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Contextual Factors Analysis: Regional School Unit 18 and Community

Spring 2022

Clara R. Moore

Community and District:

RSU 18 serves the towns of China, Belgrade, Oakland, Sidney, and Rome, all towns

within Kennebec County. There are a total of five elementary schools, two middle schools, and

one high school within RSU 18. Aside from those who have moved during their childhood, all of

my students attended Atwood Primary (P.K. - 2), and then Williams Elementary (3-5), which are

both also located in Oakland, ME. The population of the five towns sums to approximately

15,000 people; 3,189 in Belgrade, 4,328 in China, 2,389 in Oakland, 1,010 in Rome, and 4,389

in Sidney. These towns, although they neighbor larger cities within Kennebec county, (Augusta

and Waterville) are all considered rural with Rome being the most rural.

Belgrade lies at the heart of a collection of seven lakes known as the Belgrade Lakes.

Because of its location, it has a notable presence in Maine’s tourism industry. Most businesses in

Belgrade that are not related to the tourism industry are related to construction, mechanics, and

agriculture, much like a large number of other towns in the area. China is also a large tourist

attraction in the area according to their town website with no more information about other

businesses provided. In Rome the largest industry is health and wellness with six different day

spas and health centers. The town of Sidney is often roped into the large, neighboring capital city

Augusta, but has a high number of businesses related to construction, as well as XPO Logistics

(a trucking company). As far as Oakland, there is a wide variety of options for employment,
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including four of the RSU18 schools. The main attractions however are Camp Manitou and the

Korner Store (both located on Oak Street).

Many students in RSU18 have parents who work manual labor jobs or work for the

district. Outside of the bounds of the district, most parents travel to Augusta or Waterville for

work, with approximately 4.2% of the population being unemployed. Students with parents who

are unemployed have an increased risk for experiencing poverty and are more likely to currently

be living outside of the district but still allowed to attend RSU18 schools. Almost 93% of the

population have completed high school and some form of higher education, with tech school

being the more favored option in the area. Comparatively, 26% of the 93% that have some higher

education (28% overall) have earned their bachelor’s degree or higher. This is not always the

case but students whose parents have earned a college degree are more likely to have a higher

chance of avoiding poverty and being successful in school.

School:

Messalonskee Middle School has a student population of approximately 500 students and

roughly a 12:1 student to teacher ratio. The school is one of two middle schools in RSU18 and

students in grades 6-8 attend. I have yet to find any information on the district or town websites

to determine which students attend which middle school. Many of the teachers at Messalonskee

Middle School are veteran teachers and have been with the district for many years.
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Each grade level has been broken up into “teams” of approximately 80 students each.

Each team has four academic teachers and is self-contained within their area of the school with

the exception of off-team academic classes, unified arts, and special education. I primarily work

with Team Dirigo in eighth grade, but also have a number of seventh-grade students from teams

Evergreen and Highland. MMS is unique in that students will be on the same team (with some

exceptions) for both seventh and eighth-grade years. They get to grow academically with the

same teachers for the majority of the time that they are at MMS.

On staff at Messalonskee Middle School, we have 25 General Education teachers

(including one of my mentors Martha Farnham who teaches higher-level mathematics). We offer

a variety of Unified Arts (seven classes) that require 9 teachers in total to run for our students.

Additionally, there are a number of professionals that have a hand in our Special Education

department from caseworkers to ed techs, to various types of therapists and ESL teachers,

making a total of 35 staff members.

All students within the school follow the same schedule,

meeting with the four core academic classes and one Unified Art

(Team Dirigo’s falls during Block 4) every day. Their Unified Arts

will change with the change in quarters or change in semester based

on the class (Spanish and Jobs for Maine Grads run semester-long).

Every student also has an Advisory, Eagle Time, and LGT.

Advisory is a time for students to bond with each other and their advisors each morning.

Team Dirigo follows a schedule for their advisories every week: Mondays the students have a

team-building activity, Tuesday we check Power School, create goals for the week, and have
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time to work on missing assignments, Wednesdays we have sustained silent reading, Thursdays

we have circle talks, and Fridays the students get a free choice. Advisory is a key element of the

middle school experience as it allows time during the day for students to develop social and

emotional skills necessary to grow into successful young adults while they are in school.

Recently Team Dirigo in an attempt to change student response has incorporated another rotating

element to our advisory schedule: Guidance.

Previously, and what the rest of the school is still experiencing is that one of the two

school guidance counselors rotate through the Eagle Time groups of each team every two weeks

delivering “Second Step” lessons on social and emotional learning. Team Dirigo has come to the

conclusion with our assigned guidance counselor that moving these lessons to Eagle Time and

incorporating some outside resources to teach the same lessons involved in the Second Step

curriculum would be the best method for approaching these possibly difficult subjects with our

students and so far it seems to be working very well.

Eagle Time is something that the entire school participates in, just at different times, and

is designed to be a break from learning during the school day. Tuesdays and Thursdays are

prescribed sustained silent reading time, and Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays on Team Dirigo

we have opened up for student choice. Students have the options of going to the gymnasium and

playing dodgeball, going outside, and going to a “quiet room” that is a tech-free zone. Most

students choose to go outside or go to the gym, with more students choosing to go outside as the

temperature is rising.

The only students to not participate in these activities on Team Dirigo are those students

currently taking Algebra 2. These students meet with Mrs. Farnham during their Eagle Time to
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take a highly accelerated version of the class for high school credit. Eagle Time is only 35

minutes long, whereas most academic blocks are 50 minutes long, so these students have lots of

work to do outside of class, thus they do not have a block 5 class.

LGT is at the end of the day and is a time when school-wide students are able to get help

from their teachers, partake in clubs, tutor/receive tutoring and participate in band or choir. Each

student is assigned to an on team teacher (or in some cases a resource teacher) during this time

and can either be “tagged” by one of their other teachers or can willingly go seek the help of

another of their teachers freely. Eagle time lasts from 1:45 until dismissal which starts at 2:25.

Classroom(s):

At the time of writing this, I have been in my placement at Messalonskee Middle School

for five weeks, and in this time I have come to have a deep understanding of the dynamics of the

classrooms that I work in, as well as the school environment and the surrounding community.

My placement is unique in that I work with two mentor teachers: one, off-team, teaching Algebra

1 and Geometry, and one on-team teaching Pre-Algebra. During the day I see many students, but

I only teach a total of 55. Out of these 55, I work with, 17 students are in the seventh grade, and

38 are in the eighth grade. A total of 28 of my students perform above grade level in

mathematics and as such have been placed in a math class that is taught by an off team teacher.

This group is made up of all of the seventh-grade students and 11 of the eighth graders. The

remainder of my students are all performing at grade level, and are taking an on-team math class
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(with my other mentor) in preparation for high school algebra in the fall when they move on to

Messalonskee High School.

The students that I work with daily are all very different individuals in many ways but

also share much in common with each other. For example, 10 of my students currently receive or

are working towards receiving special education services. Of these students, some have 504

plans, some have an IEP, some transitioned from the Life Skills math program within the last

year, some have no diagnosis and simply need some support, and others we as a team are

fighting to be able to get them formal support and an IEP. The percentage of students that I work

with that fall into this category is just higher than the state average of 17.66% of all students. Of

all of these students who have additional requirements for success, have succeeded more in their

math classes than they have all

year because of the access to a

second adult in the room to sit

down and work with them either

independently or in a small group

setting where they are better able

to focus and thrive. Although it is

a temporary solution to a larger

problem as my placement is only sixteen weeks long in total, hopefully, it provides the data

needed to help these students receive amendments to their IEPs (or to get their IEP) to have a

condition of multiple teachers or an ed-tech in the room for support. Also well above the state

average is the percentage of students of color in my classroom. The school as a whole is 93.1%

white with a total of 6.9% minority enrollment. Comparatively, 6 out of 55 (10.9%) of my

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students are minorities. Statewide, only 5.69% of people identify as a member of one or more

minority groups. Yet another 6 students openly identify (at least at school) as members of the

LGBT community, nearly half of the state-wide reported percentage of queer teens. Through

conversations with my mentor teachers I have learned that three of my students are adoptees, this

has provided these students with a unique life experience, one that I believe has played a figure

in the strongest of friendships among my students.

I am afraid to say that I do not have a complete tally of my students who come from

low-income families but by the measure of the free and reduced lunch program 45% of students

at Messalonskee Middle school qualify. Through conversations with my mentors as well as other

staff in the building, I’ve learned that I have one student who is currently not living within the

bounds of the district due to their parent’s financial situation, one student who has a parent who

is regularly in and out of the legal system, with the other parent struggling financially. A third

student is practically raising their younger sibling, and a fourth is a caretaker for their

grandmother with cancer. Since coming to Messalonskee Middle I have developed a unique

relationship with all of my students and I am working with my mentors to ensure that I am

teaching the whole student and providing for them socially and emotionally as well as

academically.

My students have a very mixed relationship with both school as a whole and

mathematics. The students in my Algebra 1 and Geometry classes overwhelmingly have much

better relationships than the students in my Pre-Algebra classes. Because these students have the

foundational skills necessary to succeed in a class that is above their grade level, it is implied that
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they feel better equipped to succeed in school than the students in my Pre-Algebra classes,

despite the fact that when asked what they found to be the most difficult part of the school and

learning some did still respond with simply “school”, “math”, and “homework”. A much higher

percentage of the Pre-Algebra students responded with these sentiments.

All 55 students that I teach took a

survey in Google Forms based on

Amanda Morin’s Questionnaire for

Connecting with Students and

Families for students in grades 6-12

with some slight modifications to

ensure that I could get the most useful

data to help my students in any way that I can. I have compiled the answers to the question

“What is most difficult about school and learning” from my two Pre-Algebra classes as they

pertain directly to mathematics and school. I have also compiled data collected from a 1:1

assessment on solving two-step equations, combining like terms, and the distributive property

that was given in these classes. The assessment was two questions and graded on a three-point

scale where 3 was proficient and 1 was someone who needed assistance with most steps of the

process to succeed (the student

who was given a 0 attempted the

assessment for a total of one

minute before giving up and

refusing to continue). Not all of

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the students completed the questionnaire and not all students were able to be assessed due to time

constraints, as well as my mentor and I already have a firm understanding of the level that those

particular students were performing at. I would like to point out that of those who did participate

in both studies, a total of 32% have a negative relationship with the school environment and/or

mathematics, and 36% of students (those scoring between 2 and 0) struggled with grasping

content after a week and a half of working with said content.

As far as the classroom environment is concerned, the two classrooms that I work in are

very different. I spend the first half of my day off team teaching Algebra 1 and Geometry in a

classroom that was previously a science classroom. My mentor has a private closet within the

classroom and her desk sits in the same

corner of the room. There are built-in lab

stations around the edge of the room that I

as well as a variety of students use as a

workspace. There are a total of 6 tables in

the center of the room and we teach from a

stand-alone lab station at the front of the

room with a large whiteboard behind it.

Both my mentor teacher and I regularly make use of the smart TV

and project from our iPads to the TV to lecture during lessons. So

that students know what they need for the class as well as the order

of events within their block we have a standing whiteboard in the

corner of the classroom by the door with the sequence and

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materials the students will need in each of their classes for the whole day.

Both Algebra 1 and Geometry have a Google Classroom (Messalonskee Middle School’s

preferred method) and a class website where my mentor has all of the learning materials

including pre-recorded lectures for absent students posted. Algebra 1 students have paper copies

of their worksheets in a file box at the front of the classroom, and we pull the papers that the

students will need for class that day from their respective folder and leave it on the front lab table

for the students. Geometry students, since the start of the pandemic, have two binders: one for

home and one for school. The home binder has all of the material that we have not covered yet

during the school year and their school binder has at least the current unit of study, with the

option of course that students continue to hold onto their

study materials.

Students that are taking math classes off-team are subjected to

extreme rigor as they have the goal of completing the entirety

of the curriculum for their subject and passing the high school

level final exam so that they may earn high school credit

while still in middle school. Because of this, my mentor has

firmly designed the curriculum that I have been

teaching from, and my creativity shines through in

the implementation of review activities.

All classes that I teach with the exception of

Geometry take notes in the form of an Interactive

Notebook (INB). We design “foldable” that delivers

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important information in a creative way that is easy to reference and provides space for students

to practice their new skills with the group and individually. Sometimes these foldables are

self-created in the moment with a piece of blank paper, a pen, and some scissors, and other times

we create them ourselves digitally or even download them from teacher’s pay teachers. Another

common theme between both mentor teachers is that we do not use textbooks in either

classroom. Both mentors have found that it is harder to teach the students how to use a

mathematics textbook than it is to reformat the curriculum because the students have not been

exposed to textbooks in the past.

I spend the majority of my day after 10:10 in my other classroom where I teach

Pre-Algebra. My mentor’s desk is in the far left corner of the room, and my desk is on the

right-hand side, next to an adjoining door to Team

Dirigo’s science classroom. The students have a total of

10 work tables available to them with the expectation that

we only sit two students at a table. Seating charts have

been explored for these classes in the past, but we feel

that there is no true solution to our student’s behavioral

tendencies that are rooted in changing where they sit. There is

hardly any lecturing in this classroom outside of directing the

students through their INB foldable. When we do a lecture,

however, the whiteboard at the front of the room is rarely used as

we favor the Apple TV that is tucked into the front left corner of

the room and teach from our IPads, similar to my other classes.
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We start each class with a five-question warm-up that focuses on foundational skills in

mathematics and ideally, would be an easy grade booster. Unfortunately, this is not always the

case. Fridays we take a break from the warm-ups and the normal structure of the class and

implement Fun Friday. In place of warm-ups, the students get the same amount of time to work

through KenKen puzzles. We then spend the rest of class

completing an activity or playing a game that the students

enjoy and skewing the focus of the game/activity toward

the content that we covered during that week. Unlike in

the advanced Algebra and Geometry classes, we try to

assign as little homework as possible to the Pre-Algebra

students as we have just as much going on outside of

school as they do.

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