SIT Retreat Reflection

Our SIT team met for their retreat on June 22nd, 2016. This was a week after
school finished, the year was fresh in our minds with what we improved on and what
we still needed to work on. This retreat was the one time we would meet over the
summer. We would not meet again to move forward on our objectives until the preservice week in August. The four hours were filled with looking at surveys with data
and proposals for next year that were set up by our SIT team leaders. There were
things I liked about our meeting and things that I would recommend for the next SIT
team retreat.
Before the school year ended our SIT team leaders sent our three different
surveys for groups to complete before June 16 th. They three different sets of
questions to students, parents and staff. We received a copy of the questions with
breakdowns of how many people answered what answer to the question. Our
student survey had about only 59 students who responded. Unfortunately that is
not the best participation fort the 1100 students there are in the school. Since you
need to take out seniors since they were not in the building there should have been
a better response. The survey was sent out to the students via their advisor with a
QR code to use on their devices. Since it was sent the last week of school either not
many advisors had the students fill it out or they students did not scan the code. To
help with student participation, I feel there were a couple of things the leaders could
have done to get the word out. First the SIT team leader could put an
announcement out, sending reminders to staff and also provide a paper copy of the
questions. The announcement would have made the students aware to ask their
advisors for the code. This way in case the advisor did not mention the students can
bring it to their attention. If though staff is bombarded with e-mails it would be
important for reminders to be send out. Staff members are extremely busy in the
last week of school a little reminder would have helped bring back to the front.
Lastly not all of our students have devices in their hands so providing paper copies
of the survey would have reached more diverse students. With parent surveys we
had 79 parents participate. Lastly the number that gave me the most
disappointment is the staff participation which was 22 staff members. These
surveys provide a great way to get your input on what changes you would want to
take place next year.
What we found in the student and staff survey is that you are getting two
extremes. You get the people who completely agree with the statements and love
the school and you get the people who are not content with school and how
situations are being handled. Overall the students are happy with how things are at
Winters Mill. They feel prepared for college or career readiness and they also fell
connect to news/staff. The most important thing is they are feel that Winters Mill
High School is a safe environment for them to learn. When free response was
involved we see that the students did not want our flex period to leave the day.
This was a miscommunication from teachers to students, however we see how the
value that time to meet with teachers and get extra help from tutors. As far as the
parents, they feel that there needs to be a slight increase in the college and career
readiness. The parents feel that there needs to be classes in real world subject

such responsibility, basic living and meal prep. We do see however that parents are
supporting our overall educational initiatives at home. This is very important for us
to see when setting our new objective for the new SIT plan. They also feel very
connect to Winters Mill from the consent update from e-mails. The parent survey is
where we see the biggest difference in the parents who were pleased with Winters
Mill and the parent who thought we were not focusing on important aspects.
Lastly with the staff survey, we see that the staff do not think all students are going
to be college and career ready. They would love to see more rigor in the overall
school. Also there is a miscommunication between what parents find supportive and
teachers find supportive. There is also the possibility of which parents filled out the
survey and what events the teachers are recalling. Teachers would love to see more
communication between administration and staff. Mostly with over e-mailing staff
and enforcing staff to follow guidelines set.
After finishing the discussions what that the survey showed us, we connect
them to last years objective to see if we met them or if we were still in the process
on meeting them. Winters Mill as four different Measures of Success; College and
Career Readiness, Attendance, Safety, and School Climate. We found a mixture of
result if we met or did not meet them. We were separated to discuss the old goals
and objectives per area. We had three groups to look at College and Career
Readiness, Attendance, and School Climate. We thought that our safety goals were
efficient and we were waiting to hear back from the county for updates for
procedures.
I was in the group that was discussing College and Career Readiness. We
decided that we should stop looking at this as two separate groups but together
because after students through college they should still be career ready. The SIT
group leaders decided to break our objectives into different committees. College
and career readiness would be spilt into four different committees, College
Readiness, Career and Tech, In-house completer programs/majors, and AP.
Our ideas is the get the incoming freshman to create a flacon flight plan
during an advisory lesson. This flight plan will be a check off sheet for the path they
would like to follow. It will give them clear guideline if they want to complete an inhouse completer program or major, or if they would like to go to career and tech.
However first we are going to give them a tour of our in-house completers/majors
by participation in a walk through were they get to play with equipment and
programs they will get to experiences. This would be very hands on. During their
eighth grade year they get to go to the Career and Tech center to do this same
thing. After the completion the flight plan, we would set school choices based what
and where they would like to go. The schools would be labeled as a safe, good fit,
and reach schools. With the counselors help they would add the incoming freshman
statistics. This way they understand what it takes to get in the schools. Our AP focus
was on testing and enrolling students in the classes. Our school goal is to get
students to take one AP test before they graduate. The way our school schedule is
set up sometimes students do no sign up for the test because they are getting the
information in the first semester and not before the test. They are not feeling
prepared.

One for the updates for implanting the school improvement plan, is to make
committees of staff members to be in charge of. This will help us stay on top of the
objectives with the staff taking ownership over the changes in the school. For the
committees to meet and discuss objective in the four areas we will devote four
faculty meetings to just SIT team objectives. If this works how we foresee it working,
at next years meeting we will be able to build on our objectives with more staff
involvement since they are knowing they have a direct impact on the changes.