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Episode 34: Carrie Rawlins and Title I

Sup with the Sup
Sup with the Sup
Episode 34: Carrie Rawlins and Title I
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Welcome everyone to this week’s episode of Provo City School District’s What’s Up With the Sup podcast. I am Superintendent Wendy Dau, and I am very excited for our podcast this week. I will be talking with Carrie Rawlins, who is the current principal at Timpanogos Elementary. She is going to talk with us about what it is like to be at a Title I school, and instead of thinking about it as having a lot of challenges, we’re really looking at all of the opportunities that come from being at a Title I school.

But we’re going to do our updates first.

  • The Find Your Swing pins are in! If you have finished reading the book, The Boys in the Boat, check in with the office of your school to receive your pin.
  • If you are interested in hearing updates regarding the construction projects happening in the district, please visit the district website and click on the new construction newsletter sign up link. The next newsletter will go out after our April 16th board meeting.
  • The Board of Education currently has one new draft policy available for community input on the district website. From the main page of the district website, click on the Policies, Forms, and Documents button. On the next page, at the top left, there is an orange Review Draft Policies Here button. The new policy available for review is a Draft Student Board Members and Student Advisory Council policy.
  • Coming up on Monday, April 15th, Besides paying your taxes that day will also be our district wide art show. It is entitled. This is Us Creative Arts Gala. Join us at Provo high at 5 PM and enjoy the creative works of students throughout the district, as well as many fun activities. And of course a food truck.
  • The next school board meeting will be a study session and business meeting on Tuesday, April 16th. The study session will begin at four o’clock in boardroom one at the district office, and the business meeting will start at seven o’clock in the Professional Development Center. Both meetings are open to the public, and public comment is welcome at the business meeting.
  • I’m thrilled to celebrate the incredible achievements of our InvestNest Provo students. Special congratulations to Kara Miller, who clinched the 10, 000 grand prize, which With her groundbreaking project in our third round of InvestNest, advancing her to the state competition. You can learn more about her project on our website.
  • This week is National Library Week. We love our libraries and are grateful for our dedicated librarians who run them.
  • Last week during spring break was National Assistant Principals Week. We want to give a big shout out to our assistant principals and the work they do each and every day. From driving shuttles, to supervising games, to working with students, to helping teachers, they are incredible human beings and we are lucky to have them.
  • A survey has been sent out to all Provo City School District families regarding Camp Big Springs. We would like your feedback about this program and its importance in our community so that we can continue to provide great learning experiences for our students.
  • And look for the weekly video cast from me every Friday. In this short video, I provide important information and updates about work happening throughout the district.

Wendy: I am here today with Carrie Rawlins, who is the principal at Timpanogos Elementary School. Welcome to our program.

Carrie: Thank you so much, Wendy. It’s good to be here.

Wendy: So tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been a principal at Timpanogos Elementary? How did you get into education? Just give us kind of your journey.

Carrie: Oh my goodness, that might take our whole time. So I became an educator because I missed having recess when I was little, and I wondered what recess would be like. I became a principal because I spent most of my education in the principal’s office, so I feel real comfortable in a principal’s office. But I’ve had various assignments. I started as a teacher, a teacher at, uh, Westridge Elementary and taught there for a long time. I got my master’s degree in counseling psychology.

Wendy: Okay.

Carrie: I got, let’s see, I went back to teaching at Westridge. I was an instructional coach at the district office. And then I got my leadership degree at that time, and I was the facilitator at Timpanogos for one year, and then I’ve been a principal for 10, so I’ve been at Timpanogos 11 years.

Wendy: Oh, wow.

Carrie: Yeah, it just seems like yesterday.

Wendy: I know. Time goes by so fast, right? Right. So tell us a little bit about Timpanogos Elementary. I was so impressed by the presentation that you gave at our board meeting, but I really wanted to highlight this in like greater detail and give you some time to really give us a little taste of the personality of Timpanogos and why it’s so unique and then we’re going to kind of tie it into what it means to be a Title I school.

Carrie: Sure. So, specifically, Timpanogos, we have more than half of our population, they come from non-English speaking homes.

Wendy: Okay.

Carrie: Uh, 46%, so a little under half are still considered to be learning English as a second language. So, they’re still in the process of learning. Their journey with learning English. We also have about 56 percent of our students that get free breakfast and lunch every day. And we have an at risk population, meaning that a good percentage of our students have already had a lot of adverse childhood

Wendy: Experiences.

Carrie: Thank you. I couldn’t remember what the E stood for. I couldn’t remember all of a sudden it just, it left my mind. So they’ve already had those adverse childhood experiences, which most people have one or two growing up, and most of the students, a good percentage of the students, at least, at Timpanogos, already have like four or five. They’ve gone through a lot of loss, a lot of heartache. They come to Timpanogos, already, even as a kindergartner, having these barriers to learning and you wouldn’t think that a kindergartner could come really far behind, but compared to their peers in other schools, they are already incredibly far behind as they enter our school.

So that just creates a whole bunch of challenges in terms of their social well-being, their emotional well-being, and their academic well-being. Exactly. So we have focused a lot of effort building systems to support Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which the first one is just their physical. You know, are they okay physically?

And, uh, I know Marsha was on the podcast, but we have a social worker, our family advocate, who helps with anything physical that a family needs. We get them beds, we get them bedding, we get them clothes, we get them shoes, we get them food, we get them hygiene supplies, whatever these families need. We also give out over a hundred bags of food weekly for students for the weekends so that they have something to eat over the weekend.

And we, we consistently have snacks and food available in the school just because, you know, when they come to school, they might get the free breakfast, but that might not sustain them and their hunger for the weekend or, or what have you.

Wendy: So tell us a little bit about what it means to be a Title I school. People hear this phrase all the time. Oh, that’s a Title I school. Provo City School District has seven Title I schools. What does that actually mean and how is that determined?

Carrie: Yeah. So a Title I school is determined by these at risk factors, right? How many students are eating free lunch? How many get reduced lunch? What is the generational poverty? What is the regular poverty? What is, you know, how many multilingual learners do they have? All these kinds of things. But, but for a Title 1 status, it really looks at just poverty as the, as the main criteria. And schools can be a Title I school, and there’s different degrees of Title I schools, even.

So, I know that a lot of the schools in Alpine, for example, have about 40 percent of their population that get free and reduced lunch, for example, and they’re considered a Title I school. You look at some of our schools that have, you know, 56 percent free plus another 10 to 15 percent on top of that of reduced lunch.

And for most of the time that I’ve been at Timpanogos, we’ve had about 80 percent of our population that received free and reduced lunch.

Wendy: That’s definitely a significant difference between a school that has 40%.

Carrie: Right.

Wendy: Like there’s no comparison.

Carrie: It’s double, right? Yeah. And what happens is the federal government have realized that these students come in with all these barriers and everybody has, so let’s say we’re running a race. Everybody has the same finish line. Everybody has to get to proficiency, right? Everybody, that’s the, that’s the goal. That’s the end of the race. But students in Title 1 schools don’t have the same starting place.

Wendy: That’s right.

Carrie: They come in with, with instead of running a 5k, they might be running the marathon to that proficiency, right?

Wendy: That’s a good analogy.

Carrie: So the federal government comes in and they, they give so much money to a title one school to try to make up the difference of that starting place. To try to fund instructional assistants or programs or or anything that that can help and I guess it’s not anything because they’re definitely it has to be for those academic purposes, right? But to try to break down those barriers so that students can start closer, or make up the ground faster than some of their peers that aren’t Title 1 schools.

Wendy: Well, and I think one of the things that people don’t realize is that that funding has a lot of really specific requirements tied to it. It isn’t just, oh, I get to spend this on extra food or t shirts or, you know, prizes and awesome trips. And it, it’s, I mean, there’s a lot of restrictions on what that money can be spent on. And if its pent on curriculum or or materials that has to be research based and there’s a there’s a whole process by which that’s vetted

Carrie: Exactly and all teachers and all instructional assistants at a Title I school have to be what are called highly qualified, right? And so we have to vet our applicants for instructional assistants, making sure that they’ve had at least so many credit hours of a college coursework or that they’ve passed a test saying that they are highly qualified to even be an instructional assistant at our school, because we want the very best teaching these kids. Otherwise, they’re not going to make up the ground like they need to.

Wendy: Talk to us a little bit about the systems that have been created at Timpanogos. You have been an extraordinary principal at Timpanogos Elementary and have, and have worked really hard with your staff to build these structures. Talk about what those structures look like, how they support students and how they support teachers to really help our students be successful.

Carrie: So we talked about the physical portion and teachers may see some of that, but they don’t usually get involved in that unless a student needs a snack. We also have emotional supports in place. We have a wellness room and we have a behavior specialist that helps to create some emotional safety within the school. She helps with behavior plans. She helps with check and connect, check in, check out, where students set goals for their behavior and then receive support, rewards for being able to meet those goals. This really helps the teachers in the classroom because if they’re trying to get kids caught up because they’re already behind when they get to us, adding behavior on top of that for a teacher becomes really concerning because they don’t have time to both teach and monitor all the behavior. And so that has been a system that has really, really supported teachers. As well, we have our win time, what, what every student needs, time where we have our instructional assistants that help with targeted either interventions or enrichment based on what the students need.

Wendy: One of the things that I notice when I go to Timpanogos is you have an incredible climate there. Like just the kids are very happy to be at school like like even if they’re having a behavior issue they still want to be there and they want to figure it out so that they can go back to their class and be with their teacher and be with their peers and how do you create that kind of welcoming culture. What is it that you and your staff have been able to do to make it so inviting? Because you really can feel it. As soon as you walk in the door, you’re just like, I don’t ever want to leave here. This is an incredible place.

Carrie: Well, I think we all love our community. We all love our kids, right? They are priority number one. I think one of the things, even with discipline, is that there are no bad kids. There are no bad kids. No way. And. I hope that I make it very clear as students meet with me in my office that I expect them to make mistakes. That’s part of living. A mistake is no big deal. That’s no big deal. And I let them know, I let them guess, like who they think in the school makes the most mistakes. And oftentimes they’ll guess them. And I say, no, no, no, no. It’s me. The principal makes the most mistakes and there’s nothing that we can’t figure out. So mistakes are not a problem. It’s trying to figure that out and learn from our mistakes.

But as well, I think our teachers really are key in a lot of that. Our teachers love building relationships with kids and one on one, two by two, like they, they just spend time with the kids and getting to know each student’s interests, their abilities, their strengths, their weaknesses, but we celebrate, we celebrate growth.

So each Friday kids can come down for Rawlins Readers and choose a book to take home. We have a student of the month assembly where we celebrate students and teachers. Just celebration is a huge part of our school and, and being able to celebrate the good things that kids and teachers are doing on a daily basis.

Wendy: I think that’s really important to just not only in building that relationship, but that celebrating piece says, Hey, I was noticed, like somebody saw me and saw the effort that I put forth. That’s a big deal, especially if you are in a situation where you don’t get a lot of that recognition and other spaces. That becomes really important for kids.

You’ve talked a lot about some of the challenges that come from students who have some of these challenges that they’re trying to overcome and some of these barriers, what are the opportunities? Sometimes we don’t, we don’t couch it in this way, right? But there are so many opportunities at a Title I school and being a part of this community. Talk more about that because that’s what we often neglect to share with people.

Carrie: Oh my goodness. I have loved my time at Timpanogos. First off, even the superintendent that just left, he said, I come to Timpanogos and I get more hugs.

Wendy: Yes.

Carrie: Than anywhere. Um, I get more hugs than I would ever need or, or like, I love it. I just love it. Kids at our school are very loving. They’re very willing to be excited about even just small things that happen, right? Like because of those celebrations, they love those celebrations. They get excited about small prizes. I think, especially at our school, just the, the language that is there, the, the multicultural aspect of our school is such an opportunity and our, our students may or may not realize that at this point in their life, even our first grade dual immersion teacher says, you know, I speak two languages. I’m powerful kind of thing. Like we, we want both languages to be celebrated and show kids that knowing both languages will really.

Provide them more opportunities as they grow up, right? And so I think the multicultural piece, I think being able to be an eclectic group of students within a learning space where not everyone looks exactly like me, not everyone talks exactly like me, just affords our students opportunities to see the world at large in a small microcosm of Timpanogos.

Wendy: Oh, that’s a really great way of putting that.

Carrie: There are several families who choice into Timpanogos because they want that experience for their children. That they’re not going to school just with a homogenous group, right? That everybody looks like me, everybody speaks the same language as I do, we’re just the same, same, same. Where at Timpanogos it really is the world in your backyard because we have just so many diverse opportunities at our school that just are fantastic.

Wendy: It also gives students an opportunity to really tap into what we have in common as human beings and through our lived experiences rather than just that’s what you look like or what country you come from or what language you speak. There are these universal things that we all experience that we find connections to one another. It’s so powerful, especially the younger children can experience that. I think it creates much greater compassion and understanding for others.

Carrie: Well, and I think if you were to go into our kindergarten classes, people know each other by their names and such. They don’t, they don’t even look at some of the things that adults look at as differences. It’s just Johnny or Sue, like they just know that they’re their friends. They don’t look at them as somebody that’s different.

Wendy: That’s right. They haven’t been trained to do that. So now they’re going to go through Timpanogos and they’re just going to have a different perspective on the world. I also think that Title 1 schools provide opportunities for kids to really be creative in their problem solving and in their learning, because it’s like, I’ve got to figure out ways to like, Okay, I don’t know this, you know, I don’t know all of the language, but it doesn’t matter. I’m going to keep progressing and figure this out. And I’m just going to keep trying until I get it. There seems to be a little more willingness to take risks because everyone is learning in some capacity.

Carrie: And where we’re a two way dual immersion, for example, part of the kids in our dual immersion are learning Spanish and part are learning English. And so everybody takes risks, no matter what language you’re speaking, because there’s some that know it, some that don’t, and it doesn’t matter. And like, I make so many mistakes when I was speaking Spanish. You just do it because you care about communicating with other people, right?

Wendy: And it also gives the kids the understanding that it’s okay to make those mistakes, that we’re just trying and working through that.

Carrie: I think, too, our kids have so much grit and determination because of this, things haven’t come so easy. And so they just have grit and determination to like, dig into a problem and figure out what they do know, and not focus on what they don’t know about something, but really focus on what, what they can solve.

Wendy: I think one of the things that Timpanogos also illustrates to us because of its two way immersion model is sometimes we think of a student who’s a multilingual student as that this is a challenge rather than an asset. It’s always an asset if students are learning more than one language and we need to really look at it from that lens just because a student chooses to learn more than one language.

Doesn’t mean that that’s better than a student who’s required to learn more than one language, right? Because of circumstances, um, because of moving to another country. We just need to see that as such an opportunity across the board for students if we’re expanding that language capacity regardless in, in what way that’s happening. It’s just huge. It’s, it’s incredible. And how jealous I am. I don’t have that talent and that skill, but so appreciative of so many kids, so young do. It’s incredible.

Carrie: And it just opens up once again, it opens up your relationship with your community.

Wendy: Yes.

Carrie: Instead of saying, okay, you can’t have a relationship with part of your community because you don’t speak that language. Now it’s oh, no, like you can speak the language. And so you can be part of the whole of the community.

Wendy: That’s right. Oh, I love how you said that. That’s an incredible way to look at that. One of the other things I wanted to highlight is that Timpanogos, even though it’s one of our most highly impacted schools in the district, is not in any kind of improvement really and hasn’t been. Talk to us about how you’re able to do that because that’s a whole school effort. All boots on the ground. We are working together and talk about what that means for kids. What an incredible opportunity that is, and what doors that’s opening for our students.

Carrie: It really is a badge of honor for our teachers. I feel like, you know, we’re one of the largest schools by enrollment. We’re one of the largest schools with our multilingual learners. We have lots of discipline that happens on a daily basis. But yet, we really are progressing and our growth is off the charts. I think not only do teachers see that all students at their grade level are their students. It used to be that it’s like, okay, just the students, the 30 students that I have in my class are my students, and I don’t even look at the grade level as my students. But just to give you an example, we had a sixth grade girl just last year that moved in to our school. She came from Mexico to our school, and it wasn’t clear what educational opportunities she had had in Mexico. She was learning at about a kindergarten level. Right. But I didn’t know if it was because of a learning disability, Or just that she hadn’t had access to learning. So I called in a kindergarten teacher, I called in a first grade teacher and I said, could this cute sixth grade girl spend some time in your kindergarten class and learn the kindergarten skills and then go to first grade and learn some of the first grade skills just so that we know. If she is able to learn or if she has some kind of a disability and those teachers were so welcoming and said, of course, send her in. So can you imagine a kindergarten teacher accepting a sixth grade student in to the kindergarten group and just saying, okay, we’re all in this learning together. Our teachers really own all the students at our school, and we will do whatever it takes to break down those barriers. And if it’s our custodian, you’ve heard stories about our custodian who, one little guy that was struggling with some behavior, really wanted to earn the reward to be able to go help Mel, our custodian.

Wendy: I think that’s just amazing.

Carrie: We got him a little vest, like to where he became a custodian for part of the day to earn those rewards. And so all hands are on deck. Everybody takes ownership of every child at our school. And I think also just looking at the dual immersion program and looking at how that set up and was the state model helping our, especially our fourth through sixth graders advance as, as quickly as they needed to and hold on to some of that English language arts to be able to progress? That was a real strategic move on our part to help our multilingual learners.

Wendy: And you nailed it. It’s been incredible. When I look at growth scores and I, I think every teacher needs to walk away from that, just going, they all had a part of that, right? Cause you’re building every teacher, every single teacher is contributing to the success of every single kid.

Carrie: Well, and with our dual immersion program, We have had over 50 students this year move into our school straight from another country.

Wendy: That’s so many.

Carrie: So two full classes basically of brand new to the country students and we’re able to put them in the dual immersion program so that they can learn English without losing the content that they’re bringing from whatever country they’re moving from. And so that’s huge too, because just because they don’t know English doesn’t mean that they have a deficit.

Wendy: Nope.

Carrie: That they don’t know math, that they don’t know how to read, that they don’t know how, you know, social studies or science, they, they have those skills. They just don’t know them in English. And so being able to put them in the dual immersion program helps them jump right in a progress like the need to and are capable of.

Wendy: I think that’s one of the mistakes that we make as we categorize all multilingual students in the world. One category, which is oftentimes, oh, they’ve never been in a school. They don’t, they don’t have any knowledge as well as language. And usually it’s just a language barrier. They have a ton of knowledge and have a wealth of experiences from the countries that they’re coming from. And I think we’re getting much, much better about seeing the assets that they’re bringing and the skills that they’re bringing and, and really giving them opportunities. Uh, to capitalize on that, and I, certainly you have created a great environment for them to do so, Carrie.

Carrie: Well, we, we love them, and it honestly brought tears to my eyes this summer when a dad was registering his students at our school and he was choicing into our school. He said, you know, I’ve heard from my colleagues at work. If I want to go to a school where my children are valued and honored, that I need to bring them to Timpanogos. And I thought, Oh, I love that. Of course. We, we. Thank you. Um, Bring them all. Yeah.

We love them. We love them.

Wendy: That’s incredible. That’s a huge tribute to you and your staff. So just incredible work. And now we’ve stolen you and now you’re going to come to the district office. I can’t wait to have all of this energy over here. It’ll be amazing.

Carrie: I, you know what? I’m sad to leave Timpanogos.

Wendy: Of course, of course you would be.

Carrie: I told the kids this last Friday that I was coming to the district office and we But, oh my goodness, Clint Wolfe, the new principal, will do so great. Leann Parker, the new vice principal, will do so great. They’ll be fabulous. And I’m excited to help some of my colleagues as principals look at systems and look at ways to be able to be preventative in some of these things. And hopefully, I can bring some knowledge from Timpanogos that that we’ve had with success and I can’t wait to learn from all of my colleagues too because I know that they’ve done great things at all their schools and hopefully support and build a community around our schools here in Provo. to be successful and preventative as well.

Wendy: I’m excited about that. What are you going to miss the most about Timpanogos?

Carrie: Oh, goodness. Oh, goodness.

Wendy:You might have to narrow it to maybe three things.

Carrie: I’ve been, I’m going to miss the hugs from students. Yes. That’s, that’s got to be, I’m going to miss saying, you know, good morning. How are you today? The students asking how I’m doing. I’m going to miss watching teachers teach and just the light in students eyes as they get something that was really difficult and they’re excited to learn. I’m also going to miss just the collegiality that I have with the teachers and the staff at Timpanogos. We’re a family, we’re friends, and I’ll miss that association with them.

Wendy: Yeah, for sure. I know they’re going to miss you a lot. They’ll be just fine. They’ll be in good hands, but they’re still going to miss you.

Carrie: They can miss me a little bit, but I’ll come visit and they’ll be in great hands.

Wendy: That’ll be great. Well, thank you so much, Carrie, for sharing so much about Timpanogos and what it’s like to be in charge of a Title I school. And I love your perspective in terms of these are opportunities for kids, and that’s really what we’re about. So,

Carrie: Well, thank you for having me, Wendy. I have loved my work in a Title I school. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Wendy: I know. I love it.

Thank you, everyone, for joining me for this week’s episode of What’s Up With the Sup?

As always, all episodes will be posted on the district website, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcast. If you have any topics or questions you would like us to discuss on the podcast, please email us at podcast@provo.edu. Until next time!

Shauna Sprunger
  • Coordinator of Communications
  • Shauna Sprunger
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