Early information on this year’s students at Pointview Elementary is promising.
Writing skills are up thanks to the work by kindergarten, first- and second-grade teachers to introduce the practice early. Math skills are on the rise, especially in the fourth-grade where 88% tested proficient on the state exam. Early literacy skills continue to grow each year.
On Wednesday, teachers, staff and administrators who make up Pointview’s building leadership team reviewed various assessments that offer a picture of where students have grown, what they’re struggling with and how teachers can support them. The team celebrated the gains while planning next steps for improvement.
All across Pointview, students are making more than a year’s worth of growth, in some cases moving from three or more years behind grade level to one or two years.
Now the question is whether teachers and staff can help them grow again — so they are ready for lessons at grade level, MTSS Coach Amy Hinz said to members of the team.
“Based on what our history has shown us, we’re doing it,” she told them. “Let’s just keep going.”
For the past two years, Pointview leaders and staff have worked towards rebuilding the culture, climate and expectations of the school. Their goal was bold, yet simple: A school community focused on supporting every student in the building— not just the ones in their classrooms — and each other.
For Hinz and Principal David Bennett, it all came down to consistency — making sure every child experienced the same strong teaching, support and clear expectations every day.
And the results speak volumes: Pointview earned its first-ever 4-star rating on this year’s state report card. They earned 4 stars in both progress and gap closing measures.
It’s a dramatic turnaround that redefines what’s possible for Pointview. When Bennett first arrived at Pointview in 2018, the school received an overall D grade. (Prior to stars, the state report card rated schools and districts with letter grades). The school only met 1 out of 9 possible indicators for an F rating and about half of the students were performing below proficiency.
“This work would have not been possible without a team effort,” Bennett said. “Everyone has contributed to this journey at every step along the way.”
EVERY STUDENT, EVERY DAY
In spring 2023, Pointview teachers completed an end-of-year survey that called for action. They wanted more voice in how the school operated and improvements to the building’s climate and culture.
For years, Pointview experienced a turnover in staff and students; teachers moved to different buildings while students sought either a Magnet program or open-enrolled to another elementary in the District. The teacher turnover made it difficult to bring consistency to the work in the building and often led to staff working individually as opposed to a unit.
“We wanted to retain our staff and we had to look at what we were going to do to make sure they felt supported and valued and appreciated,” said Hinz, who joined Pointview in 2023.
Previously, she spent 21 years as a teacher and instructional coach at Cherrington Elementary.
Bennett organized a team focused on climate and culture to redefine the school’s mission, staff commitments and priorities moving forward. Through the group’s conversations, they agreed that all building decisions will be based on what is best for students and understanding that each staff member is responsible for every student in Pointview.
The team also wanted to bolster relationships among staff. They created a support system for new staff members so they would have a go-to person in the building if they needed help or had any questions.
Meanwhile, Hinz worked alongside MTSS coach Lauren Krella on Pointview’s continued push towards MTSS, or Multi-Tiered Systems of Support — a framework that ensures every student gets the right support, from extra practice to enrichment to specialized help. It is built on three tiers, each offering a different level of help depending on a student’s needs:
- Tier 1 – Core Instruction: Every student receives high-quality instruction in the classroom and teachers use strategies that help most students learn successfully.
- Tier 2 – Targeted Support: For students who need extra help beyond the regular classroom instruction. Small group sessions or specialized strategies focus on specific skills that either intervene or enrich what a student knows and is able to demonstrate.
- Tier 3 – Intensive Support: For students who need personalized, intensive support. This support is given either 1-1 or in small groups where instruction focuses on the student’s unique needs.
Hinz and Krella worked as a team to support teachers, using data to navigate conversations about what they were doing well and where they could improve.
To ensure everyone was on the same page, Hinz led several training sessions throughout the school year to help teachers understand what core curriculum instruction looks like at their grade levels. She guided them through various approaches of intervention and explained how they would track students’ progress.
At the end of the school year, Bennett met with every staff member individually to gather feedback, reflect on the year and their hopes for the following school year.
That summer, he had six classroom positions to fill after teachers retired or were offered other opportunities in the District.
During interviews with teaching candidates, Bennett and Hinz were transparent about Pointview’s goals and expectations. They reinforced the commitments staff created that’s grounded in what is best for students.
“We talked to them about where we were and where we wanted to go, what we wanted to build,” he said.
MAKING MOVES
It’s 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and for the fourth-graders in Lauren Marks and Riley Dougherty’s classes, it’s time for intervention.
Marks’ students found their “Fluency Buddy” and spread out throughout the classroom. Each duo has a reading passage and a worksheet that tracks their progress on the number of words they’ve read under a certain time. Since the start of the school year, students read with their Fluency Buddy each day, taking turns reading new passages each week while the other follows along, marking words their partner skipped, mispronounced or added.
The goal: to read more of the passage than they did the day before.
“So far, I’m already seeing improvements in their fluency,” said Marks, who joined Pointview last school year. “On Fridays, they get really excited by how high their numbers are, especially from where it started.”
Meanwhile, in Dougherty’s room, students are working on online lessons tailored to their specific learning needs.
Last year, Pointview established a dedicated block of time for intervention at each grade level. Students get targeted support in math and reading — from one-on-one help with a reading teacher, to small-group lessons with Marks or Dougherty, to independent learning on online programs. The intervention block allowed teachers to protect core instruction time.
“What I noticed when I was student teaching, there were students being pulled at random times,” said Dougherty, who joined Pointview as a first-year teacher last year. “There were different kids at each time so we were always trying to catch these kids back up. Everyone knows when is the fourth-grade’s time for intervention so if anyone needs to see a kiddo, this is the time to do it… It has made catching them up a lot less.”
If the 2023-24 school year was about laying the groundwork at Pointview, last school year was about putting plans into action.
“They were all in,” Bennett said.
He began the year with Pointview’s first-ever staff retreat. Meanwhile, Hinz worked with teachers to monitor students’ progress throughout the year. She helped them pinpoint which reading and math skills to focus on and how to give students the support they need right away. She met with teachers by grade level to answer questions, review data or cover any topic that helps them support their students.
They also launched a staff chat so teachers and staff can quickly support one another, making sure every student has help within reach.
Bennett also wanted to revisit the school’s approach to covering life skills with students. Pointview had been using the Leader in Me program, which is based on the book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” The program is designed to build perseverance and leadership in students, create a high-trust culture and help improve academic achievement.
Last year, teachers added three elements of the program to their school day:
- Morning meetings, where students start the day by gathering to greet each other, participate in group activities and build a sense of community within their classrooms;
- Quiet time, which offers an opportunity for students to transition back into the classroom after recess by reading, writing, drawing or doing some other quiet work so they are ready for an afternoon of learning;
- Closing circle, where students spend the final minutes of the day together to reflect on what’s meaningful to them about their schoolwork, their classmates and themselves.
The routines offer a structured approach to teaching students skills such as self-regulation and maintaining friendships. For Pointview staff, it was another layer of consistency across the building.
Tonya Mariscal, who has taught at Pointview for more than a decade, noticed a change in the school’s climate and culture last year.
New staff members brought excitement and energy to school — each of them committed to doing what’s best for students, she said.
“There were no complaints and questions about it,” she said. “They said, ‘Let’s do this work. Let’s get them growing.’”
Last year also marked a change for Mariscal, who moved to third-grade after teaching first-grade for most of her career at Pointview. She sought stability in a teaching partner after welcoming a new first-grade partner every year for the past six years.
She connected with third-grade teacher Michael Grant, who like her was devoted to Pointview.
“That was the commitment we made — We’re going to do this and do this together,” she said. “This is where we want to be. It makes a huge difference for the kids, to be able to work together to create that climate that we want to be in and the kids want to be in.”
BUILDING MOMENTUM
After nearly an hour reviewing data on this year’s students, Hinz closed Wednesday’s building leadership meeting by putting their work into context:
Test scores are slipping nationwide. Students are coming in with skills, behaviors and backgrounds that didn’t look the same a decade ago. What are we going to change in what we do in the classroom to meet their needs?
“That is on us,” she said. “We are tasked with making sure we meet students where they are and adapt our approach to meet their needs.”
Grant, the third-grade teacher, weighed in. Educators have to connect with their kids, he said.
“When I said Jacque Cousteau is the GOAT of exploring the ocean, they didn’t care about Jacque until I said he was the GOAT,” said Grant, referring to a book in their recent Wit and Wisdom language arts lesson. “They are very different now than in my 10 years of teaching.”
Hinz nodded.
“There are different things that I’m seeing in the classroom now that you are adapting to kids — and you need to adapt because that’s what it’s going to take to keep them engaged, keep them focused,” she said. “There’s different things we need to do to make sure we’re meeting their needs.”
Pointview teachers admit it’s challenging and demanding work. But they aren’t shying away from it.
For the first time since Bennett has been principal, none of the teachers left the school over the summer. He said teachers are committed to each other and stand firm that every Pointview student is their own.
He noted another sign of progress: Staff completed another end-of-year climate and culture survey during the spring. Topics they once scored with 1s and 2s jumped to 4s and 5s.
“Now we have a strong foundation to build upon,” Bennett said. “And we look forward to what the future holds for us as we continue to focus on high expectations for teaching and learning.”
PTA membership has also soared. Classes range from 20% to 80% of their parents joining the group this year. The PTA’s Morning with Muffins event earlier this month attracted more families than in recent years.
There’s an excitement to what’s happening at Pointview, said Jill Fockler, a reading teacher whose children attended the school during the early 2000s.
She has dedicated more than 20 years to the school, from parent to a substitute teacher to an English Language paraprofessional. For the last eight years, she’s served as a reading teacher.
“I feel like we’ve got the best staff, the right mindset and we are totally ready to” rise to the moment, she said. “And our kids are ready too.”