SEL Curriculum and Professional Development Lead Valerie Corson said the first highlight was regarding Fly Five, an SEL curriculum for grades kindergarten through eighth. All MCSD elementary schools implemented the program after Woodbury joined last year.

During the first year, there was an increase in keyboard vocabulary among students and staff.

“Which is great progress,” she said. “They’re still working through typical challenges such as time management and organization. The overall implementation has been going very well.”

Corson said they are trying to figure out how the program fits in and when to implement the lessons. Fortunately, the teachers seem receptive to the lessons and are starting to see how it can be incorporated into everything in the school day.

MCSD School Board members Zach Wahl, Elizabeth Wise and Sara Faltys listen during Monday night’s regular meeting.

“Which is our end goal, always when it comes to social emotional learning,” she said.

The Fly Five curriculum addresses CARES – Cooperation, Assertiveness, Responsibility, Empathy and Self-Control.

“All of these do align with our core competencies for SEL,” Corson said. “When we talk about what we want our kids to know in terms of their core competencies, relationship skills, self awareness, responsible decision making, self awareness and self management. Those are our five core areas.”

CARES is exciting, she said, as the school staff have really embedded it into SEL. Corson said staff have taken formats and integrated CARES to create consistent teacher language. Two years ago, she said she encountered representatives and asked how MCSD staff could implement CARES and Fly Five into Responsive Classroom approaches. Corson said they were trying to figure out how to make it work.

“It spiked their interest, and last year they came and did a whole spiel on us,” she said. “They have completely taken over and [this] is them taking over and embracing that whole concept. When I said our counselors want to do this, they were like, ‘Let us think about how we can do that.’ We kind of helped them along the way, but it’s really a testament to how we are embracing both and leading the way in what we’re doing, and shaped what they’re doing and how they’re promoting their program.”

From left to right, MCSD School Resource Specialists Jayden Sellers, Melinda Tullis, Samantha Baedke and Meredith Lageschulte were presented with certificates of appreciation during Monday night’s board meeting in conjunction with National School Social Work Week.

The other highlights regarded Responsive Classroom, a set of practices intended to create a happy, safe and engaging learning environment. The curriculum focuses on four areas – effective management, engaging academics, positive community and developmentally responsive teaching. The first highlight was another year of observation feedback visits from a Responsive Classroom consultant, who measures how the four areas are implemented in classrooms.

The consultant scores on a 1-to-3 scale, with 3 being exceptionally well.

“It is not very often schools ever score a 3,” Corson said. “There’s only a couple districts she works with that consistently score 2s, and we’re one of those.”

District-wide, she said there was improvement in all four focus areas, with effective management the highest and developmentally responsive classroom the lowest. Five of the seven elementary schools showed improvement in all four areas. Franklin and Anson did not show the same results.

“Fisher has completely skyrocketed in their growth this year,” Corson said.

From left to right, Marshalltown Community School District (MCSD) Director of Business Operations Randy Denham, School Board President Sean Heitmann and Superintendent Theron Schutte look on during Monday night’s regular meeting.

She said consultation is also done outside of the classrooms and in areas such as hallways, cafeteria and playground. Corson said the district-wide average was almost to 3 in some of the areas, such as the arrival spaces. Non-structured spaces such as entry ways and cafeterias are a struggle, falling at or less than 2.

“I will tell you though that the cafeteria one on the average doesn’t show it, but sitting in the feedback visits with the consultant, we have done a lot of improvement and she has seen so much improvements in the buildings she was in,” Corson said. “It was something she continuously complimented on.”

The last highlight was the training of paraeducators in Responsive Classroom. The majority rated the overall experience positively. Corson said they learned things such as developmentally appropriate responses and teacher language.

“A lot of them commented how it’s helped them collaborate and work more efficiently with classroom teachers,” she said. ” . . . They feel like they understand things now and can collaborate with teachers more.”

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.