Muscatel Middle School Pivotal Practice in the area of Student Engagement: Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) In March 2020, teachers at Muscatel Middle School immediately responded to the needs of our students; arriving at our school campus to assemble and distribute work packets for our students to stay engaged with their studies. When staff realized that it would be a long time before our students would be able to return to campus, teachers again returned to our school site to distribute Chromebooks for each student to use to access their assignments in Google Classroom. At this point, PLCs continued to develop and align curriculum maps for student access, but also began examining the data produced, or not produced, by their students in distance learning, to address ongoing gaps in access and achievement.

When the 2020-2021 school year began, PLCs evolved from monthly collaborations to weekly and in many cases, bi-weekly team time. PLCs met to answer the collective question,“What do we want our students to learn?” The team also expanded to “How will we know when they’ve learned it?” This created common formative assessments (CFAs) to assess progress for learning and to intentionally design intervention and acceleration activities based upon findings from this CFA data. Though staff was not able to physically be in the same space with our students, the PLC practices connected us to them, allowing staff to more deeply know and respond to their instructional needs.

“I am incredibly proud of the Muscatel team of educators. Our staff cares for and works tirelessly to support the academic and social emotional development of our students, and this care and concern became even more apparent during the pandemic. We are humbled to receive the California Pivotal Practice Award and we will continue our efforts to maximize student engagement on the Muscatel campus,” stated Muscatel Principal Mrs. Jocelyn Wilson.

“Although student and staff safety was a primary focus for our school district, student academic achievement and socio-emotional learning was as well. Muscatel’s PLC model is an example of how our dedicated educators tackled the challenge of teaching and learning in the midst of a pandemic. We are extremely proud of our Mustang staff and students” shared Superintendent Mr. Alejandro Ruvalcaba.

“Congratulations to Muscatel Middle School for being one of the recipients of the California Pivotal Practice School Program Award for 2022. It’s a great honor for our middle school to receive this award. Amidst of a pandemic, our teachers, principal, staff, and Superintendent remained laser focused on ensuring that our students continued receiving a high quality education. I’m appreciative of all their hard work and dedication,” stated Board of Trustees President Ms. Nancy Armenta.