Written by: Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic 

While the ongoing transition to a comprehensive model prevented any adoption of new materials at Newberg High School, Newberg School District director of teaching and learning Stafford Boyd believes the process established in selecting new language arts curriculum for the rest of the district over the past year will pay dividends for years to come.

That’s in large part because the district integrated the language arts adoption with its ongoing effort toward digital conversion, moving away from the textbook model and taking a major step toward the digital classroom model it envisions as the way forward in the 21st century.

In addition to reaching a full 1-to-1 ratio of electronic devices to students in grades K-5, next year the district has invested heavily in the professional development needed to make teachers successful with the new tools at their disposal.

Just as importantly, Boyd believes the thoughtful and collaborative approach taken by teachers and administrators in selecting how they will use digital technology to deliver content to students will provide a blueprint for how to consider future curriculum changes.

“The key thing is that we really took time and engaged a lot of people in the process to make the best decisions for our kids,” Boyd said.

A lot of the work involved was led by numerous innovation teams that piloted various aspects of the adoption, including options for sourcing texts and units of instruction, across the district.

That led to a series of recommendations from a team of 40 teachers and administrators, which were presented to the school board and approved at its April 12 meeting.

One of the core discoveries through the process was that it simply would not be possible to provide language arts instruction in a digital classroom unless each student had their own device.

That, in part, spurred the district to accelerate its timeline for achieving full digital conversion across all its schools from the fall of 2020 to fall 2018 in the hope that, as a quote Boyd particularly likes, that technology in the classroom should be like oxygen.

“It should be ubiquitous, everywhere,” Boyd said. “It should be invisible and it should be necessary. We shouldn’t even notice students using it because it’s just what they do.”

The district elected to move forward with digital curriculum products that are congruent with the Common Core standards, including Amplify’s “Knowledge Language Arts” (CKLA) program for grades K-5, “EL Achieve Systematic ELD” for K-5 English learners and “English 3D” for secondary ELL students, but the CKLA curriculum for K-5 students represents a shift in teaching models big enough that the district is planning on a two-year implementation period with a focus on professional development.

Middle school teams tested “Collections,” a digital content library provided by traditional publisher Houghton-Mifflin, but has elected to use a less rigid model based upon freely available materials from the Internet, known as Open Educational Resources.

High school teams also piloted Collections and the district found from visiting middle and high schools in the David Douglas school district that it proved to be too static, leading teachers to search out other materials on their own.

Therefore, the high school will continue exploring options in hopes of making an adoption beginning in fall 2017.

The district will have to self-report on its Division 22 report that it is still partially out of compliance with the state’s curriculum adoption timeline in language arts, but Boyd said the district’s priority is to make the right choices first.

Boyd added that the district will approach the next two scheduled adoptions, for math and science, together as a STEM curriculum to be implemented in 2018 at the same time it completes digital conversion.

“The traditional seven-year state cycle doesn’t necessarily match the reality of what that looks like,” Boyd said. “I think we’re primed to just keep reiterating the directions we’ve moved in during this time of the cycle.”