Replicable Practices

• School utilizes an “academic support index” to identify the needs of individual students and provide intervention classes focused on the whole child in ELA and math.

• Through staff development days, common preps, and weekly scheduled collaboration time, staff identify and prioritize standards through their curriculum maps, create common formative assessments, and use data to reflect and identify areas for re-teaching.

• Stauffer’s instructional leadership team leads the staff in creating and implementing evidence-based practices and implementing the school-wide focus: “Read, Lead, Succeed.”

• Teachers can be involved in the Downey Unified “fellows” program an intensive program pairing individual teachers in a PLC with an instructional coach. Participants intentionally carry out the teaching cycle by working collaboratively through a lesson study process that includes lesson preparation, implementation, reflection, and re-teaching.

• Through a “21st-century learning initiative” teachers receive support for three years from a district Instructional technology coach serving students at Stauffer in three of their core classes.

• Students are exposed to “Career Technical Education/Pathways” that prepare students to enter high school and begin pathways of their choosing. Among the choices for students are: law/mock trial, introduction to culinary arts, foundations of animation, Project Lead the Way Units, and math 7 and 8 computing. In addition, the school offers AVID, drama, marching band, jazz band and music.

• With the support of the administration and the leadership team, Stauffer has trained staff and implemented AVID strategies school-wide with teachers and students embracing the practices.

• Stauffer supports student organization and goal setting through “Organizational Wednesdays” which consist of binder checks, the reviewing of Spartan guide planners, and creating individual SMART goals with students. Each month a different department takes charge of organizational Wednesdays making the clear statement that expectations are the same in every room and every subject.