ROCK SPRINGS — Eastside Elementary fifth-grade teacher Tracey Burton spent a portion of her summer providing two different academies for students and teachers to collaborate to improve instruction.

The summer academies are offered every year, and are professional development classes that staff members in Sweetwater County School District (SCSD) No. 1 can choose to complete during the summer, Burton said. However, she said she believes this is the first time students were involved in the delivery of the instruction to teachers.

“This is why I believe these academies were so special and a huge positive for our community to know about,” she said.

She had five students from her classroom participate in the trainings. Those students were Deion Bridewell, Madie Chubb, Colton Pederson, John Thompson, and Denin Ziegler. Additionally, two parents stayed while their kids presented to provide feedback as well.

“They are very, very informed with how they’re doing, and when they were teaching the teachers, they were able to share that knowledge with the teachers in their perspective. It just kind of drove it home how important it is for them to do this,” Burton said.

This summer, Burton taught two separate session for two academies including Digital Data Notebooks and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time Bound) Goals and Exploring the WYTOPP Authoring Tool.

Digital Data Notebooks and SMART Goals Academy

Burton said she has been incorporating digital data notebooks, paper data notebooks, and SMART goals in her classroom for the past three years, and this academy was designed to share that success with other teachers in the district. She said she also included the research behind the power and student success rate for classrooms that use the teaching strategies of students tracking their data and creating their own SMART goals.

“The main research data I referred to, which is very prevalent at Eastside and district-wide, is called Hattie Strategies. This research is nation-wide and one of the most respected nation-wide at this time,” Burton explained.

Burton’s students have been designing SMART goals for themselves that are specific to them and their capabilities. A student who scores a 1 on an assignment will set an attainable goal of reaching a 2, just like a student who scores a 2 will strive for a 3, and so on. Additionally, they will track their goals and assignments in notebooks so they can be active in their education. The digital notebooks are also available for parents and guardians to view so the family can all be on the same page with the learning plan.

“Over the past several years, it has been apparent that classes who had a high success rate at Eastside had a common practice of some form of students tracking their data and creating SMART goals with this data. My administrators quickly saw this correlation, shared it with our staff on many occasions, and it became a school-wide initiative starting with the 22-23 school year,” Burton said.

Starting last year, Eastside Elementary started implementing the data notebooks and SMART goals in every classroom.

“In order to help the entire staff with this new initiative, I provide fourth through sixth-grade level staff trainings and shared my resources at the beginning of the year,” Burton said. “This training led to the summer academy I taught and there are currently discussions about having me provide this training and my resources district-wide this school year during some of our Friday professional development days.”

She said one of the best things about the summer academies was allowing a group of students to take their experiences with the data notebooks and share with the teachers. Not only did this inform teachers directly on how the notebooks have been a benefit, as well as present ideas to improve the notebooks, but it allowed the students to acknowledge their voice and accountability in their education.

“They taught the teachers why this is important, why they should do it, and showed the teachers the true value. A lot of what we do, you always look at research and theory, but in my opinion what matters most is the kids’ perspective, and what’s working for them and what’s not. If we don’t listen to them, we could be totally missing the boat,” Burton said.

Burton said the group of students provided personal examples of how tracking their data and SMART goals gave them purpose and drive to do better in their school work.

“I am a firm believer students must be empowered to be active participants in their education and we do this in my classroom daily, in everything we do. This was very apparent when the kids were presenting during the academies,” Burton said. “Because the students knew how they were performing in all of the standards, it also gave them the ability to participate in classroom discussions that were data driven.”

Burton’s hope is that the data notebooks will move towards being implemented district-wide and will continue in the junior high and high schools. She believes this will help students advocate for themselves and their education.

Exploring the WYTOPP Authoring Tool Academy

Burton said the second academy was structured around sharing her success with how she incorporates the new Authoring Tool, which is located on the state Wyoming Assessment website.

“The authoring tool was new to the website during the summer of ’22 and I played around with it until I understood how I could use and incorporate this tool into my classroom on a daily basis,” Burton said.

She provided trainings to fourth through sixth-grade teachers at Eastside again before providing additional trainings for the sixth through eighth-grade science teachers. This led to the district-wide summer academies that she provided this summer.

“During the trainings I reviewed how to navigate through this new platform and how to incorporate this information into daily lessons through assignments, short cycles, and practice assessments that match the rigor of our WYTOPP state assessment,” she said. “The practice assessments could be completed via paper and/or on the Wyoming Assessment portal, which is where students complete their WYTOPP state assessment.”

Students looked at the authoring tool and gave feedback to Burton on what material they felt they had a good grasp on and what she needs to teach them still. Burton said it was important for the kids to be able to give this feedback. While she’s always telling the students that their voice matters, the weight of that sentiment set in with the students when they had 15 to 20 teachers listening to them and taking notes.

Student Voices

Burton said the structure of the academies allowed the students to lead a conversation with the teachers for about 30 minutes, in which they shared strengths in the data notebooks, and suggested areas that could be improved.

“Each of their opinions were valued from everyone in the class and I did make changes in the data notebooks according to their suggestions. For example, the kids stated finding the specific standard in the digital data notebook could be difficult at times, so a teacher who was taking the class suggested to add quick links to take the kids directly to the standard they were adding their grade in to make it easier. I added these quick links to each of my digital data notebooks and I will start using them this year,” Burton said.

Not only did the students feel as though their opinions were valued, but this also showed them that their opinions could lead to improvements to benefit themselves and their fellow classmates.

After the kids shared their opinions, they fielded questions from the participants. This included teachers from all areas and disciplines, as well as administrators.

“They did an amazing job,” Burton said of the students. “They were able to answer all questions in a confident, honest, and intellectual way that no doubt provided reasons to the teachers why they should complete these notebooks and goals in their classroom.”

One of the most important results to come out of the data notebooks, Burton believes, is the students’ ability to advocate for their needs in each of the standards in all subject areas she teaches. She added that discussions with students where they advocated for their needs have guided her planning of future lessons.

“The level of self-confidence and advocacy for both themselves and other students was very apparent in all of my students, not just the five that presented,” Burton said. “The drive and determination of the kids also increased as they visibly saw their success and realized their input and opinions matter to me as their teacher.”