May 31, 2020
How We Nearly Doubled Math Scores with Kevin Finnegan
Transformative Principal 333
Social Media: When we saw Math could be a discussion, it totally
changed everything.
Kevin Finnegan is the principal of Prairie
Hill School in Illinois. His students recently showed a 77%
growth in Math, and we talk about how he made that happen.
- Prairie hill is the school and the community comes together
around it.
- Northern Illinois, PK–4th grade.
- 9 years as the principal.
- Mission statement: Students first, always.
- PLC school
- Reformed schedule so that every day (4 teachers per team) have
an hour of common collaborative time every day.
- Why are we making this decision? The students are always the
bringback.
- Norms: imagine the students you are talking about are
here.
- To be a great principal is easy. You just have to have a great
staff.
- PE teacher said, “I want students more.”
- Each class has 10 half hour blocks each week: Art, PE,
STEM,
- Always been a high performing district. Makes change really
hard when you have had success in the past.
- staff is competitive within themselves.
- Noticed that math scores were less than we expected.
- Dove into the data.
- Computation was awesome, but they struggled with elaborating on
their thoughts.
- In every math assignment, adding the words, “I know this
because…”
- If you see something that can be done in Kindergarten it can be
done anywhere.
- Ready Math - iReady as platforms for learning.
- Standards based School, done in isolation.
- Common language in math.
- Didn’t get good training at first, but then got good training
and that made a huge difference.
- Math has always dealt black and white.
- Math didn’t have to be one answer, it could be a discussion,
totally changed everything.
- Talking about kids’ growth, talking about assessments,
classwork, and then looking at the data.
- It’s not about what you teach, it’s about what we learned.
- How long did it take to understand that it was working?
- It fit us, rather than us fitting it.
- How to be a transformative principal? Spend a little time with
kids, like on their birthday. It’s a constant reminder that kids
come first.
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