I would say that my school, Hampden Academy (HA), is fairly regular. I have been teaching at HA for 9 years and although we have had a few changes, our standard operating procedure has stayed relatively the same. We have good teachers and historically have been one of the higher performing public schools in the state. The school operates on a rotating schedule with 4 eighty minute periods that meet every other day. We have incorporated an advisor-advisee program, began the process of RTI, and for the first time, we are actively looking at making changes to our master schedule. The impetus for this change has come from the fact that we have not made AYP the past few years in English and Math and teachers in these departments feel as though they need to meet in greater frequency in order for their material to become more "sticky" for the students. The other possible reason for this change is financial. Due to the current budget shortfall, a change to the master schedule may mean a need for less teachers and a chance for the district to save money.
The threat of this change has caused great stress amongst the faculty in fear of their jobs, not seeing the students at the current time and frequency and wondering how this change will effect learning. Any major change is going to met with resistance by some, acceptance by others and a whole bunch of people who are sitting on the fence. How do you know when it is a good time to change something that will effect everyone? And if you do change. What happens if you can't or don't have the time, resources or forsesight to execute the plan you put in place?
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One of my fears, and I know it's shared by others at my school, is that if you change - can you change back? The financial hardships that we are all facing means many more teachers will lose their jobs again this year. Should things turn around, will those jobs be open again or will the districts say that since we managed with less we should keep less?
ReplyDeleteComing from a school that feels like it has been in upheaval for the past three years (probably more, but that's when I started), I guess you should be thankful that up until now your school has been stable and that this too shall pass. My biggest complaint is that my school doesn't stick to any one thing and we are known for trying every bandwagon out there. I think the more solid your foundation is, the easier the changes will be. All schools are dealing with budget shortfalls and are looking at cutting positions. It almost feels like we are moving backwards in education, back to the days of giant class sizes and little 1:1 time with the teacher. Your district has a good reputation, hopefully everything works out.
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest problems in education is that we have essentially one model...lots of other ideas work as well or may be even better...but the vast majority of schools use the same model. We tinker with it a bit every year...some schools have wide swings in their practices and other schools remain relatively stable...but it is all around essentially the same model. And that is one we don't question.
ReplyDeleteHere are the regularities we are used to: nine and a half month school year; periods of 45 or 80 minutes; curriculum organized around separate subjects; students exposed to 10 individual and different teachers each day, etc.
The question we need to ask is...what do we want kids to know, be able to do, and what kinds of dispositions do we want them to have when they leave us upon graduation?
Once we have that figured out, we should brainstorm the many different ways we could make that happen (many of which look very different from the way schools now run). For example, maybe the best way we could teach high school students is to have them stay with a team of teachers for 2 years...or maybe even all 4 years.
Or maybe we should approach the curriculum by teaching thematically across subjects and organize ourselves into humanities, STEM, and the arts faculties instead of separate subjects.
Just two ideas out of many?
Other ideas...anyone, anyone?!