Wayne A. Culley

Meadowlark Elementary School
Salt Lake City, Utah
wayne.culley@slcschools.org

Best Practices

1) I have worked hard to change the climate and culture at Meadowlark Elementary. Meadowlark has been in turnaround for a very long time. When I came to Meadowlark the students and surrounding community called it “Getolark”. I have worked hard in the last three years to change that perception. During my time Meadowlark has adopted Academic Parent Teach Teams (APTT) for parent teacher conference and we have created a culture that encourages home visits to change our community outlook for our school. We have completely turned around our lunchroom and playground. There has been an adoption of the MTSS philosophy, with school wide implementation of SecondSteps, and teaching a bully prevention program. I created systems with in our Student Support Committee (SSC), so that teachers felt more supported and students were getting services faster. By doing these best practices we have built strong relationships with teachers, staff, parents and students. Meadowlarks office referrals have gone down every year from (370) incidences in 2017-18, -20% 2018-19 to (298), -30% so far this year.

2) For the past three years has been working hard on visible learning strategies. Our teachers have been writing task specific three-part objectives. I have prepared several professional learning opportunities so that teachers can core align their objective and write success criteria. The lesson goals need to be clear for students, grade level appropriate, discussed and referred to throughout the lesson. Teachers have work in PLC’s to connected objectives to other lessons. Success criteria is appropriate for the lesson, student selfassess and progress monitor during lesson. Teachers learn how to monitor student success and make quick adjustments to pacing as they go. It has taken three years of block planning and writing student friendly lessons. We are now seeing success in our schoolwide data.