Salem Public Schools

A Journey for Leaders, Teachers, and Students

When Rebecca Westlake, District ELL Director, first began her partnership with Confianza, she believed it would help her to improve the learning experience and access to content for English Learners in the ELL Department. What Rebecca did not expect was how much her work with Confianza founder Sarah Ottow would allow her to become a change agent and transform the work across all academic departments in Salem Public Schools.

Salem Public Schools is a small district about 20 miles north of Boston with a storied past and rich future. The community is growing and ever-diversifying--nearly half of Salem students are Latinx and, for one-third of learners, English is not their first language. In 2016, Salem Public Schools embarked on an accelerated improvement plan to address mounting challenges in the district and increase opportunities, access, and outcomes for all students. 

A New Role for a Changing District

This is around when Rebecca Westlake, District ELL Director, reached out to Confianza. New to her position, Rebecca sought support for how to conceptualize her role as ELL Director and build out a department that best serves the needs for a growing community of English Learners. 

A Three-Phase Plan

Together, Confianza Director and Founder Sarah Ottow and Rebecca developed a three-phase professional learning plan to meet the district’s goals. 

Phase 1: Bring a Language Lens, helping district leadership to better know their students, celebrate their diverse backgrounds, and see multilingualism as an asset to learning.

Phase 2: Support ELL Specialists, growing their capacity to plan, teach, assess, and collaborate with a language lens, as well as helping design the Newcomer Program at Salem High School.

Phase 3: Expand Impact Across Disciplines, training instructional coaches through the lens of accessibility for ELL and ALL students through Confianza’s coach training program.

Impact at All Levels

After three years of partnership with Confianza, Rebecca built an ELL program in Salem that is driven by the needs of students and teachers. “Sarah started and met me where I was in my own leadership journey and then helped elevate my understanding of how the system works; always student-centered, and always on behalf of kids," shares Rebecca. 

Salem educators have shifted their perspectives from the one-and-done PD model to seeing the immense value of on-going coaching and reflection. With Confianza’s help, teachers are seeking continuous feedback about student learning and engagement to improve their practice and Salem has seen steady improvement on all performance measures over the last three years.