Effective Educators

The next item on the list of things on which LCS focuses in order to prepare students for college and career is:

Effective Educators.

There is currently a shortage of teachers. There are fewer students studying to become teachers. There are more seasoned teachers leaving the profession for a variety of reasons: low pay, changes in policy and curriculum, classroom behavior issues, etc. And there are many teachers who quit the profession after just a few years. The pool of educators is small, and the pool of excellent, effective educators is even smaller. LCS recognizes the vast importance of hiring only the most effective educators.

Teaching is a difficult job, but a most important one. These educators will see your child five days a week for ten months. Elementary teachers will spend seven hours a day with your child, five days a week, for ten months. For this reason alone, the character of a teacher must be above reproach and the kind you would want influencing your child for roughly 1400 hours a year. Beyond that is the importance of the teacher’s ability to teach the curriculum effectively, producing results in each student’s learning.

LCS chooses teachers who have been properly trained for their area of education. Their expertise is essential for the success of each student. The teachers are also ACSI certified, and continue to build on their own education in order to prosper their students.

Without teachers who are willing to use the curriculum correctly and show flexibility in their own concepts of education in order to meet the needs of their students, there will be few positive results. The educators at LCS are not only willing to do whatever it takes to help eliminate academic gaps and propel each student forward, they are also willing to use the curriculum in the ways that have been proven to produce results. They work diligently independently, and effectively as a team of educators as well.

In order to be this effective, the teachers must also have a lifestyle that aligns with God’s Word. Without that, their effectiveness diminishes. They must not only preach God’s Word, but live it as well, effectively displaying the gospel daily for each student. Each teacher speaks from and helps shape for the students a biblical worldview. It is these things that makes the LCS educator truly effective in the lives of their students.

If you would like to hear more about LCS’s effective educators and perhaps meet some of them, please schedule a free tour today.

teacher-classroom

Best- Practice Instruction

The third item in our list of things on which Lakeside Christian School focuses in order to prepare students for college is this:

best- practice instruction.

Best practice, as you may know, is using proven, research-based methods to achieve a desired result. These will vary, naturally, depending on the goal. Because Lakeside Christian School desires to prepare each student for college and career, that means in this case, best- practice instruction is using the methods that are proven to help ready students for life after high school.

Here is what Lakeside Christian School does, and one of our best practices that is producing results:

Closed-Loop Instructional Process

Technology can be integrated into instruction to track outcomes student by student, to create what is known as a “Closed-Loop” Instructional Process. This is done in elementary language arts. In the first week, each student is tested through “benchmark” assessments. Through prior grade level standards, students are tested to determine individual standards mastered or not mastered. At that point, students are placed into small groups based on similarities: those who are working above grade level, on grade level, and those with some un-mastered skills both up to a year below grade level and beyond a year below grade level. After this, teachers provide targeted daily instructions to the small groups in order to bring mastery to the standards found in prior tests. Every 8 weeks, students are re-tested, re-grouped, and the process begins again. This closes the loop. Therefore this practice is a fluid thing, allowing students to move into appropriate groups throughout the year and receive the specialized instruction they need in order to close academic gaps and succeed.

How do we know this works? What makes this a best practice? Here’s what happens when technology provides the instructor specific feedback used to provide specific instruction to each student (in just one school year):

The school year began with 63% of elementary students scoring on or above grade level.

The school year ended with 85% of elementary students scoring on or above grade level.

The school year began with 37% of elementary students with un-mastered skills below grade level.

The school year ended with 15% of elementary students with un-mastered skills below grade level, and those had closed all prior gaps in just months.

All of this aligns with our purpose statement, which indicates that we wish to “prosper or community.” As our website details, 55% of all 4th grade students in the nation have developed learning gaps of un-mastered skills from prior grades. If this is ignored, this leads to 80% of all 8th grade students’ success inhibited in high school and scores that impact college entrance.

Lakeside Christian School will not ignore this problem. We invest both money and time in this process: the technology and consistent staff. We know that this instructional process is necessary for our students’ success in high school and beyond; we have a responsibility to provide that for them. Additionally, it’s our mandate as Christians to improve our community, and this is achieved as we improve our educational process and through the proclamation of God’s Word.

If you’d like to know more about this process or any other best- practices used at Lakeside Christian School, call today to schedule a free tour.

Aligned Curriculum

Next on our list of things on which Lakeside Christian School focuses in order to prepare our students for college and career is

Aligned Curriculum.

Another name for aligned curriculum is coherent curriculum. According to edglossary.org, aligned curriculum “refers to an academic program that is (1) well organized and purposefully designed to facilitate learning, (2) free of academic gaps and needless repetitions, and (3) aligned across lessons, courses, subject areas, and grade levels.”

Simply put, an academic program with aligned curriculum would be one in which all assessments, lessons, instructions, tests, assignments, textbooks, and the like are matched in such a way as to meet standards and cohere as a whole. The purpose of this is that the students’ knowledge builds on itself naturally and doesn’t repeat unnecessarily.

When teachers work together within a school “using developmentally appropriate and well-defined learning expectations (source),” students will have a better chance at eliminating and/or closing academic gaps, therefore becoming more college prepared.

This makes sense, especially when you understand that there can be a four-year gap in academics between the best and worst state standards. This means a senior in one state might find himself at the academic level of a freshman in another state. Consistency is important.

Beyond consistency within the school is alignment to education standards that measure college readiness at grade level. Lakeside Christian School has therefore aligned with ACT Aspire testing. College and career readiness standards are their basis for measuring student improvement (grades 3-10). Aspire tests grade-level knowledge as defined by the standards of the largest states in the US.

ACT Aspire provides three types of tests: classroom assessments, interim assessments, and summative assessments. All three work together to provide insight into each student’s progress and readiness, which then guides instruction.

Why is this so important? It’s important because our goal is to work from day one to help your child become college and career ready. One way we do that is through aligned curriculum with ACT Aspire.

“ACT solutions are explicitly designed and empirically validated to assess student progress toward college and career readiness” (source).

No other organization can link student test scores and actual post-high school performance, plus the ability to then determine what must be learned to be ready for college. Our alignment with the evidence-based ACT Aspire Benchmark testing gives students, parents, and teachers the information they need to determine the right educational path and possible interventions needed to prepare them for college and career. There is no guessing or hoping; there is no pulling for grades high enough to simply graduate; instead, each student is given the opportunity to become truly prepared for life after high school.

For more information about ACT ASPIRE, please visit their website. Consider scheduling a free tour with Lakeside Christian School. We’d love to show you how ACT Aspire works, and what makes LCS different from other schools.

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Effective Educators