3 Ways Goalbook Has Improved Instructional Practice at New York City PS 46

Liz Galvin, IEP teacher and Special Education Liaison at PS 46 on Staten Island, “stumbled upon” Goalbook while attempting to clarify her thoughts in writing instructional plans for students with IEPs. Four years later, Goalbook is now a resource that has turned her special ed team into “expert point-people” among their general education colleagues.

Here are three key ways Goalbook has helped support the professional development and growth of teachers at PS 46:

1. Demystifying Standards-Based Expectations

Liz wears several hats at PS 46, and her myriad tasks include identifying and unpacking priority standards, evaluating the relevance of current assessments used by staff and adjusting for gaps, and identifying instructional supports.

“Goalbook was a perfect resource to equip myself with as I worked through the lens of IEP writing as well as curriculum development.”

Last year, Liz’s team re-evaluated their existing curriculum maps in order to gain a deeper understanding of how meaningfully the plans supported student learning as well as access to standards and to identify standards students had historically underperformed on, as evidenced by state assessments. “That in itself was a lot of work,” recalls Liz.

This work pointed to a need to support teachers more concretely in teaching ELA standards: determining central ideas or themes of a text and analyzing their development, citing appropriate evidence, and summarizing the key supporting details and ideas of a text.

Pathways Reading Quick Assessments proved helpful in providing a meaningful baseline and benchmark data for these skills.

The resulting clarity around standards-based expectations for all students over the past school year “is definitely increasing reflective practices of teachers as a whole and recognizing the complexity of individual needs,” Liz observes.

Pathways Quick Assessments were instrumental in clarifying standards-based expectations and gathering baseline and summative data. (Example: RI.3.2)

2. High Expectations for ALL Students

Liz is also responsible for overseeing Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) for students with disabilities.

At PS 46, a select group of classrooms are implementing a co-teaching model, where students who might typically have been placed in a self-contained setting receive instruction along with their grade-level peers in the general education curriculum. The goal is to “push our thinking and our teaching so we’re able to provide access to the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE).”

Goalbook Toolkit has helped facilitate an increase in IEP quality, which has led to higher expectations for students with disabilities, providing access to grade-level content, and improving accessibility.

“Balancing between writing the IEPs and talking with teachers about how to address a standard for a student who is functioning below grade level” has been a key point of discussion in coaching teachers. Goalbook provides a structure for identifying access points and demystifies what quality instruction can look like for ALL students.

The scaffolded supports in Goalbook have also given teachers a boost of confidence in designing instruction that is accessible for even students with the highest levels of need, providing tools to plan long-term toward progress in the most foundational and critical skills while staying grounded in a student’s present levels of performance. According to Liz, this seems to be helping the shift in mindset that special education is not a “place”. “Students in all settings function and learn better with these supports around them.”

Students in all settings function and learn better with these supports around them.

3. Research-Based Resources Ready to Go

While understanding expectations is a critical piece toward designing rigorous instruction for all, teachers need the ability to turn that understanding into action very quickly and sustainably over the long-term planning of a school year.

Goalbook has steadily been adding printable resources for classroom use.

Goalbook’s Strategy Wizard helps teachers target specific learning barriers to improve access to critical learning skills.

At PS 46, resources designed to increase student autonomy within the five core competencies identified by CASEL (self-management, self-awareness, responsible decision-making, social awareness, and relationship skills) have been particularly helpful across school settings.

One teacher at PS 46 reports, “Behavior has improved by using the examples provided by Goalbook’s Strategy Wizard; for example, the schedule and choices for individual child & group breaks.”

The Break Card printable resource page has been particularly helpful to teachers at PS 46.

Halfway through a second year of partnership with Goalbook, Liz and her team report an increase in IEP quality along with curriculum maps, which indicate more specificity in instructional supports. This has translated overall to increased awareness of accessibility and to lessons which are more intentionally planned with all students in mind.

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