There were just three people on stage Friday morning when the banner unfurled at Charles Helmers Elementary, but Principal Michelle Velikorodnyy kept reiterating how many people were involved in the achievement.
First a handful of students talked about how help from multiple teachers and parents made a difference in their goals for reading and math.
After they sat down, Velikorodnyy, standing alongside Colleen Hawkins, the Saugus Union School District superintendent, and Cynthia Pilar, executive director of California Principals’ Support Network, which presented the banner, thanked the students for sharing encouragement with their peers.
“Don’t give up, work to succeed, and ask for help if you need to,” said Braiden Nevin, a third-grader who was sharing some of the ideas behind what makes Helmers a Model Professional Learning Community.
Solution Tree, a professional development company and publisher of educational material for K–12 educators, recognized the local elementary school Friday with that designation for its improvement achieved through a team-based approach.
“The beauty of being a professional and learning community is that every person that’s on staff works together for students to master essential standards,” Velikorodnyy said Friday after the assembly.
“So, it’s not just, ‘I’m taking care of the students in my class,’” she said, “It’s, ‘We’re all responsible for everyone making academic progress.’”
The school becomes one of nearly 700 that have been recognized across the nation, Pilar said, which also means the school is on a website that lists how the school’s staff works together as a learning tool for other sites. The school also agreed to be open to professional site visits from other campuses.
“And as you know, this doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” Pilar said during the assembly. “This significant work has been going on for several years now. I’ve had the honor of working with Mrs. Velikorodnyy, and I’ve worked with her guiding coalition and her teacher leaders and has been such an honor to watch the growth, the change and most importantly the improvement in student learning for all of the students here at Helmers.”
Hawkins was proud to mention the three years of consistent improvement students made at Helmers, despite what she called “a little bit of a tough time,” that many had in dealing with the pandemic, both in and out of the classroom.
Helmers uses all the data available to create a holistic approach, Hawkins said, looking at all the circumstances a student might be facing to assess how best to help them achieve, including attendance issues or academic struggles.
She thanked classified staff and then bowed in appreciation to teachers for their hard work in making changes, which can be difficult.
“To change practice to get the benefits that I knew that they were working on in their classrooms and that we knew that they were working on in their classrooms, and now to see that and be recognized for it,” Hawkins said. “I know it’s been a lot of hard work, but we all appreciate it.”
