The simple acronym WICOR actually belies a vital and effective approach to ensuring equitable access to rigorous and meaningful educational experiences for children. Believe it or not, the Common Core State Standards were adopted over a decade ago, but without accessible ways for educators to tap into this powerful constellation of standards, little may change for some of our most vulnerable students.
As we refresh and rethink our approach to students’ access to learning standards, may we anchor ourselves to WICOR. If we do so, we can help ensure equitable access to an educational experience that will truly prepare students for college and career success and give them the chance to live productive, meaningful lives.
Keep It Simple, Silly
Back when Common Core was still new, I found myself addressing a veteran high school English department about the shifts these standards represented. My goal was to illustrate the fact that the approach was not entirely new; rather, it presented a shift to refocus on the fundamental aspects of critical thinking and relevance. As is often the case, staff members were open and willing to learn, but they were also tired. To top it off, the content in the presentation was dense. How can I get all of this information across in a way that is meaningful and practical for this great team? I asked myself as we trudged through the content.
At some point in the presentation, a colleague raised her hand and said, “Yes, this is all good and fine, but we must remember the wise adage, ‘Keep it simple silly,’ otherwise we’re going to overcomplicate the approach.” She was totally right. The question was—and still is—what few actions must we do each day to ensure equitable access to learning experiences that improve interactions with these learning standards?
This essential question should guide our collective actions so we can accelerate student achievement by ensuring access to rigorous and enriching learning experiences. We should avoid focusing too much on remediation, which can have the opposite effect.
WICOR as the Planning Anchor for College and Career Readiness
It is the dedicated actions of the educators in the classroom that form the foundation of AVID’s College and Career Readiness Framework. According to this framework, there are four key actions educators take to ensure students have equal access to postsecondary opportunities, and it begins in elementary school. Below we’ll explore each of these key actions and how they relate to WICOR. For each action we will also provide a key step any staff can take immediately as they plan for a new school year.
Insist on Rigor
Effective educators provide learning experiences that challenge students but also engage them and give them greater ownership of their learning. It is easy, however, to lose track of rigor and student motivation when there seems to be so much content to cover. Furthermore, students often come into our classrooms with significant gaps in their learning and development. This can lead to rote, repetitive actions that lack the relevance and meaning that effective learning experiences exude. It usually follows that student ownership wanes, or is never developed, and then we see unfocused and disruptive behaviors.
WICOR helps immensely to avoid this pitfall. At Harvest Valley for example, we include the “W” in WICOR by ensuring we build writing experiences into our expectations for a unit or lesson. But wait, there’s more! Writing is important, but it’s not enough. We must also ensure students are creating and sharing other meaningful outputs. For example, our lesson might be a brief video response or an essay, but we start with the end in mind and work backwards. We also make sure to include the “C” (collaborative learning) and the “R” (reading), so we integrate text-dependent questions and routines for structured student talk, so we don’t forget about these key elements of rigor. You get the idea—as you plan, you look at each element of WICOR to make sure the rigor is baked into each lesson plan and the unit as a whole.
Break Down Barriers
Educators who are true champions of equity don’t leave things up to chance when it comes to ensuring every student’s needs are met. Instead, they know that not every child comes to school with the support, the habits, and the mindset to learn at high levels, even though each child has the potential to learn and grow. Like a seed that needs the right conditions, children need educators who provide the various elements that allow kids to grow.
The “O” in WICOR really opens the doors of accessibility because it means all our students know where in time they are thanks to calendar and agenda routines. Planning out a day and a week and writing down not only what needs to be completed, but how particular learning tasks are to be done and organized often makes a massive positive impact on a student’s life. It has positive effects on the student’s family who, in many cases, also benefit from supports related to time management and prioritization. At Harvest Valley Elementary, we know the “O” means that children know what’s going on every day in their classroom.
Align the Work
“There are just so many initiatives! There’s just so much going on!” We’ve all heard it before, and most of us have said it ourselves. All too often, this is the truth. Part of our responsibility as leaders is to help align the work. In other words, prioritize and simplify. WICOR’s power really comes through here as a tool to help us focus on what really matters.
The “I” in WICOR represents inquiry, and the word inquiry is a gateway into the world of what makes our students tick. We must regularly discuss and build on our knowledge of inquiry, which is our own inquiry-drive practice! The one superpower all of us have as learners is our natural curiosity, but all too often, that’s the one thing that is missing in our classrooms. It is our duty to harness and direct this natural desire to want to understand the world around us.
As a staff, we have decided that intentionally building inquiry into all our lessons and units is a must-do behavior for us. Indeed, planning around the “I” means we focus on the very questions we want kids to answer. Then, as a team of adult educators, we plan instruction around inquiry-based entry points so we don’t forget that these questions must drive our learners. We post those questions, we ensure students ask their own questions, and we go back to our collection of questions throughout the unit to add to our current understanding. Those questions ultimately connect to the end products students create, so rather than a “gotcha” approach to assessment, students are ready to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they’ve built as they’ve inquired and completed projects and solved problems.
Advocate for Students
Lastly, WICOR allows us as a learning community to continually advocate for equity and access to rigorous and meaningful coursework across content areas, regardless of the challenges our students face. Writing, Inquiry, Collaboration, Organization, and Reading are all necessary elements of a program that ensures the learning standards are accessible to students no matter their zip code or gaps in understanding they come to us with as individuals.
At Harvest Valley Elementary, we are on a journey to combine WICOR with our planning processes to ensure access to the rigor and relevance of Common Core Standards. This approach is integrated into our schoolwide program that includes a focus on personalized learning, goal setting, quality intervention and enrichment opportunities, and an ever-expanding emotional and social support system. For us, like our counterparts out there using AVID, the bottom line is that we have decided that our students’ well-being is our collective responsibility, especially after the 2020–21 school year!
Did you enjoy this article? Review AVID’s Site Leaders blog archive for more great content and advice from AVID Principals.
