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| I. Who put this portfolio together? | By placing your mouse over the highlighted text, a box will appear with annotated comments. Also provided is a link to the complete list of comments. |
| Who
put this portfolio together? The people who worked on this portfolio represent members of the community, the staff, and the students of Guffey Community Charter School. The school administrator facilitated the process. She first met with all five members of our instructional staff to determine which of our school projects best fit the criteria for a sample portfolio. We decided upon the news magazine project because it is the project that has been sustained for the longest time at our school so far. Then she met with all of the students in the project, the primary mentor of the project, and the volunteers who have helped with the news magazine project to gather ideas about what evidence would best illustrate the project. The work of three students in particular stood out due to the fact that they had been involved in the project for two years. Those three students, Savanna Velasquez, Amanda Andrews, and Josh Smith, worked with the project mentor and their classroom teachers to help gather evidence. At a weekend retreat, the entire staff met to analyze the evidence and discuss the organization of the portfolio. The primary community mentor who has worked most extensively with the project missed the retreat due to illness, but two other project mentors who are familiar with similar projects in the school, attended the retreat and offered valuable input. The administrator then used the notes from the retreat to create the narrative for the portfolio. The portfolio was used in a pilot project of the Rural School and Community Trust Harvard Research team, in conjunction with the Educational Testing Service. The feedback that came from the team was brought back to Guffey's news magazine portfolio team, and revisions were made to the project. The evidence spans a year and a half, and the News Magazine Video which accompanies this portfolio shows clips from both last year and this year. Our technology aide put the video together, and it is relatively easy for the viewer to tell which clips are from this year, and which clips are from last year, because our video equipment was much poorer quality last year. Although the ideal for us would have been to have the students lead the process of creating the portfolio, we focused instead on student involvement at every level, rather than student leadership at every level. Students were included in gathering and analyzing the evidence, organizing the portfolio, producing the video, and giving input to corrections in the narrative.[1] It is worth noting that the process we used for developing the news magazine portfolio was a model for students, staff and mentors to learn from. Our students have since used that model to develop portfolios for four other projects that are happening in our school, and students are taking an increasing leadership role in the development of those portfolios.[2] 
II. What is the Context of the Project? The
Community:[3] During the gold
rush days, the town was a relatively large and busy mining town associated
with the bustling boom town of Cripple Creek. The buildings that are in
the town today are almost entirely historic log cabins or restored buildings
that retain the flavor of the original town. "City Hall" is
a century old log building that still remains, unused, in the middle of
town. The
School:[4] There are three main classrooms, a primary (grades K-2), an intermediate (grades 3-5), and a middle (grades 5-7). The school will expand to eighth grade in the year 2001-2002. The three teachers, along with an office aide, an instructional aide, and a part time janitor, take care of all of the duties of daily operations, including driving the school vans, making lunches, covering the office, offering primary special education services, supervising recesses, and ensuring the teaching of the all the areas of state standards including technology, the arts, foreign language, etc. A consultative administrator comes to the school two afternoons per week to assist in the administrative duties of the school, and a special education consultant comes one morning per month. The student population is relatively stable, serving Guffey area students who would otherwise have to travel on busses as much as four hours a day to get to schools in other towns. Slightly more than fifty percent of the students qualify for free or reduced meals according to federal guidelines. The ethnic breakdown is 85% white and 15% Hispanic. The Purpose of
the Project: Understanding
the Evolution of the News Magazine Project: In the fall of 2000, we had some new students come into the school, and some old ones graduated. When we worked on designing our projects in the first few weeks of school, the new students were excited to join work on a news magazine, but the older students who were left from the year before had lost interest. Two of our new students, in particular, insisted that we shouldn't give up, but other students thought that they would rather try something else. There was a significant group of students who wanted to create a business, but they disagreed about what that business should be, so they decided to survey the community to see what the community thought about starting something else besides the news magazine. They created a random survey (Exhibit A), and did a data analysis (Exhibit B) based on five businesses that the students guessed would generate business.[9] They learned that the community wanted to continue the news magazine, but there was also a positive response to starting a small bakery. The students decided to split their group. Five students formed an editorial board for the news magazine, and six students began to look for mentors in town who might be able to help them start a bakery. By that time, two of our experienced students from last year's news magazine project decided to join the crew, so there were seven students committed to getting the news magazine out. The project was resurrected, and the commitment was renewed. Some changes were made in the structure of the project in order to save everyone from the burn-out of the year before. These are explained in Section III, "What was the approach to the project?" Goals of the
Project: Budget considerations: III. What was the approach to the project?[13] As explained above, the approach changed from last year to this year.[14] Last year we encouraged the students to be the sole authors of every article, which put unreasonable pressure on the students to meet deadlines, and didn't allow them the time they needed to pursue other related interests, such as designing the layout, taking more time to do in-depth researching of articles that interest them, etc. The news magazine consumed their lives, and the commitment to getting news out to the community strained them, to the point that they were overburdened with extra homework and gave up more of their summers than they had intended to give up. The approach this year is more focused, and more relaxed. Helen, Mrs. MacDonald, and the students taking on the project this year took three full weeks at the beginning of school in the fall to work on creating a system that would be less burdensome on students. Students in the project are asked to take on specific roles to help get the news magazine produced, but the expectations that every article should be student-authored is not as strong. Students give themselves more latitude to focus on the areas that really interest them, as long as they are making significant contributions to the end product. One student may enjoy designing ads, while another may enjoy researching for an article on the effects of locoweed on livestock in the area (including her own horse). The various jobs that students can choose from include reporting, researching, and/or interviewing for feature articles or news articles, reporting and interviewing for beats, collecting ads, designing ads, proofreading and editing others' articles, keeping expense accounts, taking pictures with the digital camera, and typesetting. Once they meet their deadline for articles and advertising, the whole group works together on layout design, printing, folding, stapling and distributing.[15] Helen does less formal "teaching" this year, and more responding to student questions as they arise. Last year she would stop the whole class to teach a unit on subject-verb agreement, often losing the younger students and sometimes boring the older students who wanted to get back to their article or their research. This year she lets the "teachable moments" guide her time with the students. Articles and advertisements must be proofread by fellow students, by Helen, and by the school principal before they are submitted for publication, so it presents many opportunities for teaching things like subject-verb agreement "on-the-spot."[16] Another important change this year is that there are expanded options for changing into other projects for a while if a student wants a change of pace. At the quarter, when a new issue is about to be born, students can switch with students in other projects if they desire, and then switch back again at the quarter if they choose. This has resulted in students having a higher level of personal commitment, rather than feeling "stuck" in a project that they committed to at the beginning of the year. Because of this, the news magazine has had twelve different students participate in its production this year, with each issue being produced by a slightly different team. Some students choose to stay with the project for the entire year, but others may decide after producing one issue that they need a break from the pressures of journalism. This year, too, Helen is much more comfortable in her role as mentor, and much more confident in her ability to work well with children. Mrs. MacDonald rarely meets with the news magazine project anymore, spending her time with other projects instead. The students meet with Helen at the beginning of a new issue to decide who will do what, with the more experienced students helping to organize the various jobs. Some of the jobs are done by the community, and some are done by the students, but the students do all of the organizing as to who should do what for each issue. Exhibit (D) shows a page from a student's notebook where she has outlined which community members are contributing with columns, features stories, and beats. Helen helps the newer students establish themselves in their roles and writes any articles that don't get done by deadline. Deadlines are set for each issue in a roundtable discussion with the students and Helen. Students study the school calendar and the community calendar and calculate the number of weeks needed to complete each job, and then set their deadlines accordingly. The News Magazine Video[17] shows a short clip from one of last year's discussions about deadlines, and that same approach to determining deadlines is used this year. IV. What can be learned from the student work selected? Organization of the Portfolio An introduction to Three Students Savanna Velasquez,[20] a seventh grader, at thirteen is one of our oldest students. Savanna's strength has never been academics, but she keeps up with her grade level and she excels in artistic projects. Although she tends to be social with her peers, one of her greatest handicaps in the past has been a lack of confidence in speaking with adults. She has good ideas but has always struggled with the process of getting her thoughts into written form. She struggled to get her articles written last year, and had difficulty talking with adults on the phone, and doing interviews. This year Savanna has developed a much greater level of confidence in her work, in her writing, and in her interactions with people Amanda Andrews is a fifth grader who had co-authored articles last year, but had not taken on the job of interviewing, researching, and writing an article completely on her own until this year. At the age of ten, Amanda excels academically, but she has always been painfully shy. As the youngest member of her multiage class, she has tended to be a "follower," and has been slow to take initiative or a leadership role in projects. Although she can clearly write "correctly," her shyness and lack of initiative prevented her from being an expressive writer, and kept her from being willing to strike out on her own to cover a story from start to finish. Her transformation from last year to this year clearly shows that she overcome those barriers in her expressive language, both writing and speaking. Josh Smith is a third grader, an eight-year-old who was the youngest member of the news magazine team last year. As the youngest boy in a family of seven children, Josh tends to attempt difficult tasks and then give up and cry dramatically when things seem frustrating. True to his personality, Josh chose to work on the news magazine, knowing it was the most demanding project he could choose. In order to keep him involved and not overwhelm him, Helen was patient with Josh, and allowed him to write stories for the first year that he worked on the magazine. He liked to write stories without any pressure of deadlines or content structure, but he had not tried to take on a news article until the March 2001 issue. His story writing this year showed progress in understanding how to use quotations and other punctuation that he did not readily use last year in second grade, and his March 2001 article, his very first article, reflects the skills and confidence that he gained in one year. Although there were a variety of skills to choose from, including keyboarding, writing, ad design, layouts, interviewing skills, etc., we chose to focus on writing skills[21] for our three students in order to offer as much consistency as possible in evaluating student learning. Because this is a broadly diverse multiage project with a multiage student population, we decided to use three different students instead of two to show the diversity of student work. It was difficult to find consistent samples of work from one year to the next, but we did have at least one piece of work for each student that showed a fairly accurate comparison. The process of gathering the evidence of student work revealed to the whole staff and student body the importance of preserving comparative work samples over periods of time.[22] An Explanation of the Evidence
of Student Work As explained above, Amanda did not write any articles on her own last year, except for one that her mother helped her write.[24] This is a very significant fact, because all of Amanda's articles were co-authored, where she took the "follower" role in spite of her clear ability to write well. A sample of an article she co-authored appears on page 6 of last year's February/March 2000 issue. She relied heavily on Matthew Smith to take the lead in writing that article. This year, by contrast, she has written several articles completely on her own, from start to finish. Exhibit (G) shows the notes she used in pursuing an article on pine beetles that appears on page 17 of the December/January issue of the magazine this year. Exhibit (G) shows at the top of the page the chain of numbers she followed in tracking down her interviewees. She started with Greg Gerlich, a wildlife biologist who is the father of her best friend. From there she was referred to Sheila Lamb and then to Don Crosby, a local forest service expert on pine beetles. Exhibit (G) also shows the research and interview questions she came up with before pursuing experts. One of the most difficult jobs for our students as interviewers is taking notes fast enough to follow along with the information they are learning. Amanda's notes at the bottom of Exhibit (G) show that she kept up well enough to get the information she needed. Exhibit (H) shows the very rough draft that Amanda wrote before going to the word processor. Her final article shows a picture of a pine beetle which she scanned by herself, so that the entire article was hers, from start to finish. Again, the transformation that took place in Amanda over a year's time cannot be entirely connected to specific "teaching" activities. Amanda slowly became a part of a team, and developed a sense of responsibility to that team. When many of the older students moved on to other projects or graduated, it left Amanda in a role of "leader" that was new for her. She rose to the task, and broke through her shyness, showing initiative and leadership, and sharing her writing skills with the rest of the team. By all appearances, she became a better writer because she wanted to become a more responsible member of the team. Josh wanted to help last year, but got very frustrated when he tried to work on articles, feature stories, or beats.[25] He decided instead to write a story of his own which appears on page 15 of last year's February /March issue. Helen honored his writing and helped him with the painstaking job of keyboarding it in so that it could be published. Josh got very excited about story writing. Up until March of 2001 he still didn't want to write anything but stories for the magazine, but meanwhile he has become quite proficient at the keyboard, and his writing has become more prolific. His first attempt at an article in March ended up being more than an attempt. He conducted the entire interview, with Helen taking notes for him. Helen then put her notes on a disk so that Josh could write the article from her notes. Although he had a great deal of help from Helen, he stayed with it and completed it in time for the deadline. He did the interview, organized the article, wrote most of it, and typeset some of it by himself. The single most important factor that changed for Josh was his attitude. Once he completed the article, he stated that up until now he had "let the other students do all the work" and now he was going to be a more active part of the team. The final draft of his article is Exhibit (I). Work requirements of the news magazine project adjust easily to differences in ages and interests.[26] A young child like Josh is not pressured to produce articles in order to participate in the project, but in fact can move at a pace that most fits his developmental needs. Amanda most enjoys typesetting, but has "grown into" a more responsible role on the editorial board as she has matured. Savanna, who has some experience under her belt with community issues, now enjoys the interviewing she used to avoid, and uses her natural artistic talents to create attractive advertising designs. How
Student Work is Assessed[27] With the recent development of the news magazine rubric, however, students are much more involved in assessing their own work. The news magazine rubric (Exhibit K) is obviously more student-friendly than the teacher-developed school-wide writing rubric, mostly because the news magazine rubric was created by the students themselves. Also, the news magazine rubric is far more comprehensive for the news magazine project. It includes not only writing, but eleven other important skills that are required in order to perform successfully as a journalist. Many of those skills are clear reflections of the Colorado State Standards. Interviewing, note-taking and advertising, for example require the same skills as the state standards for oral and written language skills. Some of the news magazine skills, however, such as magazine layout, exceed the state standards for language communication at the elementary level. The students now perform regular self-assessments of their work, using their rubric and making an honest appraisal of their progress. Exhibit K, in fact, is a copy from Amanda's student portfolio which has check marks showing where she sees herself in all twelve skill areas, followed by a narrative by Amanda wherein she reflects on her own self-assessment. How
the Project as a Whole is Assessed[28] The News Magazine project has been assessed at our staff retreats according to the rubric in Exhibit (L), and it scores well for our school. In our most recent staff retreat, we came up with a total score of 23 out of 30 possible points on the rubric, which is the highest score that any of our projects have been rated thus far. For that reason, we have taken measures to ensure that funding for the news magazine mentor is available in the school's general budget for the 2001-2002 school year. How Mentors, Teacher, and Students
Interact in the Project Helen Cahill[31] is only one of many community mentors who come in to help our students accomplish their various projects, but she is the primary mentor for the news magazine project, and has been the reason that the project has been able to be maintained over the past two years. The skills involved in magazine publication are many, and our students are quite young, with the more experienced ones moving on through graduation or changing interests. It is vital that we have a community representative who has the skills necessary to ensure that students reach their publication deadlines. It is also vital that we have someone who enjoys being with children, and is willing to learn the patience necessary to stay with the project even during the challenging times. The video that accompanies this portfolio shows Helen interacting with the students in two different settings (layout design and deadline planning). She has learned how to give the students all the responsibility that they can handle without expecting them to become expert news people overnight. An excerpt from Helen's written reflection about the project after the last issue is included in the portfolio as Exhibit (N). Students take a definitive role in all aspects of the publication, from planning to advertising, accounting, type setting, editing, layout design, distribution, and sales. The video that accompanies this portfolio includes reflections from Savanna, Amanda, and Josh about their changing roles in the project and in the community. The students are encouraged by Helen and Mrs. MacDonald to reflect in their journals about their work after each issue is completed, and Exhibit (O) is a sample of written reflections by two students[32]following the publication of the October/November issue this year. These samples were chosen because they are typical of the range of reflections that students generate. Alex[33] is a new fourth grade girl who just took on the journalism project this year. Because all projects start with research, design, community surveys, setting goals, and writing the minigrant, it obviously delays the time that they could "jump in" and start their project, such as producing a magazine.. It is very typical of new students to be frustrated by the planning and organization that goes into all of our projects, but once they have some experience with the process, they become much more appreciative of its importance. Alex's reflection shows that she would prefer promises of treats like ice cream to motivate her, whereas Amanda focuses on the fact that they reached most of their goals, and that seems to be her primary motivator. Alex clearly knows that she has learned valuable skills, but she is not as articulate as Amanda at being able to define those skills and their importance to the project. Both Alex and Amanda are bright, capable students, yet one reflection is clearly more mature than the other. The fact that Alex is new to the project and to the idea of reflecting on her own learning process is clearly evident, while Amanda's reflection shows a thoughtful analysis of the entire process, from the dynamics of the group to the attainment of goals, to specific skill development. Amanda's analysis reflects her ownership of the project. For that reason, the fact that Amanda is in her second year of working on the project seems more important to the quality of reflection than simply the fact that she is a year older than Alex. V. What is the impact of the project on place-based learning? Demonstration
of Place-based learning[34] Challenges of Student News Publication
in a Small Town But there have been challenges.[35] The challenges we faced at the beginning of the year regarding student "burn-out" and how we addressed that issue was explained in the first few sections of this portfolio. The challenge of students dealing with unreasonable community expectations invites more explanation. There are two businesses in town, for example that have experienced a certain degree of rivalry, and the adults involved in the rivalry do not always exhibit the most mature behavior. It happens that the students do advertising in their magazine for both of the rival businesses. It happens, too, that one of the businesses is owned by the family of a student on the editorial board who designs many of the ads. At one point, when the advertisement for the rival business was not absolutely perfect at publication, the owner stomped down to the school and tearfully demanded a discount for her advertising fee, accusing the editorial board of favoring the other business in their magazine. The students, the teacher and the mentor handled the crisis very professionally, but unfortunately, it was clear that our students need to be protected from immature adult behavior. Another factor that complicates the politics that confront our students as journalists is the fact that the project mentor used to publish the local newspaper. Journalists sometimes find that certain readers resent the way they have handled an article or some other issue in their publication. This was true for Helen as well, and she brought to the news magazine a history of distrust from one or two community members. Students had to build trust with community members who had previously distrusted Helen. The students also need to be protected from issues that are too disturbing or controversial for them to handle comfortably.[36] When several murders occurred near the school, all in the same day, and one of the victims was a thirteen year old boy, we thought that there might be some questions from the community about why that wasn't covered more extensively in the magazine. But we protect the students from issues such as these by letting the students choose what they want to cover in the magazine. Most community members respect the fact that our students are not adults and cannot be expected to produce a news magazine that is aimed only at adult issues. Whenever expectations run too high, however, Mrs. MacDonald provides a buffer, insulating the students from unreasonable expectations.[37] Community members working with
Students When our portfolio design team asked themselves the question, “Is this a project that would be worth doing again?” the resounding answer was, “It was done again!” With changed expectations and a different approach, the project is having perhaps a more successful year than last year. There are, however, two major issues that stand out as important issues to address in order to help the project become even more successful. First, the project does not truly sustain itself financially, since the mentor receives a grant stipend totaling about $3000 for the year. There is clearly a strong rationale for including the cost of the mentor into the school budget, given the fact that the project frees up our staff to concentrate on other projects while Helen works with the news magazine students. After considering the benefits of the news magazine in reaching the educational goals established by the local school board, the administrator has decided to include the cost of the mentor into the regular budget for staff for next year.[39] This will eliminate the need for students to feel the pressure of generating enough income to pay for their mentor, along with the other costs they are facing. In addition, the printer lease will be completely paid off by the fall of 2001, so that will eliminate another expensive item from the students’ expenditure column. With these changes in mind, it will be an opportunity for the students to focus on balancing the cost of ink, paper, and printer maintenance with the income from ad sales and issue sales. The income from advertising in the magazine, compared over different issues, shows that advertising income has steadily increased. Exhibit (O) shows one student’s spreadsheet that compares the income from three issues. Because the cost per column inch has remained the same since the beginning of the magazine in the fall of 1999, it is clear that the increase in income is a result of the increased number of ad sales. This offers hope that the magazine can be financially self-sustaining next year. The other issue that needs to be addressed in the future is perhaps even more crucial for the success of the project. Although we have made significant progress this year, there is a continued need for improvement of a systematic process of documenting student work, with students directly involved in the process of identifying comparative work over time.[40] The rubric that has been designed by the students is an excellent tool which will be only as valuable as the extent to which it is used. Fortunately, the mentor sees the value of the rubric just as clearly as the students do. It will be important, as the mentor takes on an increasingly supervisory role in the project, that she get help with ways to incorporate regular use of the rubric into the daily work. Built into the rubric is the dimension entitled “Portfolio” (See Exhibit K-11). This dimension might be expanded so that students are putting more thought into what they should keep for documentation, and what they should throw away. As students are increasingly involved in presenting their work at conferences, and documenting their learning process for their parents, their rubric for this dimension should mature accordingly. |