Differentiated Instruction: Fast Track to the Top (Transcript)

Connie Erikson: My name is Connie Erikson. I was the founding principle of Mesquite Elementary. I began my teaching career here in Vail at Acacia Elementary and I was there for about four years. I thought oh if I could do my dream school what would I do? And then when I was asked to be the planning principal for this school and help plan it I was thinking, you know, what can we do different? What can we do to really help children? And then as we went into our second and third year, you know, the state testing became more and more and more. When the test scores came in we just, you know, were really, really devastated to see that say for instance that fifth grade I remember we were like in the thirty-ninth percentile in math. You know, you think you’re teaching and that you’re doing a good job, but then when we see that we knew that something had to change.

Katie Dabney: Well let’s go ahead and get started. In the enrichment strategies, of course Jen, it’s going to play an important part with that.

Connie Erikson: We just started, you know, talking here as a team and we came up with a plan. We were going to start implementing Reteach and Enrich in the second semester which we did do.

Kirsten Knox: When the new system came and we started all collaborating, the tracks were gone, the collaboration was occurring, the sharing of ideas, so there has been this great collaboration piece where we all really help each other.

Connie Erikson: The staff came together. We were able to design the Reteach and Enrich program and it was just amazing what happened.

So these formatives are a way of assessing everything that you have learned about prime and composite numbers.

Katie Dabney: We wanted to give students an opportunity to be retaught skills that they did not learn, so what we did is we made sure that we had a time in the day where if students did not master the skill that was previously taught, we gave them time to master that.

Connie Erikson: And the math scores jumped tremendously when we got them back after that aims test and we went from a performing school to an excelling school. It was the key to moving us up. The leadership in Vail, you know, starts out with people like Katie.

Katie Dabney: Connie was my mentor. I worked for her as a teacher and really kind of followed in the footsteps of what Connie started at Mesquite and have just expanded upon that. I’m Katie Dabney. I’m the principal of Mesquite Elementary in the Vail School District in Tucson, Arizona.

Calvin Baker: Connie Erikson was promoted and Katie’s name popped to the surface because leadership is not something that comes with the title. Leadership is enhanced with a title.

Katie Dabney: We’re a team in the Vail School District, and just as our teachers collaborate and work together and share ideas, we do that at a district level. I really believe that it’s exciting to be a part of something successful. And I can go home every night and know that we have positively impacted the life of a child, and that what we’re doing, we’re doing the best that we can for kids and so that helps me go to sleep at night but it’s also what gets me up in the morning.