?  And so we did.

Is there anything educationally more significant for a JK-8 to operate by trimester?  Does it matter how you divide up the year?  Why not operate by semesters?

Good questions!

Let’s begin with the end in mind.  Beginning in 2023-2024, OJCS will operate by semester.  Partly why we haven’t (yet) given out the full calendar is that we are working with the teachers to clarify what that will or won’t exactly mean by way of parent engagement.  But even as we work to clarify and disseminate by the end of the school year, let’s name what will and won’t be true next year.

If you think of the year with a narrative arc for parent engagement, it would look like this…

  • PTA Back to School BBQ
  • Back to School Night (September)
  • Goal-Setting Meeting (October-November)
  • First Semester Report Cards & Parent-Teacher Conferences (January-February)
  • Second Semester Report Cards (June)

On the one hand, this represents the same quantity of opportunity, even if distributed differently.  However, there are four things to pay attention to with this proposed shift:

  1. We love the idea of bringing parents (and possibly students) together in late October-early November to share the goal-setting that we have done with our students.  It is a great opportunity to strengthen and clarify the school-family partnership, to personalize the learning, to build in student accountability and to set students up for success.
  2. Moving to a semester model increases the odds of our successfully making the switch in (some) grades from traditional Parent-Teacher Conferences to Student-Led Conferences.  More time to prepare, more artifacts to collect and an easier connection to goal-setting, all lend themselves to our students better “owning their own learning” (North Star Alert!) by playing a more active role in giving and receiving feedback.
  3. We may need to build in an engagement point between late January-early February and June.  Whether that comes in the form of (true) “progress reports” or updates from “goal-setting” or something entirely new, it may be true that we cannot reasonably go that long without formal parent engagement.
  4. We have not yet clarified the timing/structure of either the “goal-setting” or the Parent-Teacher (or Student-Led) Conferences.  We are actively working with the teachers on doing so since we need to provide parents with all partial and/or full school closures with proper notice.  But with more students than ever and a greater desire for engagement, the way we have allocated time for these conversations may shift if they are going to be meaningful.

We are looking forward to using the process to clarify the quantity of parent engagement to amplify the quality of parent engagement.  We will share out soon (this June) the calendar implications.  We will share out later (August?) the additional educational implications once decisions have been made.  We look forward to strengthening our partnership with parents and setting up our students for success through better engagement.

Consider this the second brief (for me!) blog post (last week’s update on the building being the first) in a small series attempting to name and clarify important updates and changes as we begin the gentle pivot towards next year.  More to come in the weeks ahead…