As the principal of Stephen Mallory White Middle School, it is my charge to ensure students are receiving a 21st century education. The California State Standards provide the content vehicle for students to gain equal access to the free, appropriate public educational opportunity envisioned by public school pioneers. The Los Angeles Unified School District, in partnership with various universities, provides the pedagogical strategies to enhance student learning.

My instructional leadership team and I strive to make sure that standards are implemented throughout the all areas of the middle school curriculum. We engage staff in a cycle of continuous improvement of lesson delivery. Our efforts in this area are drawn from the Lesson Study Techniques so successfully implemented by the Japanese Educational System. These rigorous and demanding learning experiences are presented with the use of curriculum maps and Bloom’s Taxonomy as a template for stimulating higher order thinking skills. The use of rubric-based assessments of culminating tasks helps students conceptualize the curriculum and master the standards in a coherent manner.

In any successful school, there are three curricula. The basic or core curriculum is the course of study in which all students participate. The core curriculum provides students with the preparation necessary to be successful in post secondary education. American cultural literacy and the democratic principles of representative government are implicit in this effort. The enriched curriculum is available to students who are ready to experience greater depths of achievement. Many times these topics of study are areas determined by individual students. The enriched curriculum is characterized by accelerated learning and individual exploration. The intervention curriculum is the set of experiences required to assist a student with achieving in the core curriculum. This curriculum is presented as a complement to the core curriculum. The intervention curriculum is made available to all students who are achieving below a C average, not proficient or advanced on the California Standards Test, or students that are not making adequate progress toward achieving their individual goals.

The goal of this enterprise is not to document which level a child is on but rather to push all students toward the skills needed to access the enriched curriculum. In fact we regularly share with students that we do not value which skills you arrive with as much as where your skills development leads you.

James P. Noble
Principal