Identifying student success methods that work have been in development for some time, as they emerge from seasoned teachers and policymakers. However, it is often the case that their classroom success and continually developing ‘awareness, knowledge, skill, and disposition', their Student Success Literacy (SSL), is not shared to any great extent and, therefore, their great insights are not accessible to all. For this purpose, SSL is introduced as an entirely new term that makes visible the overall student success ecosystem and the specific language associated with it. The L.E.A.D. Program, unique in Ontario as a pre-emptive approach of professional training, looks to enhance any school boards' ability to support its educational staff. Great potential exists in coalescing how student success literate professionals in all contexts address the sociological issues of schooling in the 21st century to help create optimal educational environments for students.
TopAs mentioned above, student success lies with the teacher; often-times, more specifically, it lies with teacher awareness of the students, situations, and circumstances of the educational system in which one is teaching. This alchemy of factors is there whether teachers acknowledge them, seek them out, or understand them. Those who seek to be transformative teachers understand that content knowledge is not first – building relationships with individuals students are.
In the literature, teacher awareness is often focused on curriculum or educational policy development (Hamilton, 2015; Jackson, 2016). For student success, teacher awareness must evolve past traditional measures of pedagogy and engage with the socio-cultural realities of their schools and communities. When it does, teacher awareness of barriers to student success increases (Cwikla, & Kinzle, 2015; Reynolds, 2016; Dessel, Kulick, Wernick, & Sullivan, 2017; White, 2017; Johnson, Goldman, & Claus 2018). As this accumulating body of awareness and knowledge will come into focus – this individually-built teacher literacy regarding student success – this student success literacy, or SSL, will finally begin coalescing into a shared language.
Diverse, in-school support positively contributes to the success that students find when barriers are working against them (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Karhanek, 2010). For this reason, it is necessary to develop and encourage teacher buy-in and encourage teacher mindsets to move beyond the focus on content knowledge into relationship-building by seeing the individual first.
For student success, transformative teaching will mean that increased teacher awareness will encourage practitioners to embrace measures of pedagogy that engage with the socio-cultural realities of their schools and communities. With transformative education, teacher awareness of barriers to student success increases (Bostad, Cwikla, & Kinzle, 2015; Reynolds, 2016; Dessel, Kulick, Wernick, & Sullivan, 2017; White, 2017; Johnson, 2018). So many diligent teachers already have their SSL well developed – it is just as important for them to acknowledge it as a new testament to their empathy and unending professionalism and, of course, to keep spreading literacy and transforming teaching perspectives.