A Hillsdale alumna’s track record of teaching at-risk students how to read and improving test scores landed her a position at Williams Elementary School.
Jonesville Community Schools hired Hillsdale alumna, Michelle Angel ‘92, to be a literary specialist for the school district, a new position created from Michigan’s Section 31a Program, which is a fund for at-risk students, said Jonesville Community School Board Vice-President Travis Berlin.
“The purpose of the literary specialist is to give at-risk students the help they need and to equip teachers with techniques to help struggling students,” Berlin said.
Angel will work full-time at Williams Elementary School in Jonesville.
Angel graduated from Hillsdale High School and received the Bernard L. Davis Scholarship, which is awarded to Hillsdale residents who “display exemplary leadership and citizenship” and graduate with at least a 3.0 GPA. Angel said she credits the Davis Scholarship for being able to attend Hillsdale because it covered almost all tuition costs.
“I was very thankful and grateful to have received the award,” Angel said.
At Hillsdale, Angel majored in Spanish and received a minor in international business.
Although Angel said she never used her major or minor directly, she said her major in Spanish gave her a unique ability to understand the struggles children face when learning a written language.
“I don’t remember learning English when I was young, but I remember the difficulty of learning written Spanish in college,” Angel said.
Angel said she got her education at Hillsdale College simply because she loved to learn.
“I remember in college thinking it didn’t matter to me what I did with this education because I would never regret getting it,” Angel said.
After Angel graduated from Hillsdale College, she worked part-time at Mauck Elementary.
“At Mauck Elementary I fell in love with working with students,” Angel said, “and I discovered that I had a passion for reading, so I decided to get my teaching certificate.”
Angel got her teaching certificate from Spring Arbor University, then taught at Waldron Area Schools for 12 years, where she worked in the Title 1 reading position and as a first grade teacher.
Berlin said Jonesville Community Schools hired Angel for her work with Title 1, which is a similar program to Section 31a, but is funded by the federal government instead of the state.
“We hired Angel because she has a track record for improving student’s test scores at Waldron Schools,” Berlin said.
One goal of Jonesville Community Schools is to score 5 percent above states averages across the board, which Angel will help with, according to Berlin.
However, Berlin said he thinks the state’s standardized tests are not always the best way to judge student’s proficiency. He said standardized tests are rapidly changing and students have no way to acclimate to the test’s style.
Increased standardized test scores are not the end goal of Angel’s position.
“Angel will work with individual students and teachers to help them with their instructional methods,” Jonesville School District superintendent Chellie Broesamle said.
Angel said the state’s standards will not be able to increase reading scores on their own.
“There is no one size fits all or one curriculum in a box,” Angel said, “I will try to diagnose exactly what each student needs.”
The M-STEP, which replaced the MEAP in 2015 in order to meet Common Core standards, assesses students on English language arts from grades 3 through 8.
Berlin said the M-STEP fails to help teachers or students because scores are not accessible until months after the examination is administered, so there is no immediate opportunity to address the issues that students or teachers may have.
Berlin said he thinks the NWEA exam, which is controlled by teachers at the local level, is a better exam.
“I wish the state would switch to an NWEA style exam because it gives teachers immediate results and scores are progressive, so they track students progress throughout their education,” Berlin said, “It allows teachers to help students in places they struggle and to push students who are already ahead to excel even more.”
Josh McDowell, the principal at Williams Elementary School, wanted reading scores to be at or above average by third grade, according to Angel.
In the 2014-2015 school year, the M-STEP showed that 55.2 percent of students in Jonesville Community Schools were proficient or advanced in English language arts, compared to a 50.1 percent proficiency rate for Michigan, as a whole.
The proficiency rating for third grade students at Williams Elementary is above the state average M-STEP scores, but Angel said she hopes to help students improve upon those scores.
At Williams Elementary, 55.2 percent of third grade students were either proficient or advanced in English Language Arts, compared to just 50.1 percent statewide, according to mischooldata.org.
Despite the emphasis on improving test scores, Angel’s conception of education is anything but standardized.
“Being a teacher you are a lifelong student,” she said, “I’m always searching for new and better methods to teach.”
Berlin said Angel is a great fit for the literary specialist position because her son is going to Williams Elementary, so she has a real stake in the success of the students, and because she excels in teaching students to read.
“She is very knowledgeable and confident, and her experience lends well to the position,” Broesamle said.
