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{ timecode: 0, handler: 'blob', id: 1, data: {text: 'DR. KATHLEEN WHITMIRE: Next will be Thomas Comp. Tom is Principal of Boulevard Elementary School in Gloversville, New York. A former Committee of Preschool Special Education and Committee on Special '}},
{ timecode: 11, handler: 'blob', id: 2, data: {text: 'Education Chairperson, Mr. Comp has been an Elementary Principal for 12 years. He has been instrumental in the design and implementation of an effective core and intervention program at Boulevard '}},
{ timecode: 22, handler: 'blob', id: 3, data: {text: 'Elementary through the use of a shared leadership model and the consistent use of student data to drive instructional program decisions. His experience in leadership have resulted in his participation '}},
{ timecode: 34, handler: 'blob', id: 4, data: {text: 'in several national and state organizations to help promote the use of student data in decision making processes, and he was awarded the 2008 New York State Elementary School Principal of the Year '}},
{ timecode: 47, handler: 'blob', id: 5, data: {text: 'Award by the School Administrators Association of New York State. THOMAS KOMP: One of the things you have to realize is that I don’t have Power Points, I have 632 students, staff of 65 and whole '}},
{ timecode: 63, handler: 'blob', id: 6, data: {text: 'lot of stuff to do. Although I have done Power Points in the past, you know what, I was not prepared for this one. But I tell ya what, I am going to speak from the heart because one of the things that '}},
{ timecode: 76, handler: 'blob', id: 7, data: {text: 'I look at is I am an educator and I am a student. That is what I expect of all staff. That they don’t know it all, that they are willing to say “help me.” Dave did a nice job of '}},
{ timecode: 92, handler: 'blob', id: 8, data: {text: 'saying one of the key roles as an administrator in a building level is, my feeling, to get out of the way. Get rid of road blocks so teachers can do their jobs. I am not the expert. What I want my '}},
{ timecode: 110, handler: 'blob', id: 9, data: {text: 'experts to do is to be able to do it effectively to help kids. That is the key issue here. When we look at things like that and I look at what I need to do is to help our educators, help our parents '}},
{ timecode: 126, handler: 'blob', id: 10, data: {text: 'understand learning, understand the reading process and be a part of it. It is not being done to them it is done with them. That is a key issue, a very key issue. We are in this together. I could '}},
{ timecode: 144, handler: 'blob', id: 11, data: {text: 'spend three hours right now just being very excited about my building, about our staff, about the wonderful things we do. I don’t have three hours; I probably could do three days worth because '}},
{ timecode: 158, handler: 'blob', id: 12, data: {text: 'they are that good. What I am going to try and concentrate on is that how did they get there. How did they get to that expertise? It started a long time ago when we sat around the table. I say we '}},
{ timecode: 174, handler: 'blob', id: 13, data: {text: 'because we are as a collective, we had concerns that we didn’t know what to do for kids. We were very frustrated. Because of that, that shared frustration, we said there has got to be some '}},
{ timecode: 188, handler: 'blob', id: 14, data: {text: 'experts out there. There they are. That is what they do. They are the experts. But how do we apply that expertise back into a classroom, back into our situation. That is the key issue here - To try '}},
{ timecode: 204, handler: 'blob', id: 15, data: {text: 'and put that all together. So what we did was we looked out and we went to universities. We actually went after grants, because as a collective we knew we did not have the answers. A little background '}},
{ timecode: 220, handler: 'blob', id: 16, data: {text: 'on my building. 62% free/reduced poverty rate. When we started this journey, it was about nine years ago, or ten years ago, we looked at data. Now we did not know we were actually doing this kind of '}},
{ timecode: 234, handler: 'blob', id: 17, data: {text: 'stuff, we just kind of said “where are we?” We looked up state assessments because that was all we had. Guess what? We were at like 47% on track. Now, you cannot run an effective RTI '}},
{ timecode: 251, handler: 'blob', id: 18, data: {text: 'program or anything else when 53% of your kids are not there. You can’t do it, you don’t have enough bodies, you don’t have enough time in the day, you don’t have enough days '}},
{ timecode: 261, handler: 'blob', id: 19, data: {text: 'in the year to do that. Just like our colleges here said, we looked at our core program. It had to be fixed. It was not meeting the children’s needs. So we did. We went after that. We did some '}},
{ timecode: 276, handler: 'blob', id: 20, data: {text: 'analysis, we did some research. We called these guys, all right? Guess what? They like to talk, they really do! They will come to your building and do an analysis, use that expertise because I am not '}},
{ timecode: 294, handler: 'blob', id: 21, data: {text: 'the expert on this. I like to go my experts here. That was a key issue for us. We changed our core. In the couple of years that it takes to change the core effectively, what do you do with all these '}},
{ timecode: 307, handler: 'blob', id: 22, data: {text: 'little guys? That is still on our grading. That is the key. So, we did a lot of staff development, an awful lot of staff development. In New York State we are fortunate to Reading First Grants to have '}},
{ timecode: 320, handler: 'blob', id: 23, data: {text: 'Reading Academy. Every one of my teachers went through Reading Academy. I have pre-K through five. That is a very important part. Some of them were experts, they did not need it. But you know what? '}},
{ timecode: 333, handler: 'blob', id: 24, data: {text: 'They went through it to get a level of understanding and that was very important. Most of these guys never had more than one reading course in their general program in the undergraduate level. Wow, '}},
{ timecode: 351, handler: 'blob', id: 25, data: {text: 'that says a lot. These guys are responding to that in their programs and that is great to hear. My little guys, when I get a teacher involved, or I am hiring a teacher, I don’t have three to '}},
{ timecode: 363, handler: 'blob', id: 26, data: {text: 'four years to train them. It is not fair to my kids. I need to have them hit the ground running. That is the key issue. That is why it is very important to get our university systems up on all the '}},
{ timecode: 377, handler: 'blob', id: 27, data: {text: 'latest research and to impart that knowledge to their teacher candidates. I don’t have the time in my district in my building. I do want to make sure that all of my staff are up on the latest '}},
{ timecode: 392, handler: 'blob', id: 28, data: {text: 'research as much as we can. The hardest part about this is the logistics of it. When do you do it? Do you do it before school, after school, summer? You know what, after school you’re tired. You '}},
{ timecode: 409, handler: 'blob', id: 29, data: {text: 'have been with these twenty-four 6 year olds all day long, your mind is not there yet. Again, in a partnership, we challenged each other to say “when can we do this?”. We did that. It was '}},
{ timecode: 423, handler: 'blob', id: 30, data: {text: 'a “we.” It was not done to anyone. We shifted our day. It is as simple as that sometimes. Typically you have a time in the morning before the kids get there. You have some time in the '}},
{ timecode: 435, handler: 'blob', id: 31, data: {text: 'afternoon before the kids get there or after they leave. We shifted it all to the morning. Sounds simple enough and it was. It was part of the program to say we need a time block for data meetings, '}},
{ timecode: 448, handler: 'blob', id: 32, data: {text: 'for grade level meetings, for training but you know what I don’t want to keep you guys any longer than you need to be because you are tired. We shifted. We came up with fifty-five minutes in the '}},
{ timecode: 463, handler: 'blob', id: 33, data: {text: 'morning. We started out with forty then we went to fifty. That was the best time. Everyone is free at that time. We do our staff development then. We bring in our experts. We do data analysis. We have '}},
{ timecode: 479, handler: 'blob', id: 34, data: {text: 'been doing this for an awful long time. We have been doing universal screenings for about seven years and then progress monitoring for about five years. We do data meetings every six weeks on our tier '}},
{ timecode: 490, handler: 'blob', id: 35, data: {text: 'three, tier two children. Our staff knows about data points. They know about trajectory lines. They know when to say it is not working. When in education, David nailed it, have we ever done that - '}},
{ timecode: 507, handler: 'blob', id: 36, data: {text: 'Stopped doing something because it did not work. That is unheard of. We just keep piling it on. Oh, do this, oh it did not work, oh do this in addition to what you just did. That is reality. No. Stop. '}},
{ timecode: 523, handler: 'blob', id: 37, data: {text: 'If the data says it’s not working for a particular group of kids, you don’t do it anymore. Typically what we do is we go every six weeks to analyze what we are doing with these children. '}},
{ timecode: 534, handler: 'blob', id: 38, data: {text: 'We have three data points we do every two weeks. We do progress monitoring. At six weeks we are pretty confident in three data points whether it is an indication of what we are doing is working or '}},
{ timecode: 544, handler: 'blob', id: 39, data: {text: 'not. If it is not working, we either delve deeper in more assessment tools, or if it is working and our trajectory is saying okay we are getting there and we can show that, we will continue on. We may '}},
{ timecode: 558, handler: 'blob', id: 40, data: {text: 'shift kids in and out of programming. We may do skills groups for a little while. The basis of all of this stuff is the expertise of my teachers. They are generating this. One of the reasons that I '}},
{ timecode: 571, handler: 'blob', id: 41, data: {text: 'believe in my building that works so well is to create a position of a literacy coach and that is what we have. Our district said “you know what, we need this.” This is a highly trained '}},
{ timecode: 584, handler: 'blob', id: 42, data: {text: 'literacy specialist who I send out to all of these trainings because if you are like me, I can’t count on good substitute teachers. That is reality. I can’t have a classroom teacher, '}},
{ timecode: 599, handler: 'blob', id: 43, data: {text: 'especially in elementary, who wants to be out of the room more than a day, if not even a day. I don’t do that to them. We send out that literacy specialist. We send out that literacy coach, '}},
{ timecode: 612, handler: 'blob', id: 44, data: {text: 'turnkey trained. And guess when we do the training? In the morning. Again, time is precious. What we are trying to do is make the quality of that time better, not the quantity. One of the things that '}},
{ timecode: 629, handler: 'blob', id: 45, data: {text: 'this RTI thing really goes after is it validates good teaching. Our veteran teachers who have been around for a long time, and I love them dearly, all it did was say to them “you are doing a '}},
{ timecode: 642, handler: 'blob', id: 46, data: {text: 'fantastic job.” It really does. People will say, “how do you get the veteran teachers?” Are you kidding, they are one of the first. The data validates what they already know. They '}},
{ timecode: 655, handler: 'blob', id: 47, data: {text: 'just put it into words. I am putting it on paper. My famous thing, and my teachers love this, or maybe not and I don’t know. Data has no emotion. Teachers are emotional people, right? We are. '}},
{ timecode: 671, handler: 'blob', id: 48, data: {text: 'That is why we got into this for. We care about kids. But data has no emotion. You may think I am doing the best job in the world, and I am going to do this and I am going to do this. Then when you '}},
{ timecode: 681, handler: 'blob', id: 49, data: {text: 'put the data down there and you go “oh.” It does not have that emotion attached to it. It says, is it working or not. We have tried programs we thought they were great programs. Everybody '}},
{ timecode: 699, handler: 'blob', id: 50, data: {text: 'was happy. I was happy. The teachers were happy. The parents were happy. The kids were enjoying themselves. When we did a data analysis, it did not work. We stopped it. I think that is the issue that '}},
{ timecode: 714, handler: 'blob', id: 51, data: {text: 'I always come out with. I am willing to say it is not working, stop. I think our teachers need to have more and more of that, that don’t add add add if it is not working, stop it. Let’s '}},
{ timecode: 726, handler: 'blob', id: 52, data: {text: 'find our experts and see what else we can do out there. The literacy coach is probably one of my biggest pieces that I always like to see. What it does is the Turnkey Training goes right to the '}},
{ timecode: 739, handler: 'blob', id: 53, data: {text: 'teachers. It doesn’t go to me, although I am in on all of them and I am sitting there and I am trying to do DIBELS. If you have ever done DIBELS, I drop that freaking watch so many times. But '}},
{ timecode: 752, handler: 'blob', id: 54, data: {text: 'listen, in doing that, the first thing I did was I bought little countdown timers for their desks. That is getting out of the way. That is what I look at that. Stop watches did not work. Sounded like '}},
{ timecode: 766, handler: 'blob', id: 55, data: {text: 'a good idea. But it didn’t. So I spent $2.75 on a countdown timer. To me, that tells the teachers, all right, that we are in this together. That I care about what they are doing. That I care '}},
{ timecode: 781, handler: 'blob', id: 56, data: {text: 'about kids and we are all here. The other piece of this that RTI really does is what I consider a laser beam instruction. When you get a good core program and you get quality intervention and you get '}},
{ timecode: 798, handler: 'blob', id: 57, data: {text: 'quality teaching, you have great expertise. What it does is it laser beams to a child’s needs. When I say laser beam, you’re not wasting time on peripheral kinds of things. You are cutting '}},
{ timecode: 814, handler: 'blob', id: 58, data: {text: 'to the chase. You can do that very effectively if you have the tools and you have the background and you have the support to do that. That is a very important part of this. It is a key part of it. The '}},
{ timecode: 827, handler: 'blob', id: 59, data: {text: 'other piece is what I consider distributed leadership. I am a real big advocate of that. I say this in the fact that here is a little story; some of you who probably know me have probably heard it '}},
{ timecode: 839, handler: 'blob', id: 60, data: {text: 'before. Five years ago, that is probably about seven years ago now, a teacher would come to me or my reading coach would come to me and say “I’ve got this child and I am pulling my hair '}},
{ timecode: 849, handler: 'blob', id: 61, data: {text: 'out” and you can see how it affected me. “I don’t know what to do” so we would sit down and we would have a team and we have a get together and we go after this. We would come '}},
{ timecode: 859, handler: 'blob', id: 62, data: {text: 'up with all this different things and we would say okay let’s try. That was five, six years ago. Three years ago this same teacher, this same reading coach would come to me and say '}},
{ timecode: 870, handler: 'blob', id: 63, data: {text: '“I’ve got this child that I have concerns about, I want to try this, this, this or this.” Okay, see where we are going this. The last couple of years, they come to me and say '}},
{ timecode: 887, handler: 'blob', id: 64, data: {text: '“by the way Tom we are doing this.” All right? My response is, what do you need? That is a key issue here is that they become experts because they are all students. They have not shut the '}},
{ timecode: 903, handler: 'blob', id: 65, data: {text: 'door saying they know everything. They are students along with everyone else and that is very much a piece of this. One of the things I just want to touch on before I leave, when the staff becomes '}},
{ timecode: 917, handler: 'blob', id: 66, data: {text: 'this professional it gets pretty comical sometimes. I say that in the fact that we explored some different core programs a couple of years ago. If you have ever had those wonderful sales people come '}},
{ timecode: 932, handler: 'blob', id: 67, data: {text: 'into your building and say “oh, this has got everything in it and blah blah blah.” My teachers drilled this guy. It was pathetic. I loved it. That sales person did not even know what they '}},
{ timecode: 948, handler: 'blob', id: 68, data: {text: 'were talking about. I called up that publisher and I said “I don’t want a salesperson, give me your trainer, if you want to sell this you will have to sell it with the trainer because she '}},
{ timecode: 959, handler: 'blob', id: 69, data: {text: 'or he will be able to ask or give the answers to the questions my staff is asking. That sales person could not run fast enough out of the building.” That to me is a fun part. The other part is '}},
{ timecode: 973, handler: 'blob', id: 70, data: {text: 'when our new teachers come on board for interviews. We get the typical team of teachers and myself but I love to sit back now. Sometimes I have to settle them down. “What do you mean you '}},
{ timecode: 986, handler: 'blob', id: 71, data: {text: 'don’t know about this, what do you mean you don’t know about the five major components, what do you mean!” “Guys, wait… it took you a while to get there.” But that '}},
{ timecode: 994, handler: 'blob', id: 72, data: {text: 'is the key issue. We have talked to Karen, and talked to David. We have to have those people coming in with a general knowledge of what is good reading instruction. Again, I always go after the '}},
{ timecode: 1005, handler: 'blob', id: 73, data: {text: 'reading because that is what we have to do. The behavioral issues anecdotally, guess what, the two biggest things in elementary school typically for behaviors in a classroom is frustration and '}},
{ timecode: 1017, handler: 'blob', id: 74, data: {text: 'avoidance. Well guess what? When we started doing this and we started doing it effectively, we did not have frustration and we did not have avoidance. Like I said, anecdotal. Don’t do any '}},
{ timecode: 1025, handler: 'blob', id: 75, data: {text: 'research… I did not get anyone coming near my room. Now recess, that is another thing. I won’t go into that. In the classroom it did not happen and it is very rare now. But it is again '}},
{ timecode: 1036, handler: 'blob', id: 76, data: {text: 'because of effective instruction. That is a key issue. In closing, I guess where I come from on this with the NEA and everybody else, we are in it together. We truly have to be. It is not an us or '}},
{ timecode: 1049, handler: 'blob', id: 77, data: {text: 'them. It is we for kids. I appreciate you inviting me here today and I thank all of our associations that did this so thank you very much.'}},
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