Suttons Bay From the Staff Perspective

Kelly Halvorsen, Special Education Teacher at Suttons Bay High School; Leslye Robinson, Special Education Teacher at Suttons Bay Middle School;  and Sarah Christensen, Counselor shared thoughts about school improvement efforts at Suttons Bay.

Q. Can you speak to the changes in services to the Native American students that were so much a part of the disproportionality citation?

A. Part of our learning included staff breaking into Professional Learning Community groups. Groups talked about various topics, including the idea of bringing the culture and information about the culture to our staff here. Isadore Toulouse came and talked about early Native American boarding schools. Our students’ grandparents were literally stolen from their homes and stripped of their culture. They didn’t let them speak their language. Our tribe here wasn’t able to learn their language. I wasn’t aware of that and didn’t realize how much dysfunction that caused in families.

Over the last three or four years, Suttons Bay has sponsored some of our students to go to a language conference in Sault Ste. Marie. After Superintendent Mike Murray came on board, he saw the value of incorporating the culture and the language. A couple of the parents who go to this conference said, “Oh, this wonderful man, Isadore Toulouse, would be willing to come down and help start a language program at Suttons Bay.” Once again, Mike reached out and made connections with people. The tribe actually pays the language teacher, who also provides other services to the tribe. This whole process strengthened relationships between the school and the tribe. Funding from a Michigan Education Association mini-grant (to improve academic results for Native American students) provided several opportunities for Suttons Bay staff and students. Activities included the above mentioned language conference for students held in Sault Ste. Marie and a Critical Issues for Native Americans seminar held in Mt. Pleasant.

Toulouse is from the Manitoulin Islands, a member of the first nation community in Canada. They didn’t lose their language there because children were not taken to boarding schools. The students really love working with a tribal leader. The tribal representative is engaging and works to instill pride in who they are. At a recent gathering, students made lunch for the tribal elders at the school. Elders from the tribe were invited to sit in on the language classes. Elders are very much a part of this culture. The tribal leader embraces that and makes it part of the learning process. Kids have their grandparents with them in the class, telling stories and helping teach the language. It is amazing to watch!

We have a wonderful tribal chairman, Derek Bailey, and have maintained a Parent Committee with tribal parents. Parents want to work with the schools. We also have a tribal liaison who is very involved.

A student from our tribe was the lead dancer at the Gathering of Nations, which included Northern, Central, and South American indigenous tribes. He did the chicken dance. It was fascinating with all the costumes and the things they did. We also had a national champion hoop dancer from the tribe who was a Suttons Bay student. She performed for the entire school.

Q. What was the path that led to this level of engagement and brought it into being?

A. Awareness about disproportionate representation and increased understanding about how we could better serve our students really got the ball rolling. Superintendent Mike Murray has been a phenomenal leader in getting us to acknowledge the problem. He put it out on the table and said, “here is the issue, what are we going to do about it?”

At first it seemed like, “Yikes! The state is coming down on us and we are really in big trouble” following the disproportionate representation citing, but it inspired change that has been needed in this district for a long time.

We found out, in going through this process, that we are doing a lot of things right, but we didn’t have those things documented. Sometimes you get focused so much on the negativity of what’s not happening, of what’s not going right, that you don’t sit back and focus on the positive things that are working and build upon them.

Reaching and Teaching Struggling Learners has helped us to understand that it is really about all struggling learners, not just kids receiving special education services. Teachers present the problem to the core team and say, ‘I’m struggling with this kid.’ Typically it would have been addressed as ‘this kid is struggling.’ Now the focus is ‘what can we as teachers do to help other teachers work with this kid.’

What we have been pushing this year, and somewhat last year, is that special education is a service, not a place. It’s more about what we provide for the student receiving special education services, and “WE” includes the general education teacher. In the past it was always “your students and my students.” We are trying to get past that mind set. All students in this district are “OUR” students. Together as a team we need to figure out what we can do to help an individual kid.

Q. Can you say more about the cultural issues?

A. It is not necessarily about race. You could go to a school where there is a homogeneous population, but you’re still going to have a group of students who learn in a different way. A key point is that it is not what is best for the adults in the school; it is what is best for the students. If the adults can come around and do what is best for the students, then you are doing your job right.

Kids like feeling successful and being part of the class. Previously when students took the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) exam we, had small groups and pulled out the students receiving special education services. When students took the MEAP this year, students receiving special education services were grouped with students in the general education classroom. Watching students receiving special education services perform along with their peers, we noticed that they were working harder than they had ever worked! And the results showed that.

Q. The path of improvement included Response to Intervention (RtI). Did the new superintendent introduce this or was it already part of the conversation?

A. Minimally, I think RtI existed as part of the conversation. We were hearing about it but we really didn’t know what it was all about. The ISD team would bring it to meetings and say that pretty soon identification would be based on the RtI model and no longer the discrepancy model.

Superintendent Murray took things a step further. He went into the community and asked for feedback about what the schools needed. The next thing you know we have daycare and preschool in the district. These are huge improvements on the path to reaching kids early. They have also brought about a better sense of community involvement. When a community day care facility closed two years ago, superintendent Murray took the opportunity to go there and say, “I will hire all of you. You can keep your jobs in daycare but we are going to do it in the school.” The parents were thrilled because their kids could stay after school and receive after-school care. It was good timing. He saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.

Q. What specific processes were put into place that led to improvements in the disproportionate representation issue?

A. We meet as a special education staff to review, analyze, and look for documentation about identified students. The state requires data collection and record keeping. We had very thick files, but sometimes they were not very well organized. In doing our part, as the state required, we began to see patterns of things happening systemically. We were able to act on what we were seeing.

Our meetings began to change once we became better at identifying issues. We were given the time and the direction for the work we needed to be doing. Our special education service area director from TBA ISD, Kim Urbanski, gave us focus. She has been with us through the disproportionate representation citation. Kim has guided us the whole way. She presented the challenge as a huge opportunity and always looked at the positive side of things. We are now so much better at documenting interventions and keeping more accurate and useful data on individual students. We’re striving to recognize that a student may learn differently, but we can teach them according to how they learn. We are all trying to look at things differently.

Freshman progress reports and report cards are reviewed every three weeks. Any student who has a D or an E is required to go to a guided seminar where they get one-on-one help to work on raising that grade. We revaluate progress every three weeks, and if the student has improved and gotten into the C grade range they move out of the guided seminar. We pull data every three weeks on every single freshman student.

We were seeing classroom teachers—all excellent teachers—focusing too much on the students who sit, listen, and do very well. The student who has a different learning style, who can’t sit and pay attention, who becomes disruptive in the classroom, was referred for special education services. It was an easy process, without broader interventions and documentation prior to the special education referral. We now focus more on assisting teachers. Co-teaching helps. Teachers are learning how to work with students who pose difficulty in the classroom.

Students are realizing less separation from general education with the co-teaching model. I had a student who had a two-year re-evaluation this spring. When I told him he didn’t qualify for special education services anymore he said, “I’m in special education?” I can now be hands-off with some of these kids. Students in the co-teaching classrooms do okay and the special education teacher can be really invisible. Another student in this setting asked, “You mean I am not special education anymore?” When I told him he was still receiving special education services,  he replied, “You mean like undercover special education.”