● Sarah Krider and The Equity Project team were an invaluable resource and asset to me and my classroom this year.
● I experienced significant growth in my professional development, classroom culture, and implementation of data practices that would have taken me many years to achieve on my own.
● The coaching, mentor ship, and support The Equity Project provides is transformational.
● The Equity Project empowered and supported me in obtaining the skills necessary to move student data in monumental ways. This simultaneously moved my “data” significantly forward in observations and teacher evaluations.
● There is no amount of gratitude that seems appropriate for the gifts Sarah Krider and The Equity Project have given my teaching practice and my classroom this year.
Kristen 6th grade ELA Panorama Middle School
● I have seen a huge increase in student engagement
● I have noticed more participation and students helping other students (working together, even when they are not asked to)
● Students are taking ownership in their classwork/grades/learning
● Classroom environment is a safe space for students to make mistakes are students are more likely to ask for help either from their peers or myself
● Students get excited to come to small group
● Students have said "You are the only teacher that has made sure that I don't fail. You help me and that makes me want to get better."
Hilary 7th grade math teacher doing level three intervention Fox Meadow Middle School
“Beth helped me with tangible improvements to my teaching such as accountable talk and station work. Her availability was awesome: she consistently responded to emails with helpful resources within 24 hours, and was available every week, sometimes twice a week, to help in my classroom. I needed to engage the off-task learners and Beth’s engagement strategies helped me do just that. I certainly grew under her mentor ship—I can see my students’ increased engagement as the direct result of this.”
Henry 7/8th grade ELA teacher Panorama Middle School
“The Equity Project was more than helpful to me and my classroom this year. As a second-year teacher, I struggled with classroom management and procedures – which led to struggling with teaching the content and helping students master skills. The Equity Project gave me inspiration, assistance, and most of all, the tools I need to become a more successful teacher.
Sarah and her extensive background knowledge along with experience in the education system was valuable to myself and my colleagues at Panorama Middle School. Her advice and research based instructional practices helped me completely regain control of my classroom and move my lowest level class over 20% on their assessment scores.
At the beginning of the year, the average for my 6th grade English Language Arts (ELA) classes on Reading Language Standards was 23.5%. By the end of the year, my class average overall had improved to 41.5% - an increase of 18%. Students truly struggled on the skills associated with these Reading Language Standards, and I struggled on the correct way to model and think aloud for students. Sarah came in and took notes, gave solid feedback, and helped me implement and plan how to integrate the feedback and research based (John Hattie) knowledge to guide my instruction. Her support with stations, individual student feedback, and tracking Demonstrations of Learning weekly or daily, helped me see where students were truly struggling and specifically where they needed the most assistance on certain skills.
Sarah’s positivity and encouragement were great, and my students learned how to accept someone outside of their comfort zone and learn from all adults in their middle school! The communication in our classroom improved with social contracts, and the students responded well to her encouragement of “Love and Logic” through teaching. I truly can say I would not have made it through this instructional year without The Equity Project to guide me with their knowledge and experience.”
Kashli 6th grade ELA teacher Panorama Middle School
After identifying a struggle among our students with understanding text and being able to effectively answer questions with text-based evidence, Sarah walked department leaders through a close reading process to help teach chunk of this strategy to fellow teachers. Over 3-5 months, students in all core classes were taught each piece of the strategy, each piece building on the previous one. Students learned how to work through unknown words, breakdown questions, format their answers with evidence from the text, and more. Teachers modeled their thinking, provided feedback, used student examples, and developed clear rubrics to assess student work.
The strength behind this process was in the plan of attack of rolling out this strategy school-wide. It was not taught to the whole staff on a professional development day and then never followed up on. It was teacher led, teacher tested, teacher approved which allowed us to eventually see this strategy ingrained in our students when they read. Even in year 2, returning students were automatically doing this close reading strategy on their own. We noticed that our students were able to write more coherent answers with appropriate textual evidence and better comprehend what they were reading because we gave them a means to slow down and work through difficult or lengthy texts.
Consistency with implementing this strategy school-wide, coupled with Sarah's knowledge of literacy strategies and teaching experience with struggling readers, resulted in our school increasing our reading scores across the board. Thanks to her, our staff had a way to help students in any subject understand what they read and be able to effectively show what they know!"
REBEKAH ENGLERIGHT
7TH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER
PLC LEADER/DEPARTMENT CHAIR
"I had the incredible opportunity to work with Sarah Krider and her team at Equity Project. The experience changed me as a teacher and changed how my students learn. The best win/win of the 2019-2020 school year. Because Equity Projects is designed and supported by a team of veterans in multiple disciplines and age groups in education, they are able to address the whole student. The team looked at my lesson plans, planned observations, observed and participated (hands-on) in my classroom (multiple times), and then debriefed with me after working with me and my students. I got great feedback that helped me tweak my lessons and improve student learning, because I was able to improved teacher facilitation. I teach in a tough demographic where learning is not at the top of my 6th graders' list of needs. Inspiring this group to want to learn can be challenging. Sarah and her team have this dynamic energy that moves even the most stubborn 11 year old! My students don't want to get left out, so they join in. The number of students who completed successful paragraphs, successful essays, and successful research papers using multiple sources all while connecting their information to a novel was exciting. It has been a true joy to be included in Equity Project. This group of educators is a gift to teachers and students. Equity Project creates great strategies that are completely specific to a classroom and a teacher's style of facilitation. I've never experienced anything like it."
Leslie 6th grade teacher Mann Middle School