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Joslynn Couture

February 10th, 2020

Deborah Baker

Contextual Factors Analysis

Contextual Factors Analysis

COMMUNITY, DISTRICT, AND SCHOOL FACTORS:

The district is fairly large, overall there are about 2,330 students with 370 staff. They

have an operating budget of 36.5 million dollars. This was based off of the (15-16) school

year. There are a total of eight buildings in the school district. The elementary students

are split into two buildings. Coffin school houses grades K-2 (375 students) and Harriet

Beecher Stowe has grades 2-5 (700 students). The district also has Region 10 Vocational

School where students can go to take trade classes. Brunswick Junior High houses

students in grades 6-8 and there are approximately 475 students. The district also has

the REAL school where grades 3-12 go for adventure-based day treatment. They also

have the Hawthorne school for grades 9-12 for before/after school programs. As you can

see below around 28% of students receive free/reduced lunch. This is lower than the

state average. Combined with this statistic are the 10% of students who are in the

gifted/talented program. This is higher than the state average.

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One thing that is really cool about the Brunswick district is that students are with each

other from the beginning. It is a one town district so these students are with each other

K-12. It really helps to support the relationships and community within the classroom.

In my experience, I came from a district with many towns, there were several smaller

elementary schools for all of the many towns and then we all finally came together for

middle school. This really created separations within the school. Often people from the

same town would stick together and become clique and there wasn’t much of a

community. It was very divided. Where this district is all one town, Brunswick, you see a

much stronger sense of community.

Brunswick, like many districts, has a diverse makeup. Roughly ten percent of the

population are minorities in the district. Below is a table with the breakdown. Seventeen

percent of the student population receive some form of special education services.
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Thirty-four percent of the students are labelled economically disadvantaged. Over eighty

percent of high school students are involved in some form of activity or club. Finally,

twenty-four percent of students choose to be in a higher level math class. These students

are being awarded for their successes in many different places such as, National Honor

Society, National Merit Finalists, New England Music Festival, National Art and Writing

Awards, Rotary Service Interact Awards, and Scholar Athlete Awards. These are

incredible students that are doing incredible things.

Brunswick School Department Breakdown:

The community is really invested in the quality of the education that the students are

receiving. This is incredibly evident everywhere you look. From the staff in the schools

to the students. The core values of the district are student success, professional

excellence, and community connections. The relationship between the community and

the school is quite strong. From the first day I started my mentor teacher spoke with me
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about all of the involvement the community has in the school. Many of the parents and

community members have started an annual fundraiser at one of the restaurants in

town to raise money for grants for the teachers. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. The

school district knows that the community is a really important part of their district and

they work really hard to communicate with the community well and effectively.

The community has really great resources for those who are facing hard times. There are

many resources for finding low income housing and there are places where community

members can go to get help with applying for section 8 housing. The Brunswick Housing

Authority is one of those places. The mission statement for this group is, “​ ​The mission

of the Brunswick Topsham Housing Authority is to provide safe, quality and affordable

housing for eligible persons in need of assistance, regardless of race, color, sex, religion,

national or ethnic origin, age, handicap, marital status, sexual orientation, familial

status, or disability, and to promote opportunities for the growth and development of

residents as well as our community.” This group has a lot of low income buildings as

well as helping residents apply for section 8 housing. They’re really great about helping

people find the connections that will help them. It’s really cool that they focus on not

only helping someone short term but helping them grow as an individual to someday be

in a better place.

For people facing homelessness there is a wonderful resource called the Tedford Shelter.

Their belief is that everyone deserves to be in a safe and affordable home. One critique
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of the Brunswick area is that it can be quite expensive to live there. Finding affordable

housing can be quite difficult. Not only is Tedford housing a shelter but it also provides

resources and housing for low income people. They work really hard to prevent people

from becoming homeless. Below is a chart that they put on their website for the 2019

fiscal year. It shows all the programs they worked with to prevent homelessness in the

area. One of the many is a program called Warm Thy Neighbor. It works to help people

afford the costs of heating their homes in the winter months. It is nice to see how many

people they were able to help but it is also startling to see that even with all of the

resources Brunswick does have they still have to turn some people away. It also

highlights the youth they were able to help. They served homeless youth in Brunswick as

well as two neighboring districts. It just highlights that while this district is in many

ways privileged and has resources that there still are youth that are struggling and facing

really hard circumstances.

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CLASSROOM FACTORS:

The classroom setup is definitely quite original. When you walk into the classroom you

see the white board in front of the class. You see two rows of chairs facing the white

board. Then you see the desks. Currently, the desks are arranged in table groups. Each
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table group consists of four desk groups. Along the further side of the room there is a

power strip that runs along the side of the wall. There are three to four desks facing this

wall. Students can choose to sit here to plug in their laptops if they didn’t get a good

charge that night or if their battery is running low near the end of the day. At the back of

the class there are two teachers desks. There is also another white board that displays

every learning target for the unit. These learning targets are checked off as they are

taught. This is displayed so students know where they have been, where they are, and

the direction they are heading. The whiteboard at the front of the classroom houses that

day's specific learning target so the students know what to expect for that day.

The classroom setup in a lot of ways takes away distractions. Students don’t have their

desks to hide their actions. When I asked my mentor teacher about the setup she

actually said that she got the idea from her previous districts elementary school. When

she was at her last school she actually had a rug and students could sit on the floor if

they chose. I think that this setup offers flexibility in arrangement and it provides

movement during the class period. Students transition quite a bit from the rows of

chairs in the front to their desk to work. This could be something that would provide a

distraction to the classroom, as it is often transitions that often can create chaos. This

doesn’t happen in this classroom. A lot of work has been put in to build the classroom

community. Norms were created with the students at the beginning of the year and are

still heavily enforced. In fact, new norms are created as the classroom dynamic changes

and the students' personalities are learned.

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Every student has a MacBook Air that they are able to take home if the parent allows it.

With every student having access to such a nice piece of technology it really allows for

more creativity in the classroom. Technology is a huge part of modern day education

and it’s nice to have it available. It is intriguing to see how many students fail to have

their laptops charged and ready for class each day. It has become something that is a

problem in the classroom. Especially where power outlets are so scarce in the classroom.

It almost seems like students are trying to get out of their assigned seating by coming

into class with their laptops dead. Additionally, classrooms are set up with Apple TV

which makes projecting super simple. My mentor teacher is consistently using this

feature to give her students something visual to look at. She firmly believes that if a

middle schooler doesn’t see something then it isn’t real to them. They like to have

something real that they can look at.

The school runs off of period scheduling. This means that each class is about fifty

minutes long and they have each class every single day. This is really great for the

students. It doesn’t require them to sit still for too long and lessons are often pretty

short. With shorter lessons it feels like students are getting bite sized pieces of

information that they can actually digest. It also leaves enough time for students to start

working on their “homework” in class. My mentor teacher calls this workshop time. It’s

a great time to walk around and see what students are understanding the lesson and
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which ones may need a little extra help. If everyone seems lost we can bring it back into

circle time to redo the lesson.

STRENGTHS/NEEDS ANALYSIS:

There is a huge range of students. Students are either at about a 5th grade or below

reading level or at about a 10th grade reading level. There really isn’t much of a middle

ground here. My mentor teacher attributes this to the economic factors in the area.

Many students are really financially well off. Brunswick is really rising in cost and it’s

becoming really hard to afford to live there if you aren’t at least middle class. There are

some small parts of the town that are low income housing. But these parts of town are

small and pretty quickly starting to disappear. The school has a lot of really great

resources for the students who are doing really well. There are a lot of resources

available in the Brunswick community but not enough for the lowest income earners.

Even with all of the resources the school doesn’t do well enough to bridge the gap

between the two groups of students.

STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Throughout this section of the paper are many observations that either myself or my

mentor teacher have observed. Much of this was learned through conversation and

interviews with many of the adults in the building.

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Privileged students are much more extrinsically motivated.While this is not a fact of the

district, it is something that my mentor teacher and I have observed. They want to

compete with each other to do well and get better grades. After every test and every

assignment that students get back you can hear students in the classroom starting to

compete with each 0ther and brag about the grade they just got. This is something that

is definitely more popular amongst the more privileged students. There is definitely a

culture in the eighth grade and the school that people can’t make mistakes. You always

have to be right. There is so much ridicule if a student gets the answer wrong that you

can really sense that no one wants to try new things out of fear that they will be wrong.

The less privileged students are the ones that are more intrinsically motivated but most

don’t have the resources at home to do quite as well.

There are incredibly high anxiety levels amongst Brunswick kids. Many of the kids work

very closely with guidance. We are in a particularly lucky school that also has a

counselor from Sweetser on staff. They all have a lot of pressure on themselves to do

better than their peers. Every student wants to be the best. I think there is a lot of

pressure that comes from home as well. The community of Brunswick all places a really

high level of importance on education and doing well and the students feel this pressure.

There is this belief that nothing other than perfect or exceptional is allowed. Part of this

is because of the parents who won’t allow any less than perfect from their students. The

minute a grade is posted many parents have notifications sent to their phone so they can

follow their kids progress. Often, if the grade is not what the parent likes they will send
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emails to the teacher. This is especially strong in the high school where students are

fighting for rank in the class and everyone wants a 4.0 gpa. It’s nice that students want

to do well but it’s not really for the right reasons.

STUDENT SURVEY RESULTS:

Name: Star Favorite Learning Favorite Least 504 or

Reading Class: Style: thing favorite IEP or
Score: about thing ILP
school: about
school:

Student 1 1256 Spanish With a Seeing Taking No

friend friends tests

Student 2 648 Math With a Seeing Homework No

friend friends

Student 3 1345 Math By myself I get to Homework 504

learn

Student 4 942 French With a Being with Band w/ No

friend friends teacher

Student 5 969 LA With a My friends Science No

friend

Student 6 869 Math By myself Being with Taking No

friends tests

Student 7 649 Social With a Art or Science No

Studies friend science teachers
teaching
methods

Student 8 1346 Social By myself Extra Band No

Studies curriculars teacher

Student 9 1282 French By myself Being with Homework No

friends

Student n/a Math and By myself Learning Lots of No

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10 LA and being homework

with friends

Student 1347 n/a n/a n/a n/a ILP

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WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS MEAN?:

This class is really small and with the exception of two students excel in school. This

means that the two students who do lag behind quite a bit have the opportunity to get a

little bit more one on one time with the teachers. Right now with there being two of us in

the room, it's pretty easy to check in on the two students that usually need a bit more

help than the rest. Both of those students do really like working with their friends in

class which does provide added support. Sometimes the best support you can give a

student is peer to peer because they can communicate the information in a way that

their peers will actually understand. A lot of times you will see someone else in class give

support to the student before we can even get there. It’s really amazing to see.

This class is also super motivated. They all really love to learn and do well in school so

typically behavior management wise there isn’t much that you have to do. With this

class it’s a lot of redirecting the excitement. They get really excited about various things

but they typically respond really well to being redirected. They are typically really

mature when it comes to behavior. I’ve noticed as a whole class they typically get more

lenient rules because they have shown that they have enough maturity to respond to that
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in the correct way. This means that they typically get more range when it comes to

goofiness.

This class is also a great class for group work. Some kids prefer to work on their own and

that’s okay. They can have that choice but the kids that do want to work together do

some really good things. Student B and G are a couple of the kids that benefit immensely

from purposeful grouping. Pairing them with a couple of the higher kids in the class

(that they are friends with) usually works really well. The higher student gets a higher

level of understanding because you’ll often see this student helping in a way that’s not

giving their friends the answer but reteaching the lesson. During group work I really see

this working really well. Typically, an adult in the room will check in at this group a few

times to see if the lower students are really grasping the content. When planning this

class we often will plan more work or find ways to increase the level of difficulty or a

combination of the both. Often these students don’t need as much mini lesson time and

often have more workshop time. We just find that the class as a whole is typically ready

to put their skills to the test sooner than other classes.

A total of three of the students have neither a 504 or IEP but they have something

referred to as an ILP. This is for the “gifted” students at Brunswick. They have gifted and

talented teachers in the building that follow the progress of these students and they have

plans. Truthfully, these aren’t taken as seriously as they could be. They’re not a legal

document but something Brunswick uses to track students. Tracking students is

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something that some teachers in the building are on board with and others do not like it.

Students are tested at a really young age and then not tested again for this. This means

having an ILP is sometimes not the best fit for a student.

There is one student with a 504 plan. Student C has some health issues and with that

they miss a lot of school sometimes. I have not seen this yet but I am told that it does

happen. This is because for the most part his attendance is really good but there are

times when he can miss like a week of school. The health issues are correlated with food.

So what this means is that anytime we plan to have a party at school with food we need

to let the parents know what type of food we are having and let them know that it is

perfectly okay to send this student with something else that they can actually enjoy. This

student is very capable of advocating for themselves and that does help things. When

the student does have to miss school the team of teachers works together to help the

student make things up that he shouldn’t miss and exempt him on the things that would

be “busy work”. Busy work is work that won’t really help the student learn if he can

prove that he already knows that skill via the assessment. I know at some point with this

class I will have to work with this student to help him make up work that he misses due

to illness.

CLOSURE:

Through completing this paper I not only learned a lot about my students and the

district, I got to meet a lot of the adults in the school. This taught me how important it is
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to get to know your students. Building relationships with your students is one of the

most important things that you can do as an educator. The student survey helped me

learn a lot about my students that helped me further connect with my students. In the

future I will continue the use of student surveys in my classroom.

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Works Cited

Dearing. “Brunswick Believes: A Strategic Framework 2016-2021.” ​Brunswick School

Department,​ 21 Sept​. 2016,

www.brunswick.k12.me.us/blog/2016/09/21/brunswick-believes-a-strategic-framework

-2016-2021/​.

LaClaire, Hannah. “Brunswick Junior High Needs Millions in Repairs, but with Another

Multi-Million Dollar School Coming next Year, Officials Look for Money.” ​Press

Herald​, 12 Nov. 2019,

www.pressherald.com/2019/02/14/brunswick-junior-high-needs-millions-in-re

pairs-but-with-another-multi-million-dollar-school-coming-next-year-officials-lo

ok-for-money/​.

LaFleur, Jennifer. “The Opportunity Gap: Brunswick Junior High School.” ​ProPublica,​

projects.propublica.org/schools/schools/230378000096.

“Our Programs.” ​Tedford Housing​, 1 July 2019, tedfordhousing.org/programs/.