Engaging SCOE Special Education Students

02/28/2019 -

Student engagement has been proven to increase student success, but can feel abstract and difficult to measure or increase. However, a team from SCOE's special education department has found successful ways to do just this in Teacher Melanie Bourgeois' EDB class at Windsor Middle School.

The team, which consists of the teacher as well as Tyson Dickinson, Program Principal, Mary Champion, School Psychologist, and Chris White, Classroom Counselor, has been participating in a program designed to measurably increase student engagement, called the Rooster Fellowship. That program is run by the Instructional Services division.

Over the course of the school year, they have tested different strategies for student engagement in Melanie's class and measured the success by surveying students. Over the last couple of months, they have achieved something no other team has—all students reported the highest level of engagement several weeks in a row. They believe the strategy that was most effective was shifting from teacher-led conferences to student-led conferences. In these conferences, students sat down one-on-one with their teacher and identified what they, as the student, thought they could be working on to do better in school. The rest of Melanie's team rearranged their work to support Melanie being able to spend time in these conferences.

Congratulations to this team on challenging themselves to try new strategies and use student input to improve outcomes for their students!