Key Characteristic 2: Leadership for Learning

STANDARD # 12
Professional staff members implement curriculum and instruction that are aligned for relevancy, inclusion, and effectiveness.

Elements

Professional staff members implement, review, and adjust curriculum and instruction based on recognized and evidence-based content standards. Curriculum and instructional practices are assessed to assure alignment, relevancy, inclusiveness and effectiveness for all learners.

Evidence

Evidence 1: Endowment (https://www.mntamilschool.org/mnts-scholarship/) section lists the 47 total students attaining MN Seal of Bi-literacy from 2016. Of which, 29 attaining Platinum seal (maps to our 11 years of syllabus), 16 attaining gold seal (corresponds to 10 years of our syllabus and 2 attained certificate (maps to 6 years of our syllabus). MNTS Tamil School current curriculum is aligned to ACTFL (American Council for Teaching Foreign Language) Proficiency levels/standards and also aligned with Tamil National Standards published by ACTFL during July 2022. The learning targets for LSRW skills is based on these standards and completely adopted from NCSSFL (National Council of State Supervisors for Languages) Can-do statements for language learning. This alignment helps us to prepare all our students towards attaining various proficiency levels required for Minnesota Seal of Bi-literacy; like Advanced Low (Platinum – 4 semester equivalent), Intermediate High (Gold – 3 semester equivalent) and Intermediate Low (Certificate – 2 semester equivalent). End of semester assessments, conferences / all hands teachers meeting and continuous improvements around syllabus are playing a pivotal role in constantly reviewing and improving syllabus and the instruction methodology.

Evidence 2: Assessment methodology (https://www.mntamilschool.org/grading/) and parents-teachers conference (https://www.mntamilschool.org/parent-handbook/) are used in gathering both objective assessments and subjective feedback from the learners. These are regularly analyzed for identifying the focus area of improvements. The parents-teachers conference is a powerful medium used for teachers to share the proficiency levels of the students and for the Parents to share the feedback on the curriculum, instruction methodology, tools and process.

Evidence 3: The syllabus-feedback-forms (https://www.mntamilschool.org/syllabus-feedback-forms/) categorized by the levels stays as an open forum for additional feedback. This in augmentation to the broader syllabus committee reflect schools’ commitment towards closed loop feedback and continuous Improvements.