Episode Details

Sue Szachowicz, a history teacher who became principal of Brockton High School, explains how her school built a school-wide literacy initiative after a state test showed failure rates of 44 percent in English and 75 percent in math. A teacher-led committee asked what skills students need, not how to outguess the test.

Her team first guessed wrong by launching a Shakespeare push, then found no Shakespeare on the test. They rebuilt around reading, writing, speaking and reasoning, trained all 334 faculty members, colleague to colleague, and started with writing because every teacher could measure it.

What you'll learn

• Ask what skills students need for your state test, for their classes and for life after school, then group the answers into a few literacy areas.
• Draft skills lists with a teacher committee, then test the wording with a 7-Eleven test so parents can read it.
• Train staff colleague to colleague in small interdisciplinary groups of 20 to 25, all using the same process.
• Start a school-wide initiative in a department other than English so it does not look like an English department mandate.
• Use a common rubric and a calendar so students get repeated, deliberate practice without overloading teachers.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the Brockton High literacy interview
• 1:45 From Brockton student to principal and fellow
• 4:25 Failing test scores and the Boston Globe headline
• 11:13 The Shakespeare mistake and what to ask instead
• 15:36 Taking skill lists to faculty and the 7-Eleven test
• 18:09 Why writing came first and writing is thinking
• 20:27 Training 334 teachers colleague to colleague
• 24:38 The implementation calendar and where to start

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Questions this episode answers

How do you start a school-wide literacy initiative?
Szachowicz's restructuring committee asked what skills students need for the test, for their classes and for life. The overlap became reading, writing, speaking and reasoning. They drafted skills charts, took them to faculty for feedback, and spent a year refining them before asking anyone to change practice.

Why start a literacy initiative with writing?
Szachowicz says her committee chose writing because every teacher in every content area could measure it. She says writing is thinking: when students write, they show what they learned and what confuses them, so teachers know what to reteach.

How do you train a large faculty on one process?
At Brockton High, with 334 faculty, Szachowicz's committee split teachers into interdisciplinary groups of 20 to 25 and ran the same workshop for each. Colleagues taught colleagues, then each teacher picked a reading from their own subject and used a common rubric.

About Sue Szachowicz

Former principal of Brockton High School in Massachusetts, where she was a student, history teacher, assistant principal and principal, now a senior fellow with the International Center for Leadership in Education.

Links and resources

• Brockton High School on Wikipedia
• Brockton High School news article
• New York Times article on Brockton
• New York Times letters on Brockton
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