PAR Focus Interviews - Reflection

In considering my PAR project, I’ve given a lot of thought to how our school district, Las

Virgenes Unified, can improve our English Language Arts test scores at the middle school level.

In order to delve into this question, I interviewed Lindero Canyon Middle School principal Eric

Anhalt and our Director of Education and Leadership, Ryan Gleason. Both interviews took place

at the Las Virgenes Unified School District Office. Eric’s interview took place on Monday,

September 23rd and Ryan’s interview took place on Tuesday, October 1st.

In interviewing Eric, I asked him a number of questions related to curriculum and

instruction. In 2017-18 I facilitated a middle school adoption process for middle school ELA, and

the outcome resulted in teachers developing their own curriculum and forgoing a standard

publisher-authored curriculum. Eric shared that many of his teachers feel that this adoption has

resulted in declining/stagnant test scores. They feel that without a traditional book to draw from,

students could potentially be missing out on core instruction they would otherwise receive. In

addition, I asked him a variety of questions surrounding professional development. I had planned

on asking additional questions as they related to class structure and teacher efficacy, however

Eric’s responses caused me to center my focus on his teachers’ perceptions of the curriculum and

how we can better support them through professional development.

After receiving the perspective from the school site level, I also wanted to confer with

someone about the larger picture. Interestingly enough, Ryan’s perspective differed from that of

Eric’s regarding curriculum and professional development. He shared that the curriculum

adoption been beneficial to the middle schools, and allowed a group of efficacious teachers to

better utilize their creativity and not be limited by a “one size fits all” curriculum. Ryan’s

interview centered more around the concept of how to support struggling students, which he feels
is the main step to enhancing middle school ELA test scores. In addition, a lot of my questions

centered around the overall structure of our middle school program in considering both the

Honors and GATE programs and how they might be impacting our struggling students in the

general education classes.

Through my interview with Eric, I learned that teachers are struggling in the second year

of their curriculum adoption are challenged by a perceived lack of coherence. I had previously

been under the impression that the adoption was appreciated by all teachers, and there were not

any significant struggles that were being endured. In addition, I learned that teachers are seeking

additional professional development options in order to be supported with the curriculum’s

implementation. I did not receive clarity on was whether or not this was having a negative impact

on test scores. With one year of implementation, test scores were stagnant so it’s difficult to

know how much of an impact the homegrown curriculum made on student achievement.

However, what I did hear loud and clear was that at least one of our three middle schools is

struggling with the implementation of our self-made ELA curriculum.

Through my interview with Ryan, I learned that he feels strongly that they way to improve

our middle school ELA data is through targeted intervention strategies for struggling students.

He believes that this is an area of growth as a whole for our district, and we need to implement a

more systematic approach to intervention. I learned that we have a 24% D/F rate at the middle

school level for ELA, which was an alarmingly high number. In addition, he feels there would be

significant improvement in our student achievement levels if our classes had more of a

homogenous grouping. He shared that our honors program potentially might be having a negative

impact on student achievement due to struggling students being restricted from being in the same

grouping as higher performing students. This was an interesting perspective, as it is contrary to

the traditional thought process that honors classes would have an overall positive impact on

student achievement. Through this interview, it got me thinking more about the potential research

on ability grouping and what this might tell us about ways in which we can enhance overall

student achievement in ELA at the middle school level.

Overall, I appreciated the opportunity to interview Mr. Anhalt and Mr. Gleason. It was

interesting to see that differing perspectives from the site and district level, and it presented me

with many different considerations in how to best approach the PAR project.