Strong Planning, Coaching, and Implementing with Fidelity– A Blended Learning Success Story

As soon as you enter Vogel Elementary School, you are greeted with large smiles. It is no secret that students are excited to show up to school every day and teachers are ready to embrace their kiddos as soon as the bell rings. The reason? Students are at the heart of all choices made at Vogel– a blended learning campus in Seguin Independent School District.

In the 2021-2022 school year, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) identified Vogel Elementary as a campus that qualified for a school action. Historically, Vogel Elementary has received D accountability ratings from the state, although they earned a C rating based on 2022 Accountability results. These results made them eligible for the School Action Fund (SAF) Cycle 6 grants. As part of the school action plan, the school selected a blended learning redesign model. This model was the best fit with existing campus and district initiatives, including the implementation of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) in Math and ELAR classes. At Education Elements, we partnered with Seguin ISD on this work, collaborating on three key steps which led to an increase in student-driven outcome data.

Step 1: Strong Planning

We spent the 2022-2023 school year making connections to Vogel’s Campus Improvement Plan and critical Seguin ISD initiatives. We conducted focus groups with students to learn more about their current classroom experience, and then strategically chose five educators (one from each grade level) to serve as blended learning champions–our pilot teachers. We knew we had to put our strategic hats on when introducing this instructional design and implementation approach to teachers, and wanted a strong group of enthusiastic teachers to help. Within this first year, we:

• Conducted stakeholder engagement sessions with family members
• Administered Tripod 7Cs Student Perception Survey 
• Visited one of our partner campuses in nearby Clear Creek ISD, which we have been supporting with instructional design and implementation practices over the past 5 years to see a strong blended learning model in action 
• Facilitated three blended learning workshops with pilot teachers, creating a strong foundation centered around student ownership, reflection, and goal-setting instructional practices to embed within the classroom 

Step 2: Strong Coaching

Brianna Green became Vogel’s Blended Learning Implementation Specialist. Ms. Green is a 5th grade math teacher and a member of the Blended Learning Pilot Team. This role was created to support teachers as blended learning was adopted school-wide during the 2023-2024 school year. As the Blended Learning Implementation Specialist, Brianna and her team of pilot teachers introduced, prepared, and engaged teachers before the school year began.

• The team of pilot teachers held a Blended Learning Academy over the summer where they introduced the Core-Four, with an emphasis on Targeted Instruction, Reflection, and Goal Setting for year one. 
• During this summer professional development, they shared resources to use for student reflection and goal setting, including artifacts from the pilot year, and templates for building student binders.
• Teachers on the campus used their first assessment of the school year to create their own reflection and goal-setting tool, and were able to build several weeks worth of personalized station rotations, all done with support from members of the Blended Learning Pilot Team and the Implementation Specialist.

As the teachers at Vogel continue through the first year of implementation, Brianna is also a member of the campus team conducting learning walks. These learning walks allow her to determine areas where teachers required more support and see first-hand the huge wins happening in classrooms. Using the information collected during learning walks, she then created mini-academies based on the campuses’ needs. During these mini-academies, she shared best practices, resources for implementation, modifications to templates to improve effectiveness, and celebrated the incredible things taking place in our first year of implementation. If you or your district is engaged in rolling out similar change for impact, here are some additional ways to leverage strong coaching: 

• Send quarterly Blended Learning Check-Ins. These check-ins allow teachers to be open and honest about their implementation.
• Provide options for support. Some examples are an after school meeting to share resources, best practices, or organizational tools, a scheduled observation of classrooms by the Blended Learning Pilot Team, or an observation of  classrooms belonging to members of the Blended Learning Pilot Team to identify ways they can improve student success and share celebrations.

By providing teachers with a dedicated staff member that they can turn to for support in Blended Learning (resources, best practices, or sometimes just encouragement) has allowed Vogel’s campus to work collaboratively and ensure success with their first year of Blended Learning implementation. 

Step 3: Implementation with Fidelity

Vogel Elementary School is on track to becoming a B rated campus by the end of this year. Their 2023 State STAAR scores in reading and math are rated approaches, meets, and or masters. Although the team is ecstatic to see an increase in scores, the leadership team is not surprised. The instructional practices the campus chose to bring blended learning to life in their first year of implementation are centered around students taking ownership over their learning. 

• Every student across all grade levels has an academic data binder
• Students are asked to reflect, monitor, and track their academic goals that are aligned with TEKS
• Teachers can progress monitor growth based on formative assessments and students then receive differentiated and customized instruction based on their academic goals

Blended learning has personalized instruction at Vogel Elementary and  provides additional support to students– leading to improved academic outcomes. And, we are just getting started! The transformative journey with blended learning is in its early stages and the team at Vogel is eager to continue emphasizing the importance of ongoing collaboration, support, and adaptation in sustaining the success of their students. We hope this story inspires you to explore innovative approaches to education and embrace the potential of blended learning to empower students and enhance learning outcomes!