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Brooklyn Middle spotlights ‘teacher clarity’ to boost student agency
Summary
Brooklyn Middle STEAM School principal Kim Monette told the Osseo Public School District board the school is using John Hattie’s visible learning and an explicit teacher‑clarity approach (learning intentions, success criteria and relevancy) to accelerate student growth after high staff turnover.
Kim Monette, principal of Brooklyn Middle STEAM School, told the Osseo Public School District board the building is prioritizing "teacher clarity" — explicitly sharing learning intentions, success criteria and the relevance of lessons — so students know both what to learn and why. Monette said the school introduced the approach after COVID-era retirements prompted a multi‑year plan to onboard new teachers and build internal instructional capacity.
Monette described how the building trained an instructional leadership team, incorporated AVID-aligned critical reading strategies and used John Hattie’s visible learning research to select high‑impact practices. "If teachers are clear about their instruction, instruction... kids become independent and owners of their learning," Monette said, arguing that clarity produces measurable student growth when combined with tiered interventions.
The principal and staff also described practical classroom practices and staff collaboration time used to make the strategies consistent across classrooms. The presentation emphasized that visible learning is a data‑driven framework: staff use resources such as MetaX to compare effect sizes of instructional strategies and focus professional development on those with the biggest projected impact. School leaders said the aim is not incremental change but to increase growth beyond the one year typically measured by state tests.
