Continuous School Improvement Plan

High engagement in the classroom contributes to student success which leads us to our focus for the school year.  We will increase academic success through our increase in student engagement with an intentional focus during instruction.  Daily lessons will be designed to include connections for students, effective questioning, reflective opportunities, clear instructions, and collaboration.  If students are more deeply engaged in their learning, they will demonstrate a higher level of success.  This success will be measured with student responses on quarterly surveys along with quarterly grades.  The intentional engagement strategies will be emphasized all year long through regular observations and planned professional learning opportunities for faculty and staff.  The faculty will determine a baseline by gathering feedback from their students during the 2nd quarter to determine which strategies students regularly experience in their classes.  Students will provide feedback during the 3rd, and 4th quarters to help faculty determine their progress. 

Students will additionally engage and remain focused on academic progress by monitoring their success each quarter.  Monitoring will occur with the assistance of a teacher mentor.  Each teacher will be assigned to work with two students during the school year.  Teachers will meet with their mentees at least once per quarter to develop and then review academic plans, goals and progress using the student success tracker template.  Workshop Wednesdays will be utilized as a strategy to support students with either remedial support or assignment completion.  Teachers will communicate with parents and make referrals when Workshop Wednesdays are needed.  

All teachers have been assigned to work with two students and most teachers have met with their assigned students to discuss academic plans with regard to graduation requirements including coursework and testing.  Some teachers are struggling to meet with students due to attendance related matters.  Adjustments have been made for some mentor assignments due to this concerning access.  There is a need to explore options for access time to ensure mentors are able to engage with students satisfactorily.  The leadership team will discuss  a modified bell schedule to build time into the school day for this purpose.  By providing time in the school day, teachers will be able to discuss goal setting with their assigned students without interruption.  Regular discussions between mentors and mentees will include academic progress for the quarter, discussion of missing assignments and a possible need for Workshop Wednesday, and testing plans for the school year.

To further improve student engagement, teachers have also received professional learning on engagement strategies to include the focus on intentional connections for students, effective questioning, reflective opportunities, clear instructions, and collaboration.  The November faculty meeting included instruction with application for these five strategies.  Teachers were given opportunities to experience several strategies so they might better understand and implement in their own classrooms.  A bank of strategies was created and teachers are meeting in their professional learning teams to collaborate on strategies and add to the engagement bank.  Strategies are documented within the bank and all teachers can reference.  The January faculty meeting will be teacher led and focused on effective questioning.  Additional faculty meetings for February, March, and April will also include a designated focus for an engagement strategy and will be teacher led.  Teachers will be selected based on their highlighted success as observed by administration.  

By the end of semester 1, teachers will have provided students with an engagement survey to determine a baseline of how often students believe the specific engagement strategies are included in daily lessons.  Teachers will also receive feedback from administration on these same strategies using a walkthrough observation form.   

Our teachers are working daily to support all students.  Communication is strong and students and parents have been informed regularly about the Workshop Wednesday sessions for additional academic support.  We have a few regular students who attend each Wednesday evening and each week we work to recruit more.  Our weekly newsletters include this communication and student grades have improved because of these efforts.  Whether students are completing assignments or just seeking to understand content better, the academic success is evident.  Our counseling staff has also used this program to advertise how students can work toward graduation requirements.  During our February faculty meeting, our entire faculty worked collaboratively to address academic concerns.  Teams were created such that CTE teachers and instructional aides worked with alternative education teachers to identify students and monitor their progress.  Teachers collectively worked to determine current progress and what is required for end of year academic success in identified at-risk areas. Teachers were provided a tool on how to calculate grades needed in order for students to pass for the year. The collaborative exercise not only allowed teachers to reflect on student progress, but it allowed teachers to identify what might need to be considered for students to remain engaged and have hope moving into the final quarter. As we move into the home stretch of the year, we will plan several events to celebrate our success.  Ideas for the celebration include any student who passes all classes for quarter 3 will earn a ticket to the student center for a special celebration.  In addition, we will plan Mentor Monday during quarter 4 where we run a 2 hour delay schedule to provide mentors time to meet with their mentees.

Dowell J. Howard desires to strengthen teacher capacity and support staff retention by providing instructional feedback through walkthrough observations.   Through the development of a student engagement walkthrough form, members of the administrative team will observe classes to capture observed engagement strategies.  Teacher strengths will also be documented and additional feedback for increased engagement opportunities will be provided.  This process supports our academic focus to improve student achievement and also strengthens teacher capacity through ongoing professional development with suggestions for increased student engagement, coaching, and providing reflection opportunities. 

To enhance our focus on student engagement, teachers have been asked to distribute a survey to one class of their choice prior to the end of first semester.  This engagement survey was created to reflect how often students experience the focused strategies in class.  The survey was shared with faculty and staff during the November faculty meeting and teachers were asked to survey one class prior to the end of the first semester (December 19.)  The survey will be given again to this same class no later than March 5 and then again by May 28. The goal is for students to report that at least 4 of the 8 engagement strategies are implemented either always or usually by May 2026.

There has been a significant change to the administrative team with the loss of our Discipline Dean.  This loss has prevented administrators from getting into classrooms for walkthrough observations as frequently as we would like.  The emphasis remains on engagement with consistent conversations about questioning, collaboration, connections, and reflection.  Our staff surveyed students to determine the level of engagement and survey results were shared with the individual teachers.  Our students report that engagement is strong in many areas, but the results reflect a need for increased collaborative opportunities.  Students will often share their desire to collaborate with their peers and in order to do this effectively, it is important for teachers to intentionally design instructional opportunities with this in mind.  There has been a strong focus on assigning roles when collaboration activities are designed.  During our walkthrough observations we will continue to look for growth in these areas with immediate feedback provided to staff following the observations.

Dowell J. Howard is a unique school with a variety of different programs.  The staff at Dowell J. Howard will work in teams based on their program areas to include:  alternative education, CTE, and Data Science.  All programs will focus on student engagement strategies to support student learning.  Teachers will collaboratively identify and discuss strategies which focus on making connections, effective questioning, reflective opportunities, clear instructions, and collaboration. 

A survey will be created to determine the level of engagement that students are experiencing in their classes.  Students will be surveyed quarterly beginning in quarter 2 to determine levels of engagement.  By May 2026, survey results will show that students are always or usually engaged on at least 4 of the 8 survey questions. 

Our professional learning communities are focused on engagement strategies and continue each month during our faculty meetings to learn more deeply about effective questioning, collaboration, making connections and reflective opportunities.  The focus this past quarter was on collaboration and making connections.  Teachers worked collectively to model collaboration strategies to include identifying student strengths, assigning roles based on those strengths, agreeing upon norms for the team, verifying the goal, using a collaborative technology tool, and reflecting on next steps.  The focus was very strategic and aligned with goal #1 in our CSIP.  The faculty modeled the strategies that we hope can be implemented in the classroom and the focus is on the intentional design of this instructional strategy.  In March, our faculty meeting was teacher-led and she focused on making connections to the learning.  She provided instruction on how connections help improve comprehension and retention and link new ideas to prior knowledge.  Teachers were asked to connect their learning and modify a lesson plan by adding or enhancing their plan to make explicit time for connections or skills before, during or after learning.  Teachers were even encouraged to use Gemini to support them in this experience.  The bank of engagement strategies continues to grow for our staff with 20 strategies currently reflected on this shared spreadsheet of ideas.  

During the 2024-25 school year, only 10 parents responded to the parent climate survey.  The staff at Dowell J. Howard will provide consistent weekly communication with a newsletter to highlight events and ways that parents can support learning.  The newsletter will include recognitions and celebrations for programs.  There will also be a minimum of two school-wide family engagement events during the school year to include an Open House in the fall of 2025 and spring of 2026. Resources for each of the CTE and Data Science programs will be provided for families to include guides and resources.  These materials will be linked on the Dowell J. Howard website and also in newsletters.    

The fall Open House occurred in August and the spring Open House will be planned during the second semester.  The recruitment for the 2026-27 school year is underway and resources have been developed for each of the CTE and Data Science programs and they have been advertised on the website and in the weekly newsletter.

Our CTE and Data Science recruitment completed on Tuesday, November 18 with two full days spent at each of the comprehensive schools in our division.  We utilized students and staff to meet with prospective students to talk about each of our CTE programs and our new Data Science program.  Information has been included on the website and in our weekly newsletter.  We have discussed plans for advertisement to be included in the comprehensive school newsletters as well.  

We will begin planning our spring Open House in January and will likely tie this event to the May event involving the Spring Employer Expo on May 13 from 1 - 5 PM.  As we initiate planning for the Open House, we continue to collaborate with community partners through EDA.  An event is in the works on January 22 to include various businesses in our community (Winchester Metals, Marlowe Motors, Shockeys Construction, Blue Ridge Industries, Cardinal Technologies, Cives Steel, and NFCU) to tour Dowell J. Howard and discuss ways to improve business awareness of our programs and accessibility and build pipelines and recruitment for industry aligned pathways.  This information will be shared in our weekly newsletter.  

The climate survey was communicated on multiple occasions and while participation has not been identified, our parents have received much stronger communications this school year due to the use of Parent Square.  Our weekly newsletters have included an administrative message, student competition results, program engagement, and pertinent community information.  We are currently reaching 453 families out of the 455 families that are identified.  More teachers are beginning to use Parent Square for communication sharing whether that is for attendance related matters, academic success, or upcoming events.  This communication platform is providing meaningful family engagement to inform parents about our school.  As we look ahead, the areas for improvement would be to involve parents more in our school.  We have reached out to families to solicit their help with Teacher Appreciation week that is coming in early May.  We have asked for donations such as snacks, beverages or gift cards, monetary contributions, volunteering time or services, or business sponsorships/donations. This is an easy way to involve parents in supporting and recognizing our amazing faculty and staff.  We have also utilized opportunities to better inform our community about our school.  There have been multiple community engagement events where we have invited community members into our school to share more about our programs.  We have hosted two sessions of FCPS 101, hosted an Industry Insight Tour on January 22  and will host the Top of VA Regional Chamber Community Leadership Program on March 20.