A Dual Vision

At Fairfield High we cannot have a vision for Academics without a vision for Educational Technology. Conversely, we cannot have a vision for Educational Technology without a vision for Academics. After reflecting back on our year so far we have focused on two very important areas for the end of the 2015-2016 school year and for the 2016-2017 school year. We want to see teachers regularly using technology in instruction with the goal of reaching DOK 2 or higher and SAMR: Augmentation or above

Our Ed Tech Vision: "At FHS we see that educational technology will be a quintessential and indispensable part of the teaching and learning process; teachers will use edtech as facilitators of learning relevant to the students' lives, and students will use edtech to become empowered, self-directed learners who realize their potential to impact their community and the wider world."

Community Partnerships that are STRONG

Fairfield High continues to partner with Liberty Church. Liberty Church has worked hard to provide ongoing academic tutors for our math classes at FHS. Additionally, FHS has used the Liberty Church facility for several events: NEU Doug Curry presentation, DUI court for our seniors, and our AFJROTC awards assembly.  We have in turn been able to support Liberty Church by providing the use of our facility. Liberty was able to hold their Easter Service celebration on our campus and hold a massive egg hunt on our football field!

Carl's Junior is also an ongoing supporter of academics at Fairfield High. Carls' Junior donates lunch monthly for our students and staff members of the month. Each month's donation is worth over $250.

Parent and community member, Mr. Bass visits FHS regularly on Friday's and brings warm donuts for the office staff. Each time he comes it is with a smile and a thank you for all that everyone does. Mr. Bass is also a strong supporter of our basketball team and his son!

NEU Doug Curry presentation @Liberty Church 

Mr. Bass with Dianna and Rosanne

AFJROTC Awards Ceremony @Liberty Church

AFJROTC Awards Ceremony @Liberty Church 

Seniors at the DUI court @Liberty Church

Perfect Attendance @FHS

At Fairfield High we recognize the importance of acknowledging and reinforcing student accomplishments. On April 15th all students that had perfect attendance for the month of March were awarded a certificate, an early out to lunch pass, and an otter pop at the "Perfect Attendance Station." Student helpers were working the otter pop station and commented that they really liked the idea of recognizing perfect attendance. The 103 students that were recognized had not missed a day of school for March and were not tardy to any classes for the entire month.

Looking into the 2016-2017 school year we are going to provide incentives monthly for students that demonstrate both perfect attendance and improved attendance. We are also going to be incorporating incentives for students that attend school events such as games and rallies. We feel that with more student spirit and camaraderie, our attendance rates will also improve. We will continue to work closely with our attendance liaison and develop attendance plans for each of our chronically absent students. Identifying and meeting with the students and parents early in the year will help counteract the truancy problems.

Connecting all 9th grade students with a senior buddy through Link Crew is another process we will be implementing for the 2016-2017 school year.

Going for Gold Standard Customer Service @FHS

Ensuring that our staff delivers Gold Standard Customer Service is extremely important. One way to determine how we are doing is feedback via surveys and anecdotal comments from parents and visitors. In an effort to reach as many families as possible with the survey, we placed the link on our Twitter feed and on our Parents section of our website. Chromebooks were placed in the front office and counseling office for parents to take the survey after completing their visit to FHS.

We are proud to recognize Rosann Aylworth as a shining example of Gold Standard Customer Service at Fairfield High.

Teach for Success @FHS

Teach for Success strategies are an integral part of moving our students and school forward. In addition to the key Instructional Strategies that we focus on we are also placing a heavy emphasis on increasing the Depth of Knowledge or DOK in all settings to at least a DOK 2 or higher.

The results of the Fall Teach for Success sweeps was shared with Department Chairs who then relayed that information to their departments and continued the conversation on strengths and weaknesses.

At Fairfield High we are continuing to run our Plan/Observe/Debrief, or POD, sessions this year. We added our Physical Education, Foreign Language, Special Ed, and Visual Performing Arts departments to the POD cycle this year. Our department chairs who are also instructional coaches are leading the POD sessions and planning and guiding side by side with their colleagues in their department. This is extremely valuable time spent as the department works to increase DOK and key instructional strategies. Observations are held the second day and then we get back together on day three to debrief and talk next steps. The POD cycle allows for ongoing refinement and reflection on teaching practices. The sweep data is therefore no longer information that is shared in isolation. Instead it is now incorporated int our next steps of POD.

We are also taking our remaining POD sessions for the year one step further. We will be incorporating our Ed Tech Specialist into the planning day. That way we can work on incorporating our educational technology alongside our increasing rigor and focus on key instructional strategies. We want to emphasize that integration of educational technology complements instructional strategies and is not a one or the other approach to planning.

Falcons SOAR with PBIS @FHS

Falcons SOAR with PBIS at Fairfield High. This year Fairfield High has jumped into year one of PBIS with a lot of enthusiasm. We have a solid PBIS Team that includes teachers, administration, classified staff, a parent, a school counselor, and our school psychologist. We see the great need to develop everyone's understanding of Positive Behavior Intervention Supports and therefore we have the PBIS team as a staple presentation at each of our staff meetings. The team is working hard to build trust and understanding. The team utilizes comment boxes on campus as well as direct feedback from staff members in order to develop next steps that have the support of the staff as a whole.

EVERY classroom teacher has a SOAR poster that is unique to their setting but supports the tenets of SOAR: Safe, Organized, Always Respectful, and Responsible. Below are two examples of SOAR posters.

RTI "Response to Intervention" @FHS

Response to Intervention or RTI is a pivotal piece of any school campus. It is essential that as educators we are constantly engaged in progress monitoring to determine what is and isn't working for our students. At FHS we offer a core replacement reading intervention, EDGE, for our incoming 9th graders that are more than three years below grade level in reading. This year we also created an English lab support for our 9th graders in Springboard that needed some additional scaffolding in order to better access the rigorous curriculum. In math we are providing both a traditional Math 1 lab support and a C-STEM math lab support this year. Our C-STEM math lab support incorporates the basics of computer coding and robotics in order to provide students another avenue to develop their Math 1 skills. We realize that our interventions need to be constantly evaluated for effectiveness.

We additionally are offering PLATO credit recovery after school for students that need to make up credits or validate their grades for college acceptance. The students that are enrolled in PLATO are making good progress in their credit recovery. In addition to PLATO we have a traditional Math 1 credit recovery course after school that is working on making up credits and building the math knowledge base for students that were unsuccessful in Math 1 first semester.

Below you will see a snapshot of our Assessment Calendar at Fairfield High. 

Amazing Partnership with Liberty Church @FHS

Fairfield High is thrilled to partner with Liberty Church this school year. We are working in partnership with Liberty in many capacities. Volunteers from Liberty are coming weekly into the math classrooms as math tutors. The first Friday of every month volunteers from Liberty serve a catered breakfast to all staff. We are also sharing our facilities. Fairfield High's stadium will be used by Liberty Church for their Easter celebration. Fairfield High was able to use the Liberty Church facility to host Doug Curry from NEU and we will be using their facility later this month when we host a DUI court for our seniors.

The possibilities are endless when people join together as a united force. The partnership with Liberty Church is amazing and we look forward to continuing this partnership for many years to come.

Integration of Technology and SAMR @Fairfield High

Integration of educational technology has been a focus of ours at Fairfield High since the 2014-2015 school year. Year one we sent several teachers to the GAFE Summit in November 2014 and about 20 to the GAFE Summit over the summer. Then, this year with the deployment of the 1:1 Chromebooks for our 9th graders, we ensured that every 9th grade teacher attended the GAFE Summit in November 2015. However, knowing and understanding the Google Apps for Education is just one step in the puzzle. Understanding how to integrate and where a lesson stands as far as SAMR is another critical component. We want our teachers to fundamentally understand that merely substituting technology for paper is very similar to a DOK level 1. We want to see our teachers at the levels of modification and redefinition.

Our Ed Tech Specialist, Josh Harris, has been a key player in assisting teachers to understand SAMR and what it looks like in their classrooms. Josh has assisted teachers in many ways and his 1:1 coaching in their classroom has been invaluable. Josh is also now going to be part of our continued Plan/Observe/Debrief planning sessions. We are going to work on showing teachers how they can have overlap with educational technology and instructional strategies such as academic conversations.

Our teachers have engaged in two colleague to colleague teaching sessions so far this school year. In November we had our #TechJamSession and in February we had our #InnerCircleOuterCircle. At both sessions teachers shared with each other different ideas for tech integration and ways to move their classrooms from DOK 1/2 up to DOK 3 and 4.

CAASPP and Biology CST at Fairfield HIgh

Now that we are in year three of CAASPP things are becoming a little easier to plan. This year the duty of preparing our CAASPP schedule was given to Assistant Principal, Dr. Will Cushman. He prepared the calendar/schedule in January and shared with the department chair in February. It was then shared with the staff at the March staff meeting and every member has it in their shared Google folder. Here is a snapshot of our testing calendar that includes the Biology CST and CAASPP.

What you should know about KW

Kristen Witt is the principal of Fairfield High School.